Contemporary Jazz

Review For the past few years Branford Marsalis has been telling anyone who will listen that he's not exactly proud of some of the music he put out in the 1980s and early '90s. It was learning time, he says. The recordings were less his heart and soul and more a chronicle of practice-room exploits. The music simply wasn't all his. He talks about the years spent walking in the recorded footsteps of the masters, says he knows now that it takes time (decades even) to get past the imitative phase of jazz discourse, blames in part those who marketed him and other youngsters as fully-formed artists. Even then, he knew that regardless of the attire, there are no shortcuts on the path to mastery. It's an unusual apologia in this age of carefully calibrated image - the cynical might even read it as another deft spin of marketing. Which it well could be if there wasn't so much evidence, in 1999's Requiem and this boldly titled followup, of Branford Marsalis' maturity. Something profound is going on in his thinking; it's as though he's broken through the conceptual and technical walls that once confined him to discover, quite unexpectedly, a realm of sensual riches that offer all kinds of ways to nourish the spirit. Contemporary Jazz is an account of a 39-year-old's transition from head to heart, from deliberate learning to more innate trusting of reflexes. Its brainy moments (like the demanding odd-meter form of "In the Crease") are never just exercises: Through them, Marsalis and his accomplished trio - drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis - balance precise carving work against headstrong flying leaps, ferocious arguments against gorgeous ornamentations. For this band, history is an asset, not an albatross. Compare the version of "Cheek to Cheek" with any recent treatment of any standard from any artist of Marsalis' generation. Listen to the abrupt stops and the unified lunges, the way Marsalis wrestles with the slap-tonguing aura of Sonny Rollins and the intervallic mischief of Don Byas, the moments when the time gets snarled and then springs magically back into place. What you hear isn't homework - it's something vital and irreverent, something that happens only when you move away from the microscope. Marsalis is playing for keeps now, with a newly refined, rail-straight tone and an immediacy he's brought to many recent live performances but hadn't successfully captured in the studio. He exhausts the challenges of his structures rather than simply outlining them, and yet never gets so deep into the math that he loses the rhythms of daily life: his "Requiem" is a gorgeous, yearning meditation played out in spellbinding rubato; his "Countronious Rex" melds sullen blues with happy-feet gospel with hinky little red-herring phrases that throw things out of whack. And after he's said his piece, along comes Calderazzo, doing bebop contortions for a few choice bars, framing the collective bursts of "Tain Mutiny" in solid block chords and primary colors that build on Marsalis' moves while sending the music into completely different directions. There are political statements embedded in everything these days - in the distinctions between "contemporary jazz" and the other kind, in the development and assertion of individual identity. No one of his generation has had to grapple with these things quite the way Branford Marsalis has - his definition of contemporary jazz, full of impish irreverence and driven by unique personal presence, offers a contrast to the outlook of fastidious scholars that prevails elsewhere. Having been in the eye of a media storm, having survived to find his own voice because of (or, more likely, in spite of) his early musical environments, Branford suggests that more than doctrine and academic mealymouthing is necessary for further evolution. He's copping some old attitude and hitting some new notes, and his attempts to bridge the storied past and the compromised future are beginning to look like a heroic quest: Can material this fluid and fiery exist next to the stodgy, note-by-note jazz recreations and equally unimaginative instrumental pop? Can it find a home in a marketplace more interested in pleasantries than provocation? Contemporary Jazz is one attempt to grapple with these questions, and if, by some chance, his ideals are not readily apparant in the music, Marsalis reinforces them with the cover: Its faded, paint-peeling image is of a woman with cigarette dangling from full red lips. The eyes are long gone but her spirit endures, an iconographic reminder of a time when music, even the most technically demanding kind, was driven by the pursuit of pleasure. --- Tom Moon, JAZZIZ Magazine Copyright © 2000, Milor Entertainment, Inc. -- From Jazziz
ASIN: B00004W5AU
VSKU: DBV.B00004W5AU.G
Condition: Good
Author/Artist:Branford Marsalis Quartet
Binding: Audio cd
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