[Dixielandjazz] New CDs - "East Coast Cool" Somethone borrowed, something new.

[Steve barbone]

While IMO this is interesting from a musical point of view, it is much more
interesting from a philosophical point of view. e.g. When a band uses the
same instrumentation as the original stars of the style, . . . . etc., if
you catch my drift. If not, read the last sentence.

Cheers,
Steve


Critics' Choice - New CD's - THE NEW YORK TIMES - January 9, 2006

John McNeil and "East Coast Cool" - Forum: Jazz

Some jazz groups can't escape their instrumentation. A quartet with piano,
vibraphone, bass and drums must deal with the fact that it uses the same
instruments as the Modern Jazz Quartet; it will have to define itself in
relation to the band that got there first. The same goes for a band with
trumpet, baritone saxophone, bass and drums: it has to orient itself either
toward or away from Gerry Mulligan's original pianoless quartet, which he
formed with Chet Baker in Los Angeles in 1952.

The trumpeter John McNeil has kept a fairly low profile as a bandleader over
the last 30 years, but recently he has been making a highly likable series
of let's-try-anything records with OmniTone. He uses his new album to
imagine a possibility: What if a band with the same instruments as the
Mulligan-Baker group played themes with boiled down, contrapuntal lines, in
honor of the ones Mulligan wrote, but engaged the bass and drums much more?
(Mulligan's quartet records were beautiful but rhythmically dry.) To put it
another way, what if that general sound, with the same blend of timbres and
the same respect for concise melody, was generally brought up to date, made
more flexible, with a more interactive group? What would it sound like?

Any attempt to answer that depends on who the musicians are. Because the
musicians with Mr. McNeil on "East Coast Cool" are Allan Chase on baritone
saxophone, John Hebert on bass and Matt Wilson on drums, the music can
remind you as much of Ornette Coleman's early-60's quartet - another
important pianoless band - as Gerry Mulligan's early-50's one.

Mr. McNeil wants to unlock the neat, airy, compressed feeling of the
Mulligan quartet; he wants to open it up to modern possibilities. And he
wants the music at least half planted on the ground. (A full-on free-jazz
homage to Gerry Mulligan, who really liked his structure and swing, would
make no sense.) So the pieces on the album, all originals but two - one of
which is "Bernie's Tune," which the Mulligan band made famous - tend to have
either a proscribed tonal center or a strong, swinging rhythm. Where there
is actual free jazz, it's just an interlude, put in for variety: "Wanwood,"
a good, original ballad, has a few of these circumscribed sections.

All the composing and arranging devices Mr. McNeil uses to discipline these
pieces - the sudden dropping out of one or more musicians, the changes in
rhythm, the use of a 12-tone row - give the music its character, but the
wonder of the record is its breezy transparency. Mr. Wilson has a light,
bouncing touch, which sounds like a result of a lot of listening to Billy
Higgins; Mr. McNeil sprawls through long, Don Cherry-style improvisations -
weaving in and out of tonal harmony - using a clear, dry, clarion upper
register. And Mr. Chase, filling Mulligan's role, does the most to seal the
record's connection to what inspired it: he plays with balance and
authority, and keeps the temperature of his improvisations low. Mulligan
fans shouldn't come to this wanting to hear what he would have done; it's a
record that borrows its starting point, but comes to its own conclusions.
BEN RATLIFF