There came a point when, ever more conscious of the extent of the terra incognita between the jazz recordings I loved from the ‘50s and ‘60s, and the smaller number of 21st century ones I had taken a shine to, I decided to make an effort to get to grips with some jazz from the intervening decades. This has been a fitful undertaking, and by no means always a successful one. Even so, there has been some tentative progress, and my ignorance has been very slightly reduced.
From the ‘90s, I’ve acquired a small handful of albums by the likes of Brad Mehldau, Tom Harrell & Charlie Haden’s Quartet West; to which I’ve now added Songbook by Kenny Garrett. Last month, Garrett’s composition ‘Sing a Song of Song’ surfaced from the depths of YouTube, and caught my fancy. A CD copy of the album arrived on Friday. It’s a nicely varied affair: ‘Sing a Song of Song’ is smoothly melodic up until a more raucous climax; the opening ‘2 Down & 1 Across’ has a looser & busier feel; ‘Ms Baja’ is laid-back & Latin-influenced, with what sounds like an allusion to ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ near the end. Let by Garrett’s alto sax, his band steer a purposeful course, without veering into the outré on one side, or the kitsch on the other.
The other new (to me) recording that arrived this week was Gadabout Season by the American harpist and composer Brandee Younger. I’d considered buying the album when it came out last year, but then forgot about it until reminded by Younger’s recent appearance on Norah Jones’ Playing Along podcast/videocast. I already owned her album Brand New Life on CD, and likewise the one (Force Majeure) she recorded with bassist Dezron Douglas during the Covid lockdown. I would have bought this one on CD too, but, looking on ebay I found a listing for a second-hand LP copy that was the cheapest option by nearly a fiver, so I got that instead. It’s another lovely record, on which Younger is accompanied by regular bandmates Rashaan Carter (bass) and Allan Mednard (drums) plus an assortment of guests including Shabaka Hutchings and Makaya McCraven.
On the record, Younger plays a harp that had formerly belonged to Alice Coltrane. While Younger acknowledges Coltrane as an important influence, I was seldom reminded of the latter as I listened. The closing track ‘Discernment’ seemed to slightly resemble the work of the one other contemporary jazz harpist I know — Nala Sinephro. After my first couple of listens, my favourite numbers are the playful title track, and the similarly buoyant ‘New Pinnacle’.
On Monday I finished reading Rachel Ingalls’ 1982 novella Mrs. Caliban. I only became aware of the book relatively recently – it was one of those things where once I’d first noticed a mention of it, I kept seeing other references to it in all manner of places. Per Wikipedia: “The plot concerns a lonely housewife who finds companionship with an amphibious sea monster named Larry.” It’s an intriguing blend of domestic drama, satirical humour and ‘creature feature’, with a depth of sadness underlying it all. Its several virtues notwithstanding, the book landed slightly wide of the mark for me: well worth the read, just not an ideal fit for my tastes.
Before that I read Days of Grace: Selected Poems by Doris Kareva, as translated from the original Estonian by the splendidly-surnamed Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov. It brings together poems published over a broad span of Kareva’s career: between 1978 and 2015. As is often the case, only a proportion of the poems connected with significant force, but the hit rate was pretty good. Most of them are short & spare, cool & concise. All but one of them are untitled, and delimited by section signs (‘§’). Here's an example:
A paw extends in the dark
to probe the flow.
There’s no
knowing what will cling to longing.
Raw rough-edged words, terse
and true, translation-proof, from table
to rafters.
Lie there, wordless,
swallow the blood-spit of the dark.
After short sharp heatwaves in late May and late June, a third one, less intense but more prolonged, is now in tedious effect.