OLIVER LAKE ORGAN QUARTET
Smalls Jazz Club, New York - Saturday 27th May 2017
Smalls Jazz Club, New York - Saturday 27th May 2017
Jared Gold – Organ; Oliver Lake – Sax; bruce Williams – Sax; Chris Beck – Drums
Oliver Lake has always placed emphasis in his discussions of the traits required in the personal development of a jazz musician on the importance of nurturing your own ‘voice’ as a performer. In Jared Gold - the Downbeat Magazine award-winning organist who has lit-up the US scene with his work with Lake, John Abercrombie, David Stryker and many others over the last decade - he has in his band the perfect example of what can be achieved by dedication to that pursuit. Lake has also often emphasised that this band exists because of Gold, because of the potential he saw for his music and their collaboration, and that call has fully borne fruit.
For sure, Gold owes much to the legacy of the great players of the Hammond B3 - Larry Young perhaps, in particular when he stretches the line, extends the harmonies - but Gold has his own sound, his own voice, that makes the organ as original, natural and engaging in this music as it was the day it was born into the family of jazz. Gold is a highly distinctive improviser bringing to the keys a complex but fluid harmonic sense, that is tailored around the molten intensity of the organ’s rich palette of tones. And, of course, with the organ it is as much about what you can’t see as what you can. This Quartet hits the stage without a bass, but the pedal work of Gold is an astonishing entity in its own right, being not limited to sustain pedal notes but full of fleet and free lines that play a full part in the ensemble’s flow.
In this set, in the suitably monikered basement room that is Small’s Jazz Club in Greenwich Village, Lake’s Organ Quartet opened with the uptempo Plan, a twisting and gnarled tune in a driven groove that gives way to an immediate intensity in the solos of Lake and Williams. Lake defies convention with the immediacy of his soloing, here it began almost at the top of the available energy as though the parameters of the emotion and tone in these solos will be prologued before any other statement begins. It is an arresting trope, and one that Lake extends into lines that flow and ride across the beat, in and out, sometimes roaring in the higher registers at others blowing through a series of straight, clean lines, its the ambiguity and fluidity of these movements that is so arresting and surprising, but always ripe with their own consistency and manifest logic.
In Bruce Williams, this band has an alto saxophonist of great versatility and range, who draws across a multiplied language of jazz and blues, and who solos with the same energy and freedom as Lake. Washington-born Williams is a rising star of jazz in the States, and one who also acts as highly fitting counterpart to Lake’s lead, providing counter lines and harmonies that elaborate and deepen the music, and with a tone that is sympathetic to Lake’s.
Both Lake and Williams shone again on the wandering, questioning harmonic darkness of the melody of Clicker - another older Lake composition that has been so well and fully explored by this and other band settings, complete as it was here with drummer Chris Beck’s scuttling, shuffling phrases. Clicker is perhaps more reminiscent of earlier Lake compositions and projects, a composition that is made for freer exploration but which is also tight, imposing, demanding of the soloing interrogator.
Philadelphia born drummer Chris Beck is perhaps less known on the Eastern shores of the Atlantic. He is a veritable powerhouse of rhythm but subtle, with a virtuosic ease around the kind of complex and ambiguous lines Lake composers. A rightfully revered and in-demand rhythm player, he also improvises with lucidity, precision and invention.
This set also featured Oliver Lake’s recital of a poem dedicated to Amiri Baraka. Once common place as an experience in European improvised and free music, the inclusion of poems and recited text is now not common in Europe, but remains so in the States. Lake - who has published collections of poetry which draw on the same root sources as his music and visual art work - places these poems well within a context of the music that moves around them. His poems, like his musical compositions have a direct intention, they speak clearly and without obfuscation, and with a purpose that makes them well considered partners in such a set. Perhaps, it is also enriching that the jazz musician is clearly also a highly considered creative force in a different art form.
This set closed with two numbers that upend the expectations once more. Lake’s composition Song for Jay is dedicated to vibes player Jay Hoggard, and is a beguiling melody with a direct emotion. The set closes with a glowing and soulful rendition of the traditional Gospel anthem that is I Want Jesus To Walk With Me. This was a moving, controlled and slowly evolved rendition that deepened with its progress toward a sustained conclusion.
Across about 80 minutes of performance, it was clear that Lake remains at the forefront of jazz music’s vitality in the States. The ability to renew and revisit music of such diverse origin, to deliver such energy clarity and insistence in purpose - and to do so with younger musicians who were raise din a different time to lake - gives his work an unfaltering and sustained relevance.
Review by Peter Urpeth
Oliver Lake has always placed emphasis in his discussions of the traits required in the personal development of a jazz musician on the importance of nurturing your own ‘voice’ as a performer. In Jared Gold - the Downbeat Magazine award-winning organist who has lit-up the US scene with his work with Lake, John Abercrombie, David Stryker and many others over the last decade - he has in his band the perfect example of what can be achieved by dedication to that pursuit. Lake has also often emphasised that this band exists because of Gold, because of the potential he saw for his music and their collaboration, and that call has fully borne fruit.
For sure, Gold owes much to the legacy of the great players of the Hammond B3 - Larry Young perhaps, in particular when he stretches the line, extends the harmonies - but Gold has his own sound, his own voice, that makes the organ as original, natural and engaging in this music as it was the day it was born into the family of jazz. Gold is a highly distinctive improviser bringing to the keys a complex but fluid harmonic sense, that is tailored around the molten intensity of the organ’s rich palette of tones. And, of course, with the organ it is as much about what you can’t see as what you can. This Quartet hits the stage without a bass, but the pedal work of Gold is an astonishing entity in its own right, being not limited to sustain pedal notes but full of fleet and free lines that play a full part in the ensemble’s flow.
In this set, in the suitably monikered basement room that is Small’s Jazz Club in Greenwich Village, Lake’s Organ Quartet opened with the uptempo Plan, a twisting and gnarled tune in a driven groove that gives way to an immediate intensity in the solos of Lake and Williams. Lake defies convention with the immediacy of his soloing, here it began almost at the top of the available energy as though the parameters of the emotion and tone in these solos will be prologued before any other statement begins. It is an arresting trope, and one that Lake extends into lines that flow and ride across the beat, in and out, sometimes roaring in the higher registers at others blowing through a series of straight, clean lines, its the ambiguity and fluidity of these movements that is so arresting and surprising, but always ripe with their own consistency and manifest logic.
In Bruce Williams, this band has an alto saxophonist of great versatility and range, who draws across a multiplied language of jazz and blues, and who solos with the same energy and freedom as Lake. Washington-born Williams is a rising star of jazz in the States, and one who also acts as highly fitting counterpart to Lake’s lead, providing counter lines and harmonies that elaborate and deepen the music, and with a tone that is sympathetic to Lake’s.
Both Lake and Williams shone again on the wandering, questioning harmonic darkness of the melody of Clicker - another older Lake composition that has been so well and fully explored by this and other band settings, complete as it was here with drummer Chris Beck’s scuttling, shuffling phrases. Clicker is perhaps more reminiscent of earlier Lake compositions and projects, a composition that is made for freer exploration but which is also tight, imposing, demanding of the soloing interrogator.
Philadelphia born drummer Chris Beck is perhaps less known on the Eastern shores of the Atlantic. He is a veritable powerhouse of rhythm but subtle, with a virtuosic ease around the kind of complex and ambiguous lines Lake composers. A rightfully revered and in-demand rhythm player, he also improvises with lucidity, precision and invention.
This set also featured Oliver Lake’s recital of a poem dedicated to Amiri Baraka. Once common place as an experience in European improvised and free music, the inclusion of poems and recited text is now not common in Europe, but remains so in the States. Lake - who has published collections of poetry which draw on the same root sources as his music and visual art work - places these poems well within a context of the music that moves around them. His poems, like his musical compositions have a direct intention, they speak clearly and without obfuscation, and with a purpose that makes them well considered partners in such a set. Perhaps, it is also enriching that the jazz musician is clearly also a highly considered creative force in a different art form.
This set closed with two numbers that upend the expectations once more. Lake’s composition Song for Jay is dedicated to vibes player Jay Hoggard, and is a beguiling melody with a direct emotion. The set closes with a glowing and soulful rendition of the traditional Gospel anthem that is I Want Jesus To Walk With Me. This was a moving, controlled and slowly evolved rendition that deepened with its progress toward a sustained conclusion.
Across about 80 minutes of performance, it was clear that Lake remains at the forefront of jazz music’s vitality in the States. The ability to renew and revisit music of such diverse origin, to deliver such energy clarity and insistence in purpose - and to do so with younger musicians who were raise din a different time to lake - gives his work an unfaltering and sustained relevance.
Review by Peter Urpeth
