Australian HiFi - March-April 2016_

Australian avhub.com.au

JAZZ TRACK
By John Shand

98

You sense a depth here from the opening

notes. Paul Grabowsky has never recorded

a solo piano album before and you hear

the resolve to make the opportunity

count. His harmonic extrapolations on the

delicate Angel are so rich and surprising it

is like turning the pages of an illuminated

medieval book to be startled first by the

gold leaf and then the silver. Most of the

This sounds less like the music is being held

prisoner by the desire for precision than

Golden’s Outliers studio release, even if that

one has a fuller sound. Here the improvised

introductions to the pieces of Golden (piano),

Bill Williams (bass) and Ed Rodrigues (drums)

constitute some of the most interesting music.

Compositionally Golden’s Paralysed stands out,

its rippling melody intertwining agitation and

When jazz first migrated north from New

Orleans it slept on Chicago’s sofa before

lobbing into New York, and the Windy City

has remained a major jazz centre ever since.

When the Chicago Jazz Festival let the great

drummer Jack DeJohnette air the project of

his choice he reunited pivotal figures from the

city’s heady 1960s days: pianist Muhal Richard

Abrahams and saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell

and Henry Threadgill, plus cellist/bassist Larry

Gray. It was a performance in which the years

slip away and you’d swear you were listening

to a bunch of kids in their 20s, so ferocious is

the energy, so contagious the joy as they attack

daring, sophisticated compositions with a rare

depth of rapport. A must-have album, it will

be a revelation to anyone only familiar with

DeJohnette via Keith Jarrett’s trio.

simultaneously. Macaulay’s sound and lines have

that magnanimous ebullience of jazz’s early years

mixed up with the imagination and curiosity to

explore what is possible now. These qualities also

apply to his compositions and to the playing of

Steve Grant (piano), Tamara Murphy (bass) and

James McLean (drums). The effect is cumulative: a

picture of humanity that is like holding a mirror and

seeing life etching itself on your face.

the planet at the moment. Around, amid and

over their grooves Goldberg lays his lacework

of piano inventions: playing that strikes an

engaging balance between effulgent lyricism

and deepening the grooves. This music is not

revolutionary in the way that Voyager’s is, but

it easily lifts itself above that of most jazz piano

trios with its melodic effervescence, rhythmic

ingenuity and intensity of rapport.

A glance at the credits tells you Cor

Fuhler is playing a piano and Jim Denley

an alto saxophone, yet their joint level of

sophistication in disguising this by extracting

a thousand unexpected and unidentifiable

sounds here reaches new heights. The point,

of course, is not an exercise in sonic curiosity,

but to make meaningful music, and in that

regard these two improvised duets represent

the art of spatial relationships, atmospherics and

suspense. Nonetheless part of that suspense is

derived from the sheer surprise factor of the

sounds that unfold, sometimes even stretching

to the delight of wondering on which instrument

they were made! The cover contains lists of wildly

diverse artists, and the one that caught my eye

was Poe: this music could function admirably as

a score for his ‘The Telltale Heart.’

compositions are his own, the two exceptions

including a ‘Round Midnight to reassert its

witching-hour connotations as he improvises

with fragments of the melody. Grabowsky has

always been blessed with the touch to make a

piano truly sing, and when combined with a

good Steinway and superb recording quality

each note throughout this album seems to

glisten as it wings from speaker to ear.

quiet yearning amid clever rhythmic convolutions.

Ultimately this is a band that is more preoccupied

with solving musical puzzles than it is in reaching

out to touch the listener, although the high skill

levels are backed up by expansive imaginations.

Their biggest attribute, however, is their ability to

play with space and dynamics, and if and when

more soul is allowed to seep around the edges of

the ample holes, look out! John Shand

James Macaulay| Three Minute Blitz | Pound Records 005

Aaron Goldberg| The Now | Sunnyside SSC1402

Paul Grabowsky | Solo | ABC Jazz 470 3342

Cor Fuhler/Jim Denley | Truancy | Splitrec 24

Casey Golden Trio | Live At Bennetts Lane | Scrampion Records SCRAMP003

Jack DeJohnette | Made in Chicago | ECM 2392

Some musicians play music. The best ones play

life, with its bewildering maze of joy, sorrow,

pain, stoicism, turmoil and fleeting pleasure.

You hear all that pouring from the bell of James

Macaulay’s trombone: someone enraptured,

transported, desperate or desolate who is

never merely treading water and playing the

‘right’ notes. The idiom is a Janus-like version

of jazz that looks backwards and forwards

Eric Harland is one of the great drummers

of our time, as has been clear on his

several tours of Australia, whether with

Charles Lloyd, his own Voyager project,

or, as on this album, the trio of pianist

Aaron Goldberg. The bassist, as always,

is Reuben Rogers, with whom Harland

also works in Lloyd’s bands, and I doubt

there is a groovier rhythm section on