This week on Jazz Spectrum – August 19, 2023

By Fritz Byers

As you’ll see in the playlist for this week’s show, three of the first four sets begin with big-band pieces.  This is not nostalgia for the Swing Era prominence of such bands, although one could spend time reflecting on the sad if unintended implications of a line in the standard “Early Autumn,” whose lyrics by the great Johnny Mercer evoke “a dance pavilion in the rain, all shuttered down.”  Although largely for economic reasons, jazz orchestras were long ago definitively overtaken by smaller groups as the primary focus of jazz innovation, larger ensembles have continued to contribute to the music’s evolution, particularly as incubators for innovations in composing and arranging, and by creating the kinds of rich tonal settings for improvisation that only full horn sections can provide.  Just thinking about this convinces me it’s time to devote a show to the magic of the great composer, arranger, and bandleader, Maria Schnieder.

This week we begin the show with a personal favorite, the Kenny Clark-Francy Boland Big Band, co-led by the pathbreaking be-bop drummer Kenny Clark and the Belgian pianist Francy Boland.  For the ten or so years of its active life, the Band provided refuge for expatriate American musicians alongside some of the most accomplished European players.  Kenny Clark contributed his exceptional skills as a rhythm-setter and his life-long propensity for placing accents at the least expected moments and making them seem almost inevitable.  He was incapable of cliché.  Francy was a marvelous composer and arranger, who recorded far less than we wish he had and turned almost exclusively to composing after the band split up in the early 70s.  

The tune that opens the show, “Tween Dusk and Dawn in Via Urbania,” is the middle of a three-movement suite composed by Francy, which the band recorded in 1969 and released as Fellini 712.  I’m not musical enough to understand the influence Fellini had on Francy’s conceptions, although I’ve always loved the cover of the lp, which you can see here. What I can hear is a big band that is somehow both tightly organized and free-flowing, Francy’s compositional flair that has a nearly Charles Mingus playfulness with shifting tempos and orchestral colors, and Kenny’s unavoidable rhythmic shaping throughout.  You’ll also get a good taste of Francy’s pianism.

The second set begins with a track from the new release from the composer and arranger Chuck Owen, collaborating with a renowned large ensemble, the WDR Big Band, based in Germany.  Chuck has long demonstrated his talents as an arranger, of his tunes and those of others, with a particular gift for both fine detail and elaborate harmonies.  “And Your Point Is” is a composition of Chuck’s, which here he has reconfigured for big band.  In the transformation, he’s made room for the organist Billy Test and the tuba of Mattis Cederberg, among other notable contributors. 

And the fourth set showcases the title track of Kemet: The Black Land, the new release from the trombonist and composer, Javier Nero.  Javier’s 2020 debut, Freedom, was buzzed about for much of the year, especially for its eclecticism.  On Kemet, Javier takes another enormous step across cultural boundaries in what comes to my ears as a deep meditation on the ancient Egyptian civilization whose name this release bears.  The recording, which has an appealing minimalism that feels true to its sources, abounds with influences, styles, themes, and implications for the evolution of music.  As Javier has said, “the discipline of music, specifically jazz, prides itself in its amalgamation of diverse cultural elements to forge something new of beauty.”  The title track shows Javier has earned the right to make such a grand statement about his intentions and his accomplishments.