![dtrcd145.jpg (35233 bytes)](../Cd-covers/dtrcd145.jpg) |
Yoron Israel - Chicago
Dtrcd-145
Joe Lovano - Tenor/Soprano Sax, Larry Goldings -
B-3 Organ, Marvin Sewell - Guitar, Yoron Israel - Drums
1. Nice And Easy 2.
Triology 3. That’s The Way Of The World 4. Picket Fences
5. Valdez In The Country 6. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow 7.
Down Through The Years 8. Green’s 9. Indigo Dreamscapes
10. Battery Blues Total Time 71:00
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“WELCOME TO CHICAGO.”
The billboard, signed Richard M. Daley, Mayor, greets vehicles as they
exit O’Hare International Airport and shoot down the Kennedy expressway on
a southeast diagonal to the looming mighty but somehow graceful downtown
skyline. It’s Michael Jordan’s Chicago, Oprah Winfrey’s Chicago, the
Chicago of Helmut Jahn and Charlie Trotter’s and the Monroe Harbor, Sammy
Sosa and Michigan Avenue, Buckingham Fountain and the Field Museum of
Natural History.
But continue further south, past the
skyline and the Loop, past the University of Chicago, and you come to the
heart of Chicago’s African-American community: an island within a city,
far removed from the gleaming towers to the north; gritty, homey, steeped
in Afrocentric culture and barbecue, churches and lounges, a city within
itself; the birthplace or homefront for dozens of musicians who’ve left
their sonic footprints on history.
Welcome to
Chicago. This time, your host is Yoron Israel.
In this spot, from the 50s through the 70s, the organ trio - that
marvelously compact and blessedly untidy combo - supplied the theme
song. So when Israel decided to update the concept with the trio he
calls Organic, he didn’t hesitate in choosing titling the band’s debut
after the city itself. Israel has done more than just dedicate this
disc to sweet home Chicago: he’s filled it with the sounds of the city as
heard by its native geniuses, ranging from jazz legends Johnny Griffin and
Jack DeJohnette to pop icons Donny Hathaway and Maurice White (the driving
force behind the 70s superband Earth, Wind & Fire). “Yes, all
the compositions are by Chicago artists,” Israel points out; “that’s why I
chose the title, because I wanted to celebrate the whole legacy of Chicago
as I experienced it growing up.
“There’s a dance
quality to the music,” he explains: “that’s what accounts for the
commonality among all of us. It comes from the whole Chicago
experience, which includes being exposed to a variety of musical styles
and not really thinking twice about it.” That’s because Chicago -
despite being the third largest American city - has a smaller base
population than the east- and west-coast mega-cities; as a result, it
doesn’t support quite the same degree of specialization that characterize
New York and Los Angeles. As a result, says Israel, “I was afforded
the opportunity to be involved in a lot of different music on a very high
level.” In Chicago, musicians face less pigeonholing: “people
wouldn’t think you couldn’t play gospel or symphonic music just because
you played jazz. This was one of my most valuable experiences as a
musician - being expected to play any style of music, not just play at a
style of music.
“And because Chicago is as big as it is,
with so much music going on in a lot of different scenes, you can actually
make a living playing music - unlike a lot of places. The city is just the
right size.”
In choosing to honor his roots with the organ
combo - a format that remains popular in Chicago, thanks to such
latter-day exponents as Charles Earland and Karl Montzka - Israel hasn’t
settled for merely re-creating the standard fare. He’s too committed
to innovation, too dedicated to putting his own footprint on the music he
plays. (This quality has placed him in considerable demand since he
left Chicago for New York in 1987. He’s appeared on more than 50
discs - backing, among others, Ahmad Jamal, Art Farmer, Abbey Lincoln, Joe
Lovano, James Williams, Kenny Burrell, and Chico Freeman - and on concert
dates with musicians ranging from Tony Bennett to Sonny
Rollins.)
“I love that soulful groove
that is traditionally associated with the organ,” Israel admits.
“But I also want to explore some more adventuorus things in this
format. For instance, we do a few things heavily associated with the
usual ‘organ sound,’ but in choosing the repertoire, I found songs that
were sort of removed from that tradition: ‘Indigo Dreamscapes’ by Jack
DeJohnette and and Clifford Jordan’s ‘Down Through the Years,’ are two
such examples.
“Even though it’s an organ trio, I want
‘Organic’ to have the looseness and flexibility of a quintet - or even a
piano trio. So it’s not always that organ groove. I’m aiming
for a sound and feel that’s not dense and locked-in. The music of
Larry Young - specifically the album Unity [recorded for Blue Note in
1965] - is the place where I wanted to start at, and move it along from
there. Our texture is lighter than the traditional organ trio, and
that has a lot to do with what I’m doing rhythmically, and with the
individuals in the band.”
Yes indeed: Israel’s work
throughout this album sparkles with crisp, unexpected accents and
counter-rhythms that play against type. You can start with the
tap-dance he provides for Donny Hathaway’s infectious “Valdez in the
Country” (originally heard on Hathaway’s classic Extensions of a
Man). Or try Israel’s own composition, “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow,”
on which he maintains a typical soul-jazz beat but does so much more -
masking it with shuffle-march figures, tinting it with dynamic cymbal
shimmers, and piercing the patterns with sudden rhythmic displacements.
