Back in the day, some fans would raise eyebrows at the implications of the term “jazz education” – preferring the romance that this impulsive music was plucked out of the air on street corners by unschooled visionaries. Donna’s Secret, a collection of eight new works from UK composer/arranger Issie Barratt’s all-female Interchange big band, displays plenty of impulsive vision – but jazz education with visions of its own brought it here. Both the quality of the writing and the assured resourcefulness of the improvising owe a lot to the innovative Barratt’s work over three decades as a bandleader, composer, sax-player, teacher and proselytiser, particularly in bringing female instrumentalists to the foreground of a traditionally male-run art.
The pieces span the world’s musical languages, but with jazz deconstructivism a constant disruption. Accordionist Karen Street’s cleverly multi-thematic Still Here embraces quiet Latin grooves for Laura Jurd’s trumpet to twist over, and martial drum tattoos (from the excellent Katie Patterson) clatter under jigging folk tunes. Singer Brigitte Beraha’s title track mixes English and French lyrics and glimpses of samba; pianist Nikki Iles’ Negomi gracefully invokes the sound world of Kenny Wheeler; cellist Shirley Smart’s Palmyra has the inflections of Arab maqam, and Cassie Kinoshi’s Caliban drives a jaggedly jazzy theme over a thudding bass hook and uncorks a whoopy, slewing tenor-sax solo from Chelsea Carmichael. The dreamily wordless vocal reverie might have been snipped a little, and the cattle-calling evocation Samla Korna Med Kulning drifts within range of the fey, but this is a powerful debut for an outfit who clearly have a lot more original music in the wings.
Also out this month
Snarky Puppy keyboardist/composer Bill Laurence’s Live at Ronnie Scott’s (Flint Music) unusually features him in mostly unplugged mode in a bass-and-drums trio, fervently coupling old jazz devotions to Ahmad Jamal and Bill Evans to his own evocative broad-brush composing and today’s hooky, Robert Glasperesque dance-mantras. Trumpeter Byron Wallen, a British Don Cherry for his nomadic world-musical assimilations, has released the atmospheric Portrait: Reflections on Belonging (Twilight Jaguar), with young guitar star Rob Luft prominent in his fine quartet. And 78-year-old guitar star John McLaughlin teams up with long-time percussion partner Zakir Hussain and singer/composer Shankar Mahadevan for Is That So? (Abstract Logix) – a lovingly crafted and unexpectedly tender east-west mix of vocal lyricism, wordless improv and synth-orchestrating, swiftly wind-mimicking guitar sonics, and delicate drumming.
