Gary Peacock Trio, “Rumblin’”
Bassist Gary Peacock has been a model of inuitive equipoise since the 1960s, when he was working in trios led by pianists Clare Fischer, Bill Evans and Paul Bley. Over the last few years — since the dissolution of a marquee unit with Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette — Peacock has led a fine piano trio of his own, which releases its second album, Tangents, Friday on ECM.
Marc Copland is the pianist, Joey Baron is the drummer, and together they share a willingness to join Peacock at any musical coordinates: impressionistic reverie, deep-song balladry, swinging abstraction. “Rumblin’” finds them in that last mode, with a title that nods to Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden — and a robust melody, carried by Peacock, that does the same.
Charles Tolliver, “Our Second Father”
The Festival of New Trumpet Music kicks off this weekend, and as usual it will unfold as a brass fantasia in many colors. This year’s edition bears the title “Impact: Celebrating 15 Years of Boundary-Breaking Music” — borrowing a theme from trumpeter Charles Tolliver, who will receive the festival’s award of recognition. Tolliver will join FONT Music founder Dave Douglas and others in a panel discussion at 5 p.m. on Sunday at The New School. In that spirit, here is an incendiary track from the 1972 album Impact, featuring Tolliver’s band Music Inc. The tune, “Our Second Father,” is a dedication to John Coltrane, and along with a heroically intense trumpet solo, it features a go-for-broke charge on drums by Alvin Queen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqHoHNl73Ko
Tom Harrell, “Time Passage”
Tom Harrell is another independent-minded trumpeter with a body of work stretching back to the ‘70s. He has been nothing if not prolific in our era, and Moving Pictures, his new album on HighNote, serves as a reminder that he’s also still very much at the top of his game. It’s a showcase not only for his working quartet — with Danny Grissett on piano, Ugonna Okegwo on bass and Adam Cruz on drums — but also for his compositions. “Time Passage” offers a taste of the smart, no-nonsense modernism that Harrell has made a trademark; it draws from the Coltrane harmonic language without falling into a trap. And listen for the voicings in the trumpet choir that plays the melody, multitracked of course by the composer himself.
Yosvany Terry and Baptiste Trotignon, “Ancestral Memories”
The notion of diaspora rings clearly throughout Ancestral Memories, a new album from the Cuban-born saxophonist and percussionist Yosvany Terry and the Parisian pianist-composer Baptiste Trotignon. Due out in the United States on Okeh this week, it’s a successful outcome of transatlantic cultural exchange, and a persuasive statement about the borders that can be elided with the tools of postbop modernism. Listen above to the title track, which hits its stride with a streetwise swagger, courtesy of bassist Yunior Terry (Yosvany’s brother) and heavyweight drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts.
Chet Doxas, “I Haven’t Seen Color”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC882zVSwzM&feature=youtu.be
If you follow this space and know Chet Doxas, you’re probably familiar with his work in Riverside, the band he jointly leads with Dave Douglas. Rich in Symbols, due out on Ropeadope this month, is a new solo album by Doxas, who plays saxophone and clarinet, and drew inspiration from the East Village art scene of the early downtown era: work by the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin. Here is the premiere of some live-in-the-studio Super 8 footage, featuring Doxas and his band – Matthew Stevens, guitar; Zack Lober, electric bass; Eric Doob, drums — hungrily attacking a tune called “I Haven’t Seen Color.”