These tunes contrast vividly with the album opener, “Nice
and Easy,” written by one of Chicago’s archtypal tenor saxists, Johnny
Griffin. It’s a solid, no-nonsense blues shout, and the most
traditional-sounding track on the album - as befits its heritage.
(Griffin recorded it on his 1957 Blue Note date Introducing Johnny
Griffin, which also featured his famous tune “Chicago Calling.”)
This track provides a perfect introduction to the rest of Organic - the
gifted keyboardist Larry Goldings and a dynamic newcomer in guitarist
Marvin Sewell - allowing them to stake their claim in the organ-trio
tradition before they start expanding the territory. Just listen to
Sewell’s hand-dripped, rawboned solo and Goldings’s full-frontal attack on
the Hammond B-3 keys - and keep an ear open for the allusion to “Red Top”
(the great hit by Gene Ammons, another native Chi-towner) in measures 9
and 10 of the theme.
“Triology,” based on the structure of
“I’ve Got Rhythm,” gets its title from its overarching concept.
Israel designed the song to avoid the usual format, in which each
instrument takes one discrete solo, in favor of a continuing conversation
- a trialog - among the three musicians. “First the organ plays one
chorus, then the guitar takes some of those ideas and plays a chorus, and
then the drums take a chorus, with Larry’s bass lines continuing to
comp. So it’s like a constant trading of choruses” - one long solo
batted about by three like minds.
The next two tunes add Joe
Lovano, Israel’s frequent employer and among the most respected musicians
of his generation. On “That’s the Way of the World,” Lovano’s
soprano snakes its way across the pop-soul contours of Maurice White’s
dance anthem; Goldings drops back to shade the sax with a wide range of
colors, as Israel bubbles along with a beat that straddles soul and
samba. Lovano switches to tenor for the eminently indolent “Picket
Fences,” Israel’s waltz-time evocation of “a relaxed, summer
afternoon, looking over the landscape in Maplewood, N.J.,” where he and
his family now live. The song
has a blues feel, but it runs only
ten measures instead of the usual twelve, which helps account for its
dreamy, off-kilter quality.
“Valdez” with its light, lithe
rhythm and loose line, leads to “Here Today,” which neatly encapsulates
Organic’s goals. Although the song is based on a typical rhythm -
and also mimics the harmonic scheme of “Killer Joe,” a soul-jazz standard
- Israel points out that “the bridge features contrasting harmonies and
rhythms along with tight ensemble figures. So it merges the worlds
of typical organ-groove and small-group arrangement.” Sewell brings
his solo from slumbering groans to bluesy argument in less than a chorus,
and Goldings works his usual magic, mercurial and clever without becoming
glib. Next comes “Down Through The Years,” a gentle memoir by the
late Clifford Jordan, one of the leading torch-carriers for the Chicago
tenor-sax tradition that flourished in the 50s; it serves as another
showcase for Lovano, who paints a glowing picture filled with rich
details.
“Green’s” is dedicated to a master communicator of
60s jazz, guitarist Grant Green, and moves from an African-inspired
triplet rhythm to “an Art Blakey-type shuffle feel for the
solos. The tune itself is actually very basic, harmonically;
the melody was inspired by the beat itself. I composed it from the
drums, instead of at the piano. That’s one of my current projects:
to write from the drums, and to bring to the forefront the kind of
concepts that we deal with as percussionists.” The remaining tracks
- by drummer Jack DeJohnette and trombonist Julian Priester, both of whom
came of age in 1950s Chicago - epitomize the range of Organic, from
post-fusion progressivism to bare-knuckle Chicago blues.
No
matter how strong the concepts underlying Chicago, none of them would work
without this band’s spectacular execution. Marvin Sewell, a college
classmate of Israel’s at Chicago’s Roosevelt University and still
relatively new to the national scene, has recorded with Jack DeJohnette
and currently performs with Cassandra Wilson. Besides his
genre-stretching guitar work, Sewell can boast expertise on a variety of
other fretted instruments - from 12-string acoustic guitar to dobro - and
Israel hopes to incorporate these in later Organic recordings. Here,
he lays bare a soulful, provocative approach to improvisation, steeped in
tradition but not restricted to jazz for his inspiration.
Goldings has energized enough top bands (led by John
Scofield, Jim Hall, Maceo Parker, Jon Hendricks) for enough years to belie
both his age and his relative inexperience at the organ. Just 30 at
the time of this recording, he began playing the instrument in his
mid-20s, but he has quickly risen to the top rank of the musicians who’ve
revived the organ-jazz sound in the 90s. He brings a light touch, a
dark wit, and an expansive tonal palette to the music, along with an
indefatigable swing; his solo concept, note-filled and eminently lyrical,
bounces off his colleagues’ work like a new Spalding.
No one
appreciates Goldings more than Yoron Israel, who played the organ as his
first instrument before switching to the drums as a teenager; even then,
he couldn’t escape the lure of the Hammond B-3. “There was a time
when it seemed that all I did was play with organ players,” he says, happy
to return the favor in Organic (one of two bands he currently leads, along
with an acoustic quintet called Connection). Israel belongs to a
select group of drummers - ranging from Art Blakey to Max Roach to Paul
Motian to and Ronald Shannon Jackson - who can lead from the rear of the
bandstand and still project a distinct vision. Both as a drummer and
a composer, he avoids clutter, imparting a neat concision to his work even
at its busiest.
So sit back, relax, and let him drive.
Chicago beckons.
NEIL TESSER,
author, The PLAYBOY Guide to Jazz
(Plume)