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Human Feel: Speak To It
More than a quarter century after its initial appearance, a landmark album from the second wave of downtown NYC jazz reappears in a remastered hi-res release.
The emergence of chamber jazz as a genre can be traced to the innovative sextet sides recorded in the mid-1930s by bandleader
John Kirby
bass, acoustic1908 - 1942
Benny Goodman
clarinet1909 - 1986
Today, there is no consensus about exactly what styles should be included in the genre. Chamber jazz can be defined by configuration: the absence of drums and the presence of orchestral instruments not generally used in jazz groups. It can be characterized by style: quiet and introspective, through-composed rather than song form or blues-based. You might hear traces of European classical music influences, or an embrace of global musical traditions. The term's meaning has changed as the music has evolved. In the 1950s chamber jazz referred to The
Modern Jazz Quartet
band / ensemble / orchestrab.1952
Charles Mingus
bass, acoustic1922 - 1979
The breadth of chamber jazz, its plurality of sources and methods, offers a direction for advancing the musical conversation across cultural and generational lines, and a lens for widening the scope of our own listening tastes.
Human Feel Speak to It
Songlines
2022
Resolution: 24/192
More than a quarter century after its initial appearance, Speak to It, a landmark album from the second wave of downtown NYC jazz, reappears in a remastered hi-res release from the Vancouver label Songlines.
Songlines has supported chamber jazz for more than two decades. Label owner Tony Reif uses the term "creative chamber jazz" to describe albums of original compositions that incorporate contemporary trends in creative music within the framework of chamber jazz, and to convey the resemblance between these small ensembles and classical music groups. Over years of playing together, a distinctive sound emerges that makes a chamber jazz group identifiable.
The ties that bind musicians for three decades must be strong, and the creative process flexible, to allow for change and growth. Since their first album as a quartet in 1991, the members of
Human Feel
band / ensemble / orchestrab.1989
Chris Speed
saxophone
Andrew D'Angelo
saxophone, alto
Kurt Rosenwinkel
guitarb.1970
Jim Black
drumsSpeak to It was recorded by Joe Marciano to multitrack analogue tape at Systems Two, Brooklyn, in the Fall of 1995, and released by Songlines on CD in 1996. Many years later, Speed's move from New York to California led to an unexpected discovery of the original analogue stereo mixes. Reif, the executive producer of the album, committed to a reissue in hi-res. The analogue tapes were remastered at 24/192 by engineer and Songlines artist
Chris Gestrin
piano
Wayne Shorter
saxophone1933 - 2023
D'Angelo's "Spaze" signals another direction in the band's book. The dryly humorous opening lines give way to off-rhythm noisy bursts that rip through the walls of form. D'Angelo's bass clarinet solo displays the full range of the instrument's wide register, not only of pitch but inflection. Overblown bass clarinet cries generate a coolly dispassionate response from Black's cymbals, leading into a dialogue between guitar and B flat clarinet, a clarinet soliloquy, and further group interplay. Marciano's skillful engineering and Gestrin's crystal-clear remastering allow the dynamics and shaded tone colors of all the instruments to be heard distinctly. As the other players drop out, Black's spare drum hits seem to fade into the gloomy distance.
Black's role in Human Feel goes beyond the traditional drum chair. As a composer-conductor, he lays the groundwork of the performance and leads the other three players along a zig-zag course. The opening of Black's "Not About You," speech-like murmurs of saxophone over subtle guitar noise, is suddenly interrupted by forceful drum strikes which call the band to order and introduce a softly-blown melody. Just when the unwary listener thinks the piece has properly begun, Black disrupts the mood with an aggressive rock-style accent-on-the-two-and-four drum pattern that prompts the actual head of this
Frank Zappa
guitar, electric1940 - 1993
The wall between reinterpretation and deconstruction is breached in the band's performance of
Mal Waldron
piano1925 - 2002
Holly Palmer
vocalsWhen the parts are as individually distinctive, creative and accomplished as the members of Human Feel, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts, but equal to it. Such equality is a rare thing in any musical ensemble.
Track Listing
Darker Joys; Speak to It; Spaze; Not about You; Nimble Demons; Left Alone; Tic, Tics; Eno Eva Yood Nodi; Hey Roma ain't Vein; Cat Teachers.Personnel
Jim Black: drums; Andrew D'Angelo: alto sax, bass clarinet; Kurt Rosenwinkel: guitar; Chris Speed: tenor sax, clarinet.
Human Feel Gold
Intakt
2019
Resolution: 24/88
The Zürich-based record label Intakt frequently releases albums that can be categorized as chamber jazz, notably, piano duos with various second instruments led by
Irene Schweizer
pianob.1941
Aki Takase
pianob.1948
Ingrid Laubrock
saxophoneb.1970
Sylvie Courvoisier
piano
Tomeka Reid
cello
Tim Berne
saxophone, altob.1954
Mark Feldman
violinIn 2018, after a long hiatus, Human Feel regrouped to perform concerts in Europe. During that tour, Intakt provided the opportunity for a recording session; from the first moments of the resulting album Gold, it is clear that this band could not be mistaken for any other ensemble in creative improvisational music.
