Jazz Journal

Everybody digs pianist Bill Evans in Grant Gee’s superb docudrama Everybody Digs Bill Evans. Or, rather, everybody dug Bill Evans. For Bill is spiralling downwards after the death in a car crash of his trio’s bassist Scott LaFaro. He sinks into non-creativity and recognition of tacit family friction.

They say : Two-time Grammy-winning vocalist Kurt Elling releases In The Brass Palace, out February 13 on Big Shoulders Records, the label he co-founded with manager Bryan Farina. Recorded with Germany’s WDR Big Band conducted by Bob Mintzer, the album fulfills a longtime ambition for a big band record, with arrangements by Michael Abene, Tim Hagans and the late Jim McNeely. Repertoire spans Joe Jackson, Thad Jones, Duke Ellington, Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul, with lyrics by Elling.

London-based alto saxophonist Sam Braysher is now on his fourth album, this time fronting an international quartet featuring his long-standing musical friend and colleague, the German-born, Amsterdam-based, guitarist Linus Eppinger alongside a rhythm section of American-born, French-resident Darryl Hall on bass and the veteran Dutch musician Eric Ineke on drums.

It is sometimes difficult to tell where composition ends and improvisation starts in the music of Chris Van Voorst Van Beest. He is clearly classically trained but with a lovely sense of groove and jazz harmony. His music is full of classical forms, sophisticated improvisation, unusual voicing of chords, changing rhythms and time signatures. It could sound a mess. That it doesn’t is down to the compositional skills of Van Beest and the sensitivity of his trio. This is compelling, stylish jazz.

They say : Malian-born, Oslo-based percussionist and cultural ambassador Sidiki Camara is set to release Ankaben, his most ambitious project to date, bringing together an extraordinary ensemble of Norwegian jazz, folk and contemporary musicians. (Oslo Session Recordings (OSR) and the number of the album is OSR010.

They say : Renowned for fusing classical disciplines, intense improvisational synergy, and traditional Balkan irregular time signatures, Acoustic Version’s signature artistic chemistry is perfectly captured on their highly regarded album Time In Time Out, released internationally by ICSM Records on CD and now, for the first time, on 180g audiophile vinyl.

The Jazz Harpist was Dorothy Ashby’s debut album. Widely regarded as one of her best it was recorded by Rudy Van Gelder at his Hackensack studio in New Jersey, produced by Ozzie Cadena and originally released on the Regent label in 1957. This vinyl-only reissue contains four bonus tracks taken from a session nearly a year and a half later with a different rhythm section.

Charlie Hunter’s second album for Blue Note (his third altogether) follows the example set by the first (Bing, Bing, Bing!, reviewed February 1996) in presenting more Scofield-styled swamp boogie and broody ballads and again using an exclamation mark at the end of its title. The band is, however, augmented by another soloist – altoist Calder Spanier.

In the light of the last 30 years or so, Gil Evans’s notion of innovation as embodied here seems rather quaint. An accident of history – today’s fad for retro sounds – makes La Nevada, a modal groove modestly enlivened by riffs and solos, sound fresher than it might have 10 years ago, but this illusion only thinly disguises the music’s antiquity. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that Out Of The Cool didn’t sound dated when it was first issued.

Although he has participated in various jazz sessions in recent years, including the 1985 Round Midnight film soundtrack and a 1993 tribute to Miles Davis with Wallace Roney, Herbie Hancock’s debut for Polygram, The New Standard, is his first straightahead date under his own name since his 1981 quartet recording with Wynton Marsalis. ‘The New Standard was the idea of Guy Eckstine, who is an executive with Verve. He’s also co-producer of the record.