March 2014 – Mitch's Muse

According to a recent news release, Mutations is Vijay Iyer’s first album as a leader for ECM Records, and a recording that will widen perceptions of the pianist-composer’s work. At its center is “Mutations I-X”, a composition scored for string quartet, pianist, and electronics. A major piece built out of cells and fragments, it veers through many atmospheres, from moment to moment propulsive, enveloping, lyrical, luminescent, and strangely beautiful. Through thematic interactivity, the interweaving of acoustic and electronic sound-textures, and some decisive improvisational interventions in notated music, Vijay Iyer has created a multi-faceted suite whose very subject is change. Iyer gives a positive value to the concept of ‘mutation’ in this music, and variously appears in it as an interpreter of notated elements, as an improviser, and as “a sort of laptop artist, mixing in noise and different sounds,” encouraging the transformative processes.

Mutations was recorded at New York’s Avatar Studio in September 2013, with Manfred Eicher as producer, and casts new light on Iyer’s creative range. In recent seasons Vijay’s personal approach to jazz and improvising has resonated with both press and the public, and multiple poll wins and awards including, most recently, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, have raised his international profile. Yet important aspects of his work have remained undocumented on disc. Over the last 10 years, Iyer has written music for chamber ensembles of various formations, much of which “involves different approaches to improvisation as well as notation. I’m happy to have this chance to let it be heard alongside other work I have been doing that’s more in a jazz vein, or more connected to the jazz community.”

Saxophonist and composer Christine Jensen‘s second album with her Jazz Orchestra marks a significant growth in her writing for large ensemble. Habitat (available March 11 on Justin Time Records

) features six compositions, all with a deeply ingrained sense of place.

“I always search for a theme in my writing,” Jensen explains in a recent news release. “The only question is whether the theme comes out of the music or vice versa. This time, the music came from places, or the feelings and imagination of place.”

For Jensen, the process of writing for large ensemble is a time-consuming one. “I average about two pieces a year,” she admits, from the initial sketch to orchestration to revision after reading it through with the band. The compositions have now grown to be explicitly for the orchestra. Jensen achieves the fine balance of small group improvisation with large ensemble orchestration and melodic development, in the vein of her inspiration Bob Brookmeyer and her contemporary (and fellow McGill alumnus) Darcy James Argue.

Much of the band remains intact from the Juno award-winning Treelines, including featured trumpet soloist Ingrid Jensen, with a few key personnel changes. Rich Irwinassumes the drum chair here – “he’s a studio drummer with a great sense of time, and he listens to every detail of the music,” Jensen enthuses. The foundation of the band is in good hands with Irwin, returning bassist Fraser Hollins, low brass specialist David Martin, and Samuel Blais on baritone saxophone.

If the low end of the band is solid, the rest of the band shines.” This mix of accuracy and familiarity with Jensen’s music allowed Habitatto unfurl more quickly. “We only did two takes of almost everything,” Jensen says, still in awe that a recording of this grandeur only took a day-and-a-half of studio time with the full orchestra.

The rapport between Christine and Ingrid Jensen is in full evidence on “Treelines,” a 2010 commission from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. An episodic piece that seamlessly weaves its way from open improvisation to straight ahead swing, Ingrid serves as the pivot for each new section. “It’s reflective of how we hang out together,” Jensen says with a laugh. “In two hours, we can cover a lot of ground, from serious music analysis to philosophy to goofing off with our kids.”

One of Jensen’s strengths as a large ensemble jazz composer is her ability to link contemporary harmonic language, as evidenced in the beautiful chorale writing on “Blue Yonder,” with traditional big band structures and swing.

“I grew up playing dance band music, and I’m probably the last generation to get to do that, where I sat in a section with people that taught me to play music from their era,” Jensen recalls. “I’ve played the Basie and Glenn Miller books to death as a student. That music is in me.”