The poignant unison saxophone line that opens D'Angelo's
Albert Ayler
saxophone, tenor1936 - 1970
Speed's "Imaginary Friend" incorporates a bolero-like central figure on the guitar while Black pounds behind the beat, under and around Speed's post-bop solo; there's a sense of pushing past the point of exhaustion, like when you need to drag yourself away from a noisy party that's gone on too long.
Half of the pieces on Gold were composed by D'Angelo. In the interim between "Gold" and the band's previous album, D'Angelo endured a life-threatening medical trauma, and had to rebuild his playing skills over the course of a lengthy recovery. What he brings to his composition "G_D" is renewed inner strength and spiritual depth. The long opening section features Speed's wide-vibrato tenor, voicing a wordless acknowledgment of the composer's brush with mortality. The fragile beauty of the piece and the clarity of intention expressed by the players reveals the growth and continued development of the band from their earlier years.
The minimalism of "Bass Place"—two chords shimmering under a simple theme for saxophone with bass clarinet responses—is momentarily submerged in waves of crashing, distorted dissonance, that subside to the stillness of a single sustained note. That reductive strategy continues in "Eon Hit." Over Black's strong backbeat, the horns and guitar restate the opening theme in repetitive blocks. A steady buildup to higher levels of energy suddenly collapses into a static electronics-laden coda.
Of D'Angelos's final two pieces on the album, "Numer" punctuates short phrases with abrupt silences; you can hear the sound between the sounds. It's a through-composed piece shorn of any reassuring structure that seeks and succeeds in confounding the listener's expectations. The companion piece, "Ology," paints abstract sonic canvases with electronically-processed sound; a return to the formless state where creative energy arises.
Notwithstanding the band's long hiatus, the communication and responsiveness among the musicians is as immediate as in their earlier recordings. "Gold" is the refined product of that rare musical alchemy.
Track Listing
Alar Vome; Imaginary Friend; G_D; Stina Blues; Bass Place; Eon Hit; Martens; Lights Out; Numer; OlogyPersonnel
Jim Black: drums and electronics; Andrew D'Angelo: alto sax, bass clarinet; Kurt Rosenwinkel: guitar; Chris Speed: tenor sax, clarinet.
Waxwing Flicker Down
Songlines
2021
Resolution: 24/96
On the quieter end of the chamber jazz spectrum are two ensembles whose recent albums explore the experimental side of creative chamber jazz. Lines that originate in different musical genres intersect, and the point of meeting is where Waxwing's sound begins.
Vancouver-based
Waxwing
band / ensemble / orchestra
Tony Wilson
guitar
Jon Bentley
saxophone, tenorb.1973
Peggy Lee
vocals1920 - 2002
Waxwing have been playing together for fifteen years but have only recorded three studio albums; the appearance of Flicker Down is a welcome addition to that discography. Saxophonist Bentley produced and shaped the artistic direction of the new album through the judicious use of post-production software; as the recording progressed, he ordered the sequence of the tracks to establish a narrative flow. On two of the shorter pieces, Waxwing improvise over pre-recorded percussion tracks. Bentley describes his methodology:
"[I] constructed hybrid improv/composed-sounding songs using production software, not common to use in a trio chamber jazz setting. Many of the short pieces on the album are actually manipulated improvisations to help give them a slightly more composed feel but retaining the spontaneity and interest of the original improvisation."
Each of the members is a composer, and each has a distinctive compositional voice. Lee, who has written extensively for her own ensembles, contributes "Crossing Paths" and "Breathe," through-composed suites that provide space for Bentley's introspective tenor lines and Lee's wide palette of cello colors. On "Breathe," Bentley re-imagines Wilson's guitar solo with sophisticated signal processing.
Wilson's pieces, which comprise the longer selections on the album, draw on his experiences as a collaborative songwriter and his reach across cultural boundaries to folk music traditions and social engagement. "Flicker Down," one of the longest excursions on the album, ebbs and flows over its seven-minute length, carrying the listener along a journey through Wilson's sound landscape. The hymn-like "On This Day" would not sound out of place in a fingerpicked acoustic guitar set; Lee's cello cadenza in "Your Bet" has the character of a passage in a contemporary classical piece.
Canada's "Highway of Tears," a corridor in northern British Columbia along which dozens of indigenous women have disappeared or been found murdered, inspired Wilson's composition of the same name. The performance is suffused with sorrow and loss appropriate to the somber theme. The minor-key mood is sustained through the eight minutes of "Joe's Theme"; the players trade solos and duets in flowing digressions, returning to the main theme by tangential routes.
"Peace for Animeek," one of the software-shaped group-credited compositions, features guest flutist Miranda Clingwall, a birdlike presence flitting in and out of the processed voices of the trio. Bentley's pieces "Chasing the End" and "Parasitic," close out the album with purposeful brevity. Working within the self-imposed boundaries of a chamber jazz trio, Waxwing produce melodically inventive music that lingers in the mind long after the performance has ended.
