Listen to selections from this month's Editor's Choices on One Jazz (www.onejazz.net) and below:

New albums from Lakecia Benjamin, Daniel Casimir, Wayne Escoffery and Eliane Elias are among the Editor's Choice recordings reviewed in the September 2024 issue of Jazzwise. Consider subscribing to Jazzwise to read all of the reviews published this month, simply visit magsubscriptions.com to find the subscription that suits you.

Lakecia Benjamin

Phoenix Reimagined (Live)

Ropeadope 

Lakecia Benjamin (as), Zaccai Curtis (p), Elias Bailey (b), EJ Strickland (d) with guests John Scofield, Kat Dyson (el g), Randy Brecker (t), Jeff 'Tain' Watts (d), Richie Goods (b), Ray Angry (p) and Melodie Ray (v). Rec. date not stated

I’ve always enjoyed Lakecia Benjamin’s studio recordings (2020’s remarkable Pursuance especially), but for me it’s in the live setting where she really shines, be it at a big festival or the more intimate spaces of Ronnie Scott's or the Jazz Café. So the idea of recording the maestra live in the studio (at New York’s Bunker, a superb space of which Brad Mehldau is an alumnus), in front of a small but enthusiastic audience and with a bunch of top-notch accompanists and stellar guests, was a brilliantly simple one.

Phoenix Reimagined (Live) doesn’t disappoint. Despite a slight Spinal Tap cringe factor when Benjamin bellows "How ya feelin'?" in the introduction, this is jazz of the highest order, played with energy, intensity and commitment – and beautifully recorded, delivering both the spontaneity and atmosphere of a live show with the crisp precision of a great studio session. Focussing on music from last year's acclaimed Phoenix album and adding three new tunes, Reimagined features Benjamin's core backing trio and astutely-selected guest turns from the likes of John Scofield, Jeff 'Tain' Watts and Randy Brecker (and everyone is precisely on point).

What's especially striking about this album is its muscularity: not just musically, but also in the trenchant comment of 'Amerikkan Skin' additionally the new 'Peace Is Possible'; and a fabulous 'My Favorite Things' and and her explosive original 'Trane' prove that Benjamin is more than capable of carrying the torch of her great hero, John Coltrane.

Phoenix Reimagined is one of the best live jazz albums of recent years. It's the next best thing to being there. Kevin Whitlock

Daniel Casimir

Balance

Jazz re:freshed/Bandcamp 

Daniel Casimir (el b, b), James Beckwith (p), Jamie Murray (d), James Copus, Jay Phelps, Shelia Maurice-Grey and Andy Davis (t), Kevin McLeod, Rosie Turton, Joe Bristow and Tom Dunnet (tb), Chris Maddock, Cassie Kinoshi, Binker Golding and Nubya Garcia (s), Ria Moran and Zola Marcelle (v) plus the London Contemporary Orchestra and Uéle Lamore (cond). Rec. November 2022

Bassist Daniel Casimir has been omnipresent across many of the current generation of jazz stars’ projects – namely playing countless tours with the likes of Nubya Garcia, Binker Golding and Cassie Kinoshi – always demonstrating supportive versatility but with a strength of tone and character that frequently uplifts a concert or recording. And while he’s already won praise for 2021’s Boxed In, little can prepare you for the power and scope of the wall of Technicolour sound that bursts forth from the minute the opening riffs of Balance jump out the speakers.

Casimir’s aforementioned former bosses swell the ranks here of this A-list powerhouse cast of some of London’s leading lights, to which the London Contemporary Orchestra adds lustrous layers of strings to futher extend the harmonic range of Casimir’s chordal palette. While some large ensemble projects can lack groove or feel like the strings are a bit of an afterthought, the key to Balance’s success is the deep integration of both brass and orchestra, which the bassist cleverly uses to bring together traditional big band sounds with rhythm section heft and lush cinematic epicness.

Blasting off with the ever-rising riffs of ‘Music Not Numbers’ – an angry repost to today’s ‘Spotify-ed’ numbers-obsessed music industry – it’s the following title track’s half-time feel that allows drummer Jamie Murray to hammer out some feisty drum’n’bass beats behind an unravelling James Beckwith piano solo. Then strings and brass dance around each other in a swirling crescendo – it’s compelling, powerful stuff. The addition of vocals, particularly on the emotive ‘I’ll Take My Chances’ with the husky soul voice of Ria Moran given space to breathe, before a searching Binker Golding solo, further demonstrates the ensemble’s canny ability to shapeshift with poise and sophistication.

Balancing accessibility, artfulness and ambition is no mean feat, but Daniel Casimir has done it here on one of the year’s most forward looking and stylistically thrilling albums. Mike Flynn

Wayne Escoffery

Alone

Smoke Session Records 

Wayne Escoffery (ts), Gerald Clayton (p), Ron Carter (b) and Carl Allen (d). Rec. date not stated

The 49-year-old Jackie McLean-mentored tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery has high-pedigree recordings and live work under his belt, including lengthy stints with the veteran trumpeter Tom Harrell and Mingus Big Band. Escoffery was born in London, but moved to East Coast America when only 11 years old, and since 2001 has recorded his own albums as leader in the modernist mainstream vein.

He is a deceptively inventive horn man of depth and intensity despite the genial, unhurried surface sound of his playing. Even when in full flow, his succinct, incisive phrasing is laid out logically and eloquently. There’s never an intention of showing off his unquestionable chops for their own sake.

Alone is an album of sleepy, patient tempos, the title alluding to a more darkly reflective mood than is typical of the saxman’s work. Which means there’s little room for sweetened sentiment on evergreens such as ‘Shadow of Your Smile’ with John Coltrane’s influence an understated yet yearning presence; and ‘Stella by Starlight’ with its tortoise-like gait and aching introspection. Informed by both Dexter Gordon and Wayne Shorter for his sleepy, blurry long tones on the title track, the Charles Lloyd sideman Gerald Clayton’s elegant Herbie Hancock-ish piano is an equally engaging listen. The intoxicating ‘Moments with You’ brings to mind a Swedish sax legend Bernt Rosengren on Krzysztof Komeda’s Knife in the Water film soundtrack while ‘The Ice Queen’ finds Escoffery balancing logical and mantra-like phrasing while Carl Allen’s minimal kit work and the living legend Ron Carter’s bass both humbly serve the collective cause. A fine album then in the ‘classic’ quartet mould; but more significantly for one that digs into over-familiar territory, it’s a recording of substance. Selwyn Harris

Eliane Elias

Time And Again

Candid 

Eliane Elias (v, p) plus various personnel including Conrado Goys, Marcus Teixeira, Daniel Santiago, Bill Frisell (g), Djavan (g, v), Mark Kibble (v), Mike Maineri (vb), Marc Johnson (b), Marcelo Mariano (el b), Edu Ribeiro, Peter Erskine, Cuca Teixeira (d), Davi Vieira and Marivaldo Dos Santos (perc). Rec. date not stated

If Eliane Elias’ remarkable 2021 album of duets with Chucho Valdés and Chick Corea, Mirror Mirror, focused on her dazzling pianism, and her 2023 album Quietude highlighted her characteristically understated vocal approach where bar lines dissolve away, her latest album Time And Again beautifully showcases her skills as pianist, vocalist, and composer.

From the gorgeous changes of album opener ‘At First Sight’ to the deep sense of regret expressed in the plaintive ‘Too Late’, the music-making on Time and Again is so in the pocket, the familiar Brazilian rhythms so seasoned, the empathy between the players so palpable, that it calls to mind Claude Debussy’s famous quote about music: “It’s not even the expression of a feeling, it’s the feeling itself.”

Elias touchingly dedicates ‘Falo do Amor’ to her granddaughter, Lucy, “who brings so much beauty, love, and joy to my life”, while the reflective ‘How Many Times’ features wonderful contributions from vibist Mike Maineiri and guitarist Bill Frisell. There’s also a magnificent duet with fellow Brazilian musician Djavan, performing ‘Sempre’, a song Elias composed specifically for him. First recorded as an instrumental ballad on bassist Marc Johnson’s outstanding 2012 ECM album Swept Away, Elias’ seductive vocals adroitly floating over the deep groove supplied by Johnson and drummer Peter Erskine on ‘It’s Time’ provides one of the album’s standout moments. Mark Kibble (of vocal group Take 6), who first worked with Elias on her 2015 Grammy-winning album, Made in Brazil, crafts heart-meltingly lovely backing vocals on six of the album’s eight songs. Peter Quinn

Hejira

Live at the Cockpit

Spin Jazz Productions 

Hattie Whitehead (v, g), Pete Oxley (g), Ollie Weston (reeds), Chris Eldred (ky), Dave Jones (el b), Rick Finlay (d) and Marc Cecil (perc). Rec. 17 November 2023

As readers will recall from February’s Jazzwise, Hejira are a seven-piece British band dedicated to playing the music of Joni Mitchell. Their main focus is the seminal double live album Shadows and Light that she recorded in 1979 with Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays, Don Alias, Michael Brecker and Jaco Pastorius. And in fact, 10 of the 12 tracks on Live at the Cockpit are taken from that album, the only exceptions being ‘A Case of You’ (originally from Mitchell’s album Blue) and ‘Blue Motel Room’ (from Hejira - yes, this is getting confusing).

The first and most obvious question to ask is: why make an album that largely reproduces another album? Hattie Whitehead’s voice is spine-shiveringly like Mitchell’s, and just as full of delicacy, emotion and intelligence. But Live at the Cockpit does not simply reproduce the songs; it reinterprets them. For one thing, Mitchell plays electric guitar on her own album, whereas Whitehead plays acoustic, sharing guitar duties with bandleader Oxley.

There’s also a little less solo grandstanding here than on the original - Hejira’s aim is to serve the songs. They are a formidably tight unit, imparting a practised smoothness to the performances. The recording is of optimal quality for a live album too – helped, no doubt, by improvements to the technology over the last quarter of a century.

Anything that helps keep a band of this quality on the road is to be welcomed, and Live at the Cockpit will probably sell well at the many gigs Hejira have in their diary during the rest of 2024. Peter Jones

Meshell Ndegeocello

No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin

Blue Note 

Meshell Ndegeocello (el b, v), Justin Hicks, Kenita Miller, Staceyann Chin, Hilton Als (v), Chris Bruce (g), Jebin Bruni (ky), Julius Rodriguez (org), Jake Sherman (el b), Josh Johnson (s) and Abe Rounds (d). Rec. date not stated

Marking the centenary of James Baldwin’s birth, Meshell Ndegeocello’s latest album for Blue Note, following 2023’s stellar Omnichord Real Book, takes the visionary black writer’s oeuvre as her inspiration. Across a sprawling 17 tracks, Ndegeocello draws on everything from Baldwin’s writings on race and the class struggle in America to suicide, sexual identity, Civil Rights and the artist’s responsibility to society. It is an involved and potentially overwhelming range of topics to improvise from, yet the strength of No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin lies in Ndegeocello’s capacity to subsume lofty ideas within the heartfelt thump of her groove.

While spoken word interludes from poet Staceyann Chin and critic Hilton Als take a more literal approach to Baldwin’s work, interpolating his writing into explorations of Black Lives Matter and contemporary politics, it’s in Ndegecello’s music that we get closest to the spirit of Baldwin’s urgency and vitality. From opener ‘Travel’, which weaves spoken word with syncopated funk, to the thundering hand drums and percussion of ‘Another Country’, the plaintive bass melodies of ‘What Did I Do?’ and the ecstatic West African polyrhythms of ‘Pride I’, Ndegeocello manages to instil each composition with a lively and emotionally-charged energy.

This is a work of complexity and depth, one that relies on repeated listens to gauge the many layers of its meaning but also one that can convey the sincerity of its instrumental ingenuity simply from its first sounds. Ammar Kalia

Angelica Sanchez/Chad Taylor

A Monster Is Just An Animal You Haven’t Met Yet

Intakt Records Intakt 

Angelica Sanchez (p) and Chad Taylor (d). Rec. 16 January 2023

Blimey. Talk about expressing yourself without giving a shit about what anyone thinks! This free-spirited, uninhibited and at times positively wild collaboration at first intimidates with its heat, its unpredictability and what seem like deliberate attempts to alienate, but slowly draws you in to what is a fascinating and, at times, a rather beautiful sound world.

The 10 pieces here veer from the serene to the frantic, from wispy to black hole-dense, from the frightening to the welcoming; but the music always manages to pull you in, aided by Sanchez’s piano shards and dazzling runs, and by Taylor’s polyrhythmic pulse (‘Myopic Seer, ‘Threadwork’) which also provides texture (as with his cymbal work on the opener, ‘Liminal’). ‘Animistic’ sees Sanchez’s piano piercing the air around it like shattering glass or a screaming banshee, while her keyboard work on ‘Alluvial’, appropriately enough, flows like a river through ever-changing landscapes: sometimes lazily meandering, then forceful like rapids before a waterfall. Her playing on ‘Tracers of Cosmic Space’ is delicate and ethereal, like a harp, and while she relishes dissonance (‘All Alone Together’, the title track) and is defiantly in the avant-garde, there are often clever and subtle references to jazz’s roots in the blues and ragtime.

A Monster… is an album that draws the listener in far more than most avant-garde jazz waxings and more than that, is a tribute to the remarkable creative telepathy between two first-rank musicians. Kevin Whitlock

Mike Stern

Echoes and Other Songs

Artistry Music 

Mike Stern (el g, bv), Chris Potter (ts), Jim Beard (p, ky), Christian McBride (el b, db), Antonio Sanchez (d), Arto Tunçboyacian (perc) plus guests on tracks 4, 5 and 9 Leni Stern (ngoni), Richard Bona (el b, v), Dennis Chambers (d) and Bob Franceschini (ss, ts). Rec. date not stated

The death of keyboardist Jim Beard at the age of 63 in March this year left many in deep shock, such was his continuous presence in the highest echelons of jazz as both player and producer with everyone from Steely Dan, to John McLaughlin and Wayne Shorter. He appears here as both player and producer on this effusive latest set from another indefatigable jazz fusion figure, Mike Stern.

No stranger to adversity himself, Stern has made an emphatic comeback from a near career-ending fall in 2017 that broke both his arms, and if anything Echoes and Other Songs is something of a late-career high for the eternally energetic six-stringer, who’s now 71 years young.

Joined by one of his hardest hitting bands in recent years – the ubiquitous Chris Potter firing from the off, McBride and Sanchez the perfect simpatico rhythm section, there’s a suitably uplifting vibe permeating these sessions, with everyone sounding overjoyed to be backing up their guitar hero Mr Stern.

Opener ‘Connections’ begins with some plucked ngoni from Mike’s wife Leni, which soon gives way to Stern’s patented minor riffing and tight unison melody lines with Potter. Stern’s solos still beguile with his artfully in-n-out lines, with the blues and his overdrive pedal never far away. His association with Cameroonian bass star Richard Bona goes back to 2001’s Voices, and they’re reunited here on three songs: the grinding funk of ‘Space Bar’, skipping vocal-harmony soaked ‘I Hope So’ and vocal-infused ‘Curtis’ – this trio of tracks also replete with guesting old chums Chambers and Franceschini on drums and sax respectively.

Echoes and Other Songs also sounds superb – taped at Power Station at Berklee NYC – Beard’s skills steering this production also extends to mixing duties alongside engineer Roy Hendrickson; more reasons to feel his loss even more keenly.

And while this set doesn’t break much new musical ground for Stern, the sheer quality of the material and performances , which are fuelled by an obvious collective joy, all amount to one of the guitarist’s strongest sets in years. It’s the perfect tribute to a much-missed friend. Mike Flynn

Tarbaby

You Think This America

Giant Step Arts 

Nasheet Waits (d), Orrin Evans (p), Eric Revis (b). Rec. August 2022

Tarbaby’s You Think This America mixes Ornette Coleman, some improv-unleashing Orrin Evans originals, even the indestructible ‘Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out’. Ornette’s jaunty ‘Dee Dee’ (from 1965’s classic trio recordings Live At The Golden Circle) gets a perkily joyous Monkish clang and a free-flow stream from Evans, and on the pianist’s groove-juggling ‘Blues (When It Comes)’ Waits’ eventual cymbal tingle and Revis’ walk makes you want to jump from your seat. There’s a hypnotically reverential sway over the leader’s brushes (his brushwork is astonishing throughout the set, from whispers to frenzy) on the Stylistics’ ‘Betcha By Golly Wow’, and the slinky ‘Nobody Knows You’ is an exquisite exercise in doing more with less. John Fordham

John Williamson

The Northern Sea

Ubuntu 

John Williamson (b), Alex Wilson (p), Jonny Mansfield (vb), Alex Hitchcock (ts), Jay Davis (d) and Immy Churchill (v). Rec. 28-29 July, 3 September 2023

Hell, if you’re a bass player, why not start your solo album with a bass solo? After all, contrary to the nasty old cliché, there’s a good chance people will still be listening nine seconds into the opening track. Williamson is a recent postgrad from the Royal Academy, and also something of a mushroom expert. Musically, he lists his main influences as Lee Konitz, Charlie Haden, Charles Mingus and Bley (I’m not sure which one – presumably Carla), and has spent three years crafting the tunes on The Northern Sea. That’s probably why it sounds so comfortable and in the pocket.

Despite the album’s noticeably fresh, modern sensibility, Williamson eagerly embraces swing – unlike many of his contemporaries. ‘Contrafact 2’, for instance (there are three of them), surges along at a suicidal tempo but sounds controlled, calm and hip thanks in no small measure to the never-flustered Alex Hitchcock. ‘Contrafact 3’ is rendered with just bass, drums and saxophone, the absence of harmony making it hard to guess what the original tune might have been; not that it matters.

Williamson has been astute in his choice of collaborators. Churchill, for example (whose mum Nikki Iles produced the album), handles the wordless melody on ‘2700 Q Street Northwest’ with her usual aplomb and accuracy. And meanwhile the always melodic Mansfield does his Bobby Hutcherson thing with a sympathetic ear, particularly on the brief bass/vibes duo track – a second version of the tune ‘Gozo’.

The Northern Sea is an intriguing debut album, full of variety, an accessible and mature piece of work. Peter Jones