Ornette Coleman once told the BBC’s Jazz on 3 that when his mother Rosa gave him his first saxophone, but couldn’t afford lessons, he thought it was a toy and played it without realising “you have to learn something to find out what the toy does”. Maybe it’s an extreme case, but not an unfamiliar jazz story. Collisions of improvisers’ whims and formal and informal learning drove ghetto prodigy trumpeter Louis Armstrong’s trailblazing timing, dynamics and rhythmic variation, Charlie Christian’s coolly swinging melodic transformations of solo electric guitar in the 30s – or John Coltrane’s lung-busting 50s/60s stretching of a saxophone’s range to make seamless long sounds and split-note harmonies that the instrument’s inventor, Adolphe Sax, never imagined.
Swiss-born harmonica star Grégoire Maret, mentored by Belgium’s Toots Thielemans, adopted an instrument once widely regarded as a toy and spectacularly enriched its voice-like sound and solo-improv agility. Ennio, the follow-up to Maret’s acclaimed 2020 album Americana, rekindles his rapport on that set with superb French pianist/composer Romain Collin, in homage to movie-score maestro Ennio Morricone. The pair are intimately and spontaneously conversational on Once Upon a Time in America (Deborah’s Theme), while the ecstatic ensemble climax of The Good the Bad and the Ugly: The Ecstasy of Gold often recalls Maret’s former collaborations with the Pat Metheny Group. Once Upon a Time in the West unfolds over a Jarrett-like rocking piano vamp; Se Telefonando is a vocal duet for Cassandra Wilson and Gregory Porter; and Man With a Harmonica is recast in drifting church-echo harmonica and slide-guitar sounds, over Collin’s trancelike piano ostinato.
Some might miss the spooky abstractions and wild sonic melodramas of Morricone’s spag-western soundtracks, but this pair’s open expressions of gratitude to the legend’s intensely emotional sound-palette are jazz-inflected labours of love.
Also out this month
Former Wayne Shorter pianist Rachel Z’s light touch is as fluent as ever on Sensual (Dot Time Records), her 13th album: an affecting mix of slow-rocking piano ballads and pulse-stretching groovers – including a cover of Foo Fighters’ These Days and occasional Foos’ drummer Omar Hakim’s thundering tribute to the legendary Taylor Hawkins. Classic-sax romanticism in unexpected settings marks New Zealand saxophonist Lucien Johnson’s Ancient Relics (Deluge Records), with Stan Getzian phrasing floating amid glistening harp sounds and some terrific Wayne Shorterish soprano sax on the punchy, Indian-inflected Space Junk. Global-jazz collective Black Lives’ People of Earth (Jammin’colorS) is a vocal-packed repertoire of funk, soul, and spoken word – plus jamming from Marcus Strickland (sax), Jean-Paul Bourelly and David Gilmore (guitars) and others. Front-and-centre socio-political declamations maybe narrow the blowing freedoms of a classy and painstakingly assembled international lineup a little, but People of Earth is nonetheless a warm and often exhilarating set.
