Album Review: "Discussions" by Roscoe Mitchell | An Album a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

WHO: Roscoe Mitchell, composer and saxophone; Roscoe Mitchell Orchestra
WHAT: New compositions and improvisations by Roscoe Mitchell
RELEASED: September 2017
LABEL: Wide Hive

When I crave free jazz, I'm usually in one of two situations. More often than not, I listen to free jazz when I'm walking around NYC -- the aural chaos of the music befits the visual chaos of the city. However, I also find that I love to listen to free jazz when I'm cooking or washing dishes. Cooking isn't so cerebral for me; it leaves my brain free to ponder anything and everything. Raise your hand if you've ever had a mid-meatloaf existential crisis. Or is that just me?

So, I try to put on some music that requires me to pay attention. Today, it was this phenomenal free jazz-classical-fusion (kind of?) album.

Roscoe Mitchell founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago a little more than 50 years ago. AEC was among the pioneering ensembles of this high-entropy kind of free jazz, a little less predictable than their predecessors and a little more similar to avant-garde classicists of the day like Stockhausen (💗) and Berio.

Mitchell is mainly known for his small-ensemble improvised compostions, but in this album he extends a few of his earlier compositions to a full orchestra. The way he uses the orchestral timbre is interesting -- the proud opening of "Home Screen" reminds me vaguely of a totally unrelated piece, Silvestre Revueltas's Ocho por Radio.

I find that the full orchestra gives me more to consider, more to pay attention to. Infinitely many different sounds can come out of any one instrument; infinity times a twenty-person orchestra, now that's living. Mitchell's use of the orchestra keeps your focus darting from one instrument to the next. He almost treats every instrument as a melody and an accompaniment at once. Of course, Mitchell also programs some of his signature small-ensemble improvisations, providing some contrast adding that disorder that free-jazz aficionados crave.

I'm going to keep it short today because I'm quite tired and I'm not done cleaning out my refrigerator, but I'm just going to say that this was a great album for washing dishes and chopping onions. Give it a listen and tell me what else it's good for!

Five Albums to Get You Through the First Week of Classes

"Who had this crazy idea to invent school all of a sudden? Charlemagne!"

I forgot how rough it is to go from doing absolutely nothing to absolutely everything. One day, I'm sitting on the recliner in my room at home watching Netflix, the next day I'm sprawled on my apartment couch after having carried twenty pounds of groceries back from my four classes and three rehearsals. But hey, such is the story of academic vacations.

Anyway, considering that many of you will be dealing with the same thing in the coming weeks, here are five albums that will help you through your first week back on the job (or any rough week, for that matter), whether you're a student or not.

If you ever wanted your classical music with a side of indie (or vice versa):
Love I Obey (Rosemary Standley & Helstroffer's Band)

To give you some context, this is the album I listened for comfort when I was stuck on the D train for almost two hours this summer. Rosemary Standley makes her career with indie band Moriarty. Bruno Helstroffer is a blues guitarist who plays early music as a day job. Together, they dreamed up this album of bluesy takes on British Renaissance airs. Standley's voice is (truly, in a non-cliché way) unlike any other singer I've ever heard, throaty and warm with a distinctive twang to the diction. And Helstroffer is just an incredible musician in all respects -- his solo debut is also among my favorite albums ever.

For a really, really good version of a piece you might know:
Bach: Motets (Collegium Vocale Gent, cond. Philippe Herreweghe)

This recording is just squeaky clean. Most of the motets are only one singer to a part on this album; the intimate accuracy gives me chills every time. The cast includes Vox Luminis soprano Zsuzsi Tóth; superstar French countertenor Damien Guillon; Bach specialist bass Peter Kooij; and a smattering of other big names in the European early music scene. When I want Bach, this album is my first stop (this version of Jesu, meine Freude is also my go-to tipsy soundtrack, something I can safely say now that I'm 21 😉).

For an album that will replace your dinner party jazz playlist:
Jazz på svenska (Jan Johansson, piano; Georg Riedel, bass)

I usually spring for new jazz over old jazz, but this album is a classic (just ask the quarter of a million people who have bought copies). Sparse and smooth, Jan Johansson takes Swedish folk tunes and adapts them for a low-key duo of piano and bass. He treats the original folk tunes with such respect -- from his adaptations, I know exactly how the original was meant to sound. There's a good reason why it's the best-selling Swedish jazz album of all time, and still maintains a degree of relevance more than 55 years after its release.

