Album Review: Louis Hayes - "Return of the Jazz Communicators"

Review first published on Blogcritics

In his new album for Smoke Sessions, Return of the Jazz Communicators, drummer Louis Hayes leads an updated version of the Jazz Communicators, the ensemble he co-founded in 1967 with trumpeter Freddy Hubbard and saxophonist Joe Henderson. Where the original band was fronted by trumpet and sax, the new configuration features the sax of Abraham Burton and the vibraphone of Steve Nelson. In an interview in the album’s liner notes, Hayes gives a kind of been there, done that explanation for the change: “I’ve had groups with trumpet and saxophone out front a lot of different times. . . . I didn’t want the same thing like that.” Driven by some spirited energetic drum work from Hayes, and complemented by the piano of David Bryant and the bass of Dezron Douglas, it’s a new sound, a good sound.

Recorded live at Smoke, like most of the albums in the Smoke Sessions series, the set features a dozen tunes combining standards and original pieces, in what has become the typical bill of fare for current jazz albums. If communication is what Hayes and his ensemble are aiming for, this is an album that hits the mark. They take a tune like Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” and Nelson’s elegant vibe exposition combined with Hayes’ brushwork has the song speaking like the true classic it is. It is a tour de force, a revelation. Burton does the same both for “Groovin’ for Nat,” a song Hayes says he used to listen to Dizzy Gillespie’s big band play at Birdland, as well as his own composition, “It’s to You.”

The set opens with a soulful attack on “Soul-Leo” followed by Nelson’s up tempo bop “Shape Shifting” which gives everyone a chance to show what they can do. And they can do a lot. Bravura versions of “Without a Song” and “Portrait of Jennie” fill out the roster of standards. Hayes’ “Lou’s Idea” has a clever witty melody that generates some clever wit from the piano and bass. The set closes with a hard driving bop “Village Greene.”

Return of the Jazz Communicators is another very fine album in the Smoke Session series, the kind of album that will have jazz fan’s mouths watering for more.

Album Review: Peter Robbins - "Pyramid" Listening to some of the adaptations of pop rock tunes on Pyramid, the latest album from saxophonist Pete Robbins is bound to make you wonder why most jazz musicians have ignored a cache of music that may at times be a gold mine. Sure, a so-called serious musician may not want to associate himself with what he might consider a lesser art form, but many a so-called serious musician might feel the same way about jazz. And if that sort of prig is clearly wrong about the latter, it is just as likely he is wrong about the former as well. If the five covers of the likes of Nirvana, Stevie Wonder, and lord help us, Guns N’ Roses, are any indication, such thinking is not only wrong, it is silly. There is gold to be mined in the hills of rock, and in Pete Robbins and his quartet are undoubtedly the men for the job. While he does include four of his own original compositions—Robbins is an acclaimed composer, it is his handling of the adaptations that is the hook on this album. And that’s a good thing. Not because there’s anything wrong with his own work, which in fact is harmonically and rhythmically inventive, but because a vibrant cover of a beast like “Sweet Child of Mine” is likely to attract some new listeners to the delights of jazz. Whereas his own “Vorp,” may mean little to a new audience, and that despite the almost fugue like interplay between Robbins’ sax and the piano of the unsurpassed Vijay Iyer. On the other hand if his arrangement of “Sweet Child of Mine” with its dynamite piano solo and roaring climax Guns N’ Roses gets someone to listen to “Vorp,” that, if the adaptation itself isn’t enough, is surely something to be grateful for. The covers are all tunes that made what seems to have been an indelible impression on the saxophonist in his youth. Among the additional adaptions are “Lithium” and “Too High”, which ironically close with the bass of Elvind Opsvik. A sweet fairly straight forward version of “Wichita Lineman” has Robbins taking the opening melody, after Iyer’s introduction, and then pushes it into new directions with some dynamic drumming from the last member of the ensemble, Tyshawn Sorey. Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” gets a more imaginative adaptation. Besides the through composed “Vorp,” the other Robbins’ originals include the title tune, a shorter piece in which the harmony becomes the melody, which closes the set. “Equipoise” is a harmonic rhythmic dialogue bookended by haunting piano solos, and “Intravenous” is an adventure in swing pushed along by Sorey’s continual dynamism. Pyramid is an album filled with fine music played with commitment by four very talented jazz musicians. If it doesn’t whet your appetite, I don’t know what will.