Track Listing
Flicker Down; On this Day; Fweeo Walks By; Your Bet; Time Waited; A Day's Life; Montbretia Gates; Highway of Tears; Birds in Cages; Crossing Paths; Joe's Theme; Breathe; Invisible Something; Just Saying; Cloaks of Coax; Peace for Animeek; Chasing the End; Parasitic.Personnel
Jon Bentley: saxophones; Peggy Lee: cello; Tony Wilson: electric guitar; Miranda Clingwall: flute and space echo.The Reappearance of the Clarinet
The clarinet has enjoyed a resurgence in contemporary chamber jazz that can be traced to the legacies of new music visionaries
Eric Dolphy
woodwinds1928 - 1964
John Carter
clarinetb.1929
Jimmy Giuffre
clarinet1921 - 2008
Tony Scott
clarinet1921 - 2007
Buddy DeFranco
clarinet1923 - 2014
Giuffre's 1961 trio concerts drew attention to the clarinet's capabilities in third stream-style chamber music, but it was Dolphy who pointed the way to an entirely new sound through his virtuoso bass clarinet solos and advanced harmonic language. After Dolphy's untimely death in 1964 and Giuffre's absence from performing and recording, John Carter was one of the few reeds players who committed to performing exclusively on clarinet, and to writing new compositions that suited the instrument's distinctive timbre and difficult fingerings. Carter's group handed the baton to a generation of younger players, and set the stage for the instrument's renaissance. Renewed activity in chamber jazz opened space for a wider range of instrumental sounds, and the clarinet returned to occupy its long-vacated place on the bandstand.
Pneuma Who Has Seen the Wind?
Songlines
2019
Resolution: 24/96
Who Has Seen the Wind?, compositions for vocalist and clarinet trio, is a creative chamber jazz project in the full flower of imaginative expression: music set to poems written over a wide range of eras and cultures, performed by a multinational collaborative ensemble.
"The whole idea was born from my love of Christina Rossetti's poem "Who Has Seen the Wind?," which Michael [Winograd] composed music to, and which I used as the foundation for the musical form of my mini-suite within the full set of music. To me it felt natural to "speak" through poetry and wordless sounds in this collection of songs." (Ayelet Rose Gottlieb, from an interview with Tony Reif.)
Pneuma is vocalist-composer
Ayelet Rose Gottlieb
vocalsb.1979
Michael Winograd
clarinet
James Falzone
clarinet
Francois Houle
clarinet
Gordon Grdina
oudb.1977
Mark Helias
bassIn "Alone," a setting of James Joyce, the lyric "The sly reeds whisper to the night" could serve as an emblem of the relationship between the clarinet voices and Gottlieb's twilight-hued vocals. "Trembling—Light" uses sampling and signal processing on the clarinets to set a spectral background for the impassioned vocal lines. The song grows out of an experience of grief for the loss of a friend; an intuition of the immanence of death in life runs throughout the album. Gottlieb's grandfather Harry was an amateur clarinetist; she writes in the liner notes of her recollections of him playing with aging, trembling hands. In "Passing Through -Lament for Harry," Winograd's plaintive solo seems to summon the communal spirit of the ancestors. In "Neither you nor I," the three clarinets speak to each other in what Houle calls 'clarinet language.'
Mayumi Terada's "The Shape of Tears" describes the poet's response to the death of her lover, an inquiry into the physical traces that linger: "three copies of the same book on the shelf/the secret self he left behind..." There's a cool, almost dispassionate tone to the lyrics, sung over the limpid tones of the clarinets; time seems to pause, until the moment of reflection passes.
Pneuma creates music of depth, compelling logic, and heartfelt inspiration. Who Has Seen the Wind? is a unique album, fusing lyric poetry to the poetic lyricism of chamber jazz.
Track Listing
Alone; Neither I nor You/Pneuma; Trembling/Light; Passing Through/Lament for Harry; Neither You nor I/Conversation with Ora; Bow Down/The Wind Will Take Us; Passing By/The Shape of Tears; Who Has Seen the Wind?; Wakened by the Scent; Who Can Say What Loneliness Is; Ruined House; This Pine Tree ; The Last Rose of Summer.Personnel
Ayelet Rose Gottlieb: voice; James Falzone: clarinet, Eb clarinet, shruti box; Fran?ois Houle: clarinet, electronics; Michael Winograd: clarinet.Tags
Hi-Res Jazz
Human Feel
Mark Werlin
Canada
Vancouver
Chris Speed
Andrew D'Angelo
Kurt Rosenwinkel
Jim Black
Joe Marciano
Chris Gestrin
Waxwing
Tony Wilson
Jon Bentley
Peggy Lee
Clarinet Summit
Pneuma
Ayelet Rose Gottlieb
Michael Winograd
James Falzone
Francois Houle
Gordon Grdina
Mark Helias
Renga
Comments
About Human Feel
Instrument: Band / ensemble / orchestra
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