*swoon*

If you want to hear the best music written for the best instrument you've never heard of:
Marais: Pièces favorites (François Joubert-Caillet, viol; L'Achéron)

Marin Marais wrote hours and hours of music for the viol (an earlier predecessor of the modern double bass that looks kind of like a cello -- if you're curious, watch Tous les Matins du Monde starring Gérard Dépardieu). It's all great, but some movements are simply transcendent. François Joubert-Caillet is the single viol player who has most consistently impressed me; here, he's selected a representative sample of Marais's most outstanding works and compiled them onto one phenomenal album. His continuo team is outstanding (continuo is a group of instruments that together comprise accompaniment for baroque music -- usually a melodic instrument and an instrument that plays chords e.g. a second viol and a harpsichord) and help to cement this album among the most satisfying Marais albums on the market today. And if you really like it, you can listen to his most recent album, a six-hour recording of one of Marais's complete books for viol.

If you really just want to get lost in the sauce:
Songs of Olden Times: Estonian Folk Hymns and Runic Songs (Heinavanker, dir. Margo Kõlar)

I've sung Heinavanker's praises before, but I'm truly hooked on their album. It's the perfect album for a low-key, relaxing evening -- tonight, I put it on while waiting for my focaccia dough to rise. I'd say I listen at least twice a month, if not more. Cannot recommend highly enough. Cook to it. Meditate to it. Sleep to it. Work to it. Seriously.

[45] Mostly Mozart presents "The Black Clown" starring Davóne Tines at Gerald W. Lynch Theater @ John Jay College | #1Summer50Concerts

PC: Richard Termine

WHO: Davóne Tines, bass-baritone; Zack Winokur, director; vocal/dance/ instrumental ensembles
WHAT: MICHAEL SCHACHTER The Black Clown
WHERE: Gerald W. Lynch Theater @ John Jay College
WHEN: July 24, 2019 at 7:30pm

As I'm sure you've gathered, I've been in NYC all summer, but I haven't really made time for many "New York" things. No Governor's Island. No museums. You know.

Most lamentably, I haven't really made much time at all for Broadway shows. I do love musical theater, even if my métier is primarily classical. But they're expensive. And they're always at the same time as classical concerts. And they require going down to the ninth circle of hell: Times Square.

The Black Clown wasn't *exactly* a Broadway show. But it was the closest I was going to get within my price range (MMF gives out student tickets for $20). And I have to say, I enjoyed it tremendously.

The concept basically chopped up Langston Hughes's poem The Black Clown into bite-sized chunks -- two to three lines at most -- and used each to base a movement (scene?) of the staging. The music showed MMF's initiative in breaking out of the strictly classical world: the pit orchestra was more of a big band, the ensemble singers evoking a gospel feel.

And at the center of it all was Davóne Tines, one of the most versatile opera singers I've ever seen. Sure, Renée Fleming has her Broadway album. Joyce DiDonato did her jazz-baroque mashup. But Davóne Tines is making his name with these cutting-edge crossover projects, not riding on his pre-established reputation so he can do something "weird."

PC: Richard Termine

Tines, clad in a black and white pleated zoot suit (this time with a shirt), was the perfect choice as a centerpiece for this project, but his phenomenal performance still rested in the second-place slot. The ensemble of singers, dancers, and actors took what was already a musically and socially meaningful production and made it dazzling. The ensemble was at once a gospel choir equal to some of the best on earth; a West Side Story-level dance troupe; and the catalysts for every emotion Tines displayed from the stage (and there were many). Tenor Brandon Michael Nase deserves special mention for striking a balance between minute, detail-oriented musicality and a soaring, piercing tone.

Each movement was fabulous in isolation; the scenes took all forms, from upbeat-swing big band charts to wrenching ballads and even a couple instances of authentic 1920s banjo jazz. The music Michael Schachter composed was stylistically appropriate, if not so adventurous; the highlights were his arrangements of various spiritual tunes, including a tear-jerking rendition of "Motherless Child." The piece as a whole read more as a song cycle rather than a through-composed work; there was very little functionally connecting each movement to the next. I did not find that particularly bothersome, but I think that a super-sudden transition from jubilant celebration to dour, prayer-like solemnity is a little bit hard on the audience as a whole.

PC: Richard Termine

I couldn't say this in my previous review of him, but I'm just going to sum up with one final thought: Davóne Tines is worth seeking out. He's a voice of the future. He's only going to get more popular. I'm not sure where The Black Clown is headed next, or if there are even plans to do it again soon. But no matter what, you can never go wrong with Davóne Tines.