The trumpet trio - the ultimate jazz group risk?

[Ian Thumwood]

I was intrigued to learn that the latest record by cornet player Josh Berman will be a trio with bassist Jason Roebke and Frank Rosaly. His last album was an aggressive avant garde reassessment of the already pugnacious music of the likes of Eddie Condon. This was one of the nest albums over the last few years.

Berman is one of those players who is capable of producing genuinely uncompromising music and maybe one of the most outside approaches on his instrument within jazz, borrowing heavily on extended techniques more usually associated with Improv. The fact that he lists the likes of Bill Dixon, Dave Douglas, Bix and Ruby Braff as influences makes his music intriguing. However, I was wondering why there were just so few trumpet or cornet trios. I think there is a tradition of tenor trios starting from Sonny Rollins and this is no surprise due to the way that the tenor and bass combine so well, with one instrument seeming to absorb the other. I like the idea of hearing a trumpet exposed like this but can only think of Avashi Cohen being the only other example I am aware of. Pitching a trumpet in an exposed scenario like this is perhaps the ultimate risk.

[Alyn_Shipton]

Ian check out Arthurs / Hoiby / Ritchie 2008 CD Explication

[Serial_Apologist]

I was intrigued to learn that the latest record by cornet player Josh Berman will be a trio with bassist Jason Roebke and Frank Rosaly. His last album was an aggressive avant garde reassessment of the already pugnacious music of the likes of Eddie Condon. This was one of the nest albums over the last few years.

Berman is one of those players who is capable of producing genuinely uncompromising music and maybe one of the most outside approaches on his instrument within jazz, borrowing heavily on extended techniques more usually associated with Improv. The fact that he lists the likes of Bill Dixon, Dave Douglas, Bix and Ruby Braff as influences makes his music intriguing. However, I was wondering why there were just so few trumpet or cornet trios. I think there is a tradition of tenor trios starting from Sonny Rollins and this is no surprise due to the way that the tenor and bass combine so well, with one instrument seeming to absorb the other. I like the idea of hearing a trumpet exposed like this but can only think of Avashi Cohen being the only other example I am aware of. Pitching a trumpet in an exposed scenario like this is perhaps the ultimate risk.

There's something about trumpets that makes them particularly stand-out in front instruments - the sound, as Guy Barker has pointed out, goes away from the performer, who therefore hears it in a different way from how say a saxophone player hears his or her own playing "coming back". This might have a bearing on why solely trumpet ensembles are hard to find, or form: the "moving away" aspect of the instrument's sound does not make for the kind of intimacy necessary to encourage interaction, perhaps. Someone - can't remember who - once pointed out how rare it is for a lead trumpet in jazz to share the pitch with another trumpet player, citing Joe Oliver's rare generosity in being prepared to share front stage with the young Satchmo. I can even remember my own slight shock on a Dizzy Gillespie big band album from the late 50s where he hands over the first trumpet solo, which happens to be the LP's first solo, to the 17-year old Lee Morgan. The only other instance I can think of of a major trumpet player sharing duties with another was in fact Harry Beckett's All Four One line-up of four trumpets, piano. bass and drums in a band he led in the early 1990s - but that was just typical of the man's warmth and openness to taking creative risks.

[charles t]

Speaking of trumpets, Peter Evans take on Body & Soul sounds close to a trumpet trio:

Self-recorded solo, played during a visit to Oberlin College in August 2009. Recorded in Fairchild Chapel, pictured.

[Ian Thumwood]

There are penty of examples of all trumpet front lines , especially in the 1950's where you can find loads of encounters or battles between stellar horn players of that era. I think the idea of a trio of trumpet , bass and drums will mean that the horn player is far more exposed that with a tenor.

The interesting thing with trumpets is that there a "tradition" which is bravura, extrovert or even ego-centric that started with "hero" improvisers like Louis Armstrong. I don't think this will work with a trumpet and the soloist will need to be really creative to made this kind of trio interesting. I had lost track of Peter Evans but he is the kind of musician who could make this work.

Here is a link to the Josh Berman website:-

http://joshberman.net/josh-berman-trio-a-dance-and-a-hop/

Oddly enough, his associate Jason Adasiewizc's current band is a vibraphone trio called "Sun Rooms, equally unlikely but very good none-the-less.

[Serial_Apologist]

Apologies thern for misinterpreting what you meant by "trumpet trio" Ian. I should have read your thread starter with more care.

[elmo]

I was intrigued to learn that the latest record by cornet player Josh Berman will be a trio with bassist Jason Roebke and Frank Rosaly. His last album was an aggressive avant garde reassessment of the already pugnacious music of the likes of Eddie Condon. This was one of the nest albums over the last few years.

Berman is one of those players who is capable of producing genuinely uncompromising music and maybe one of the most outside approaches on his instrument within jazz, borrowing heavily on extended techniques more usually associated with Improv. The fact that he lists the likes of Bill Dixon, Dave Douglas, Bix and Ruby Braff as influences makes his music intriguing. However, I was wondering why there were just so few trumpet or cornet trios. I think there is a tradition of tenor trios starting from Sonny Rollins and this is no surprise due to the way that the tenor and bass combine so well, with one instrument seeming to absorb the other. I like the idea of hearing a trumpet exposed like this but can only think of Avashi Cohen being the only other example I am aware of. Pitching a trumpet in an exposed scenario like this is perhaps the ultimate risk.

Ian
How strange this topic comes up and I have just bought a trio album newly issued on Steeplechase by cornet player Kirk Knuffke with Jamie Saft on Organ and Synthesizer and the wonderful Hamid Drake on drums. The album is called "Little Cross" - Knuffke is another one of those excellent players coming out of Chicago, I have only played the album once as yet but very impressed. Knuffke has elements of Miles and Don Cherry in his sound but he it is a personal approach, nice to see the heritage from Rex Stewart Nat Adderley being continued though the 21st century. Jamie Saft is a name i'm not familiar with but he is very good and his playing encompasses both Baby face willette and Larry Young.
As you suggest an exposed context for a trumpeter to be in but this album is certainly intriguing.
Ted Curson recorded a nice trio album with Roy Haynes and Ray Drummond (I think) called Pent up house for Interplay label in the seventies - very nice.
elmo

[Ian Thumwood]

Elmo

That Knuffke album was reviewed on a website a few weeks back. It looked interesting as I had never heard of him before even though his back catalogue was being praised. Jamie Saft has been around for ages and is now more renown for working with John Zorn although he was with Dave Douglas when I saw him perform. Prior to that, he was in one of Bobby Previte's energetic mid-1990's ensembles.

I don't know much about Ted Curson. I was once in Ax-les-Thermes in the Pyrenees touring all the Cathar castles and towns and ended up there as it is the nearest town to the celebrated village of Montaillou which I was keen to visit. I caught a French group playing in a jazz club there but was a bit hacked off as Ted Curson has performed a few weeks earlier and had missed Pete King by a matter of days too. Weird how you can heargreat jazz in tiny little towns in France but around here you just get Morris dancers if you want culture.

[Ian Thumwood]

Elmo


I've been listening to the Josh Berman trio today and the music is absolutely fascinating. Berman is a really difficult musician to pin down. He is something of an authority of all types of jazz yet he seems like a musician who is totally original in his approach. Berman uses the cornet in this instance. It is a brass instrument that is supposed to be far more difficult to master than the trumpet and Berman's style really sounds like someone trying to manage a horn that is awkward to perform. I would be reluctant to use the word "tamed" as it seems entirely inappropriate as the music he produces with his trio with Jason Roebke and Frank Rosaly has that fractured quality of Don Cherry's work with the use of smears and timbre going well beyond another cornet legend, Rex Stewart. In some instances the "music" has a rasping, asthmatic quality about it with one of the pieces being made up almost entirely of extended techniques.

The tunes are all originals but the inspiration is clearly Don Cherry. I did post a clip of a live Berman performance on another thread several weeks ago and I would have to say that the staggeringly brilliant sense of timing is also shared on this disc. It is a real improviser's session with the musicians having an almost telepathic communication, especially the bassist who is right in there with Berman. That said, the drummer is very nearly the star of the proceedings and his contribution adds substantially to the character of the trio. On odd occasions the bass picks up a walking line and the music swings in a normal sense yet this is then quickly broken apart with the phrases being stretched and pulled both in time and tempo , leaving the music sounding like a Rex Stewart record that has been allowed to sit on a radiator and melt.

The contrast with the other "contemporary" group whose CD I also bought last week is marked. Myra Melford seemed to be offering a written alternative to pushing jazz forward in it's agenda. By contrast, Berman offers an approach championed by S.A on other threads and although his approach to free improvisation may be an anathema to someone like Marsalis whose music SA has totally rejected, I feel that Berman's trio have an equally strong grasp of the heritage of jazz as well as being totally capable of sounding shockingly adventurous. I strongly agree with your favourable comments about Roebke and Mitchell on the Blue Note thread and the ability of many Chicago scene musicians (even if they now reside elsewhere as is the case with Nicole Mitchell) to almost reject the direction of jazz post-1970 and take their cues from the likes of AACM and Don Cherry does render their efforts with a degree of authenticity missing from a lot of the contemporary scene. I like the approach of "composers" and these Chicago improvisers with equal enthusiasm but anyone with an interest in reliably authentic and consistent jazz has got to check out Delmark. Their artists are usually under the radar but the records are extremely rewarding.

Jazzrook who be advised to check this one out too.

[MrGongGong]

Maybe a bit OT?
What do you folks think about this chap?
(of course, according to some people in these parts, anything you do suggest will be patronising nonsense BUT i'm genuinely interested in what folks who have listened to much more of this music than I actually think )

I've been listening to some of his gigs on Youtube in the last few days and some great playing IMV

[Ian Thumwood]

Mr GG

I first came across Maalouf a couple of years ago when he was being touted as a big name in Vienne. I never got around to hearing him but his tracks do feature from time to time on the radio. It was interesting at the beginning but it was a shame that the track ended by "rocking out" which wasn't too original. Other than that, I'd have to say that the haunting opening was pretty compelling even if I'm not too convinced that it was jazz.

[MrGongGong]

Mr GG

I first came across Maalouf a couple of years ago when he was being touted as a big name in Vienne. I never got around to hearing him but his tracks do feature from time to time on the radio. It was interesting at the beginning but it was a shame that the track ended by "rocking out" which wasn't too original. Other than that, I'd have to say that the haunting opening was pretty compelling even if I'm not too convinced that it was jazz.

He does tend to go for a "rock out" ending
Does it matter whether it fits the "jazz" box or not?

[Serial_Apologist]

He does tend to go for a "rock out" ending
Does it matter whether it fits the "jazz" box or not?

For me there needs to be inventiveness and interaction for it to be jazz. Apart from which, Ian's said all there is to say there, imo.

[Ian Thumwood]

He does tend to go for a "rock out" ending
Does it matter whether it fits the "jazz" box or not?

I suppose, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter but I always feel that the best music is always the type which adheres more closely with what you would expect to hear in jazz. Maalouf is interesting in that he goes for micro-tones and I think he is a pretty genuine improviser. I would prefer to hear him in a more out and out context but I do admire horn players who deviate from the more grand-standing style of playing that manifest itself in players from Louis Armstrong onwards. Players like Don Cherry, Kenny Dorham and Ambrose Akinmusire to "work" for me in this fashion and I would also have to say that the incorporation of "freak sounds" amongst brass players has always appealed. I love musicians like Cootie Williams, Rex Stewart, Lester Bowie, Dave Douglas, Malachi Thompson etc, etc who incorporate this in their playing whereas those musicians with a "purer" tone like Chet Baker, Terence Blanchard, Clifford Brown, are less interesting in my opinion.

I've been listening to Josh Berman this week and I would have to plonk him in the same category albeit the style of jazz played on the trio record is an entirely different type of jazz. For me, Berman is a one-off , the solo's often incorporating the sound of the air being blown through the instrument and full of extended techniques. Fair enough, the trio's other members are incredibly wired in to each other and the group are staggeringly attuned to the twists and turns in the music. However, Berman is completely original , albeit he seems to bridge jazz and Improv.

[Serial_Apologist]

he seems to bridge jazz and Improv.

way to go.