Clarinetist Don Byron has put together an extraordinary quartet for his latest set of recordings, and given them a solid set of music to explore. Bill Frisell, long a Byron compere, is in non-Nashville mindset here, brilliantly laying out harmonic pathways that turn out to be something altogether different from the listener’s expectations: changes, indeed. Bassist Drew Gress probes constantly, even outlining the simplest changes. For drummer Jack DeJohnette, the usual superlatives apply: his finely-shaded cultivation of time around the music at hand is as good as it gets. The ferocious “Bernhard Goetz, James Ramseur and Me,” shows the full quartet at full tilt; the Lennon-McCartney “I’ll Follow the Sun,” with its enchanting changes, is a particularly apt choice for clarinet, as well as for Frisell’s crystalline musings. Byron pays homage to Ellington with “Mural from Two Perspectives” and “Perdido,” with the latter being a pretext for these fine players losing themselves in the music. Byron quotes liberally through his solo: when “Laura” pops her head up, dancing to Byron’s quirkily individual approach to the line, she reveals much of Don Byron’s approach to improvisation and jazz.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro