A Jazz Double Bill

The piano enters stealthily, its ethereal elements exposed. A tentative trumpet follows, the flutter of the player’s tongue creating a sound not quite foreign to human ears and certainly not familiar. As if a veil of purple fog was playing with dewy blades of grass in a forest meadow, the piano continues suggesting an awakening as the trumpet moves toward a clarity found when that first ray of sunshine breaks through. The recording is called Angel Falls. Angel Falls is the Anglo name for the world’s tallest waterfall at 979 meters, and a plunge of 807 meters. It drops over the edge of the Auyán-tepui mountain in the Canaima National Park and is located in the Gran Sabana region of Bolívar State in Venezuela. The pianist on the recording being revealed here, Sylvie Courvoisier, remarks on another possible reference: “And I also like the image of an angel falling down.” Contemplate the concept. Does a falling angel make a sound; we know waterfalls do. When does a falling angel become a fallen angel?

There’s a chill of a certain kind I feel whenever the sound of Leo Wadada Smith’s trumpet first issues from whatever device I am listening to. It’s something akin to the shiver of anticipation before entering a place I’ve never been armed only with a general understanding that it will be unlike any other previous excursion, even if the surroundings seem intimately familiar. Smith’s latest work with pianist Sylvie Courvoisier continues this tradition; uniquely original yet satisfyingly familiar. This doesn’t mean in any way that listening to this new disc, titled Angel Falls, is predictable or comfortable, somnolent or static. It is none of those; instead it renews the concept of music while reconstituting the concept of jazz. Once again, Smith takes the elements of jazz and transcends them, creating a music that is not only of this earth. In Courvoisier, he has once again found an ideal counterpart–one whose playing ensures the music created will be considerably more than the sum of its parts. Exponentially more. Courvoisier’s piano playing assumes the piano’s traditional role of providing rhythm to the soaring and floating tones created by Smith’s trumpet while also creating melodies and harmonies of its own.

Smith and Courvoisier first played together in a 2017 concert organized by composer and sax player John Zorn, an avant-gardist in his own right. The musical attraction was instant and within a few months the two recorded a live performance with drummer Marcus Gilmore. Other collaborations followed. The booklet accompanying the disc notes Smith’s love of the piano and trumpet duet. That love and the two artists’ comfort with the format defines the work. Muted or open, Smith’s trumpet whispers, talks and ultimately sings; Courvoisier’s fingers remark, respond and encourage the musical conversation we are privileged to listen in on. There’s a sonic intuition present between the piano’s ivories, the horn’s valves and the souls that guide them that turn their musical manifestations into a celestial celebration the musicians seem happy to share. The sum is certainly greater than its parts—parts which have proven they can also stand alone without fear or hesitation.

Kenny Dorham is also a trumpet player. He left us over fifty years ago. Thanks to the master producer at Resonance Records Zev Feldman, a previously unrecorded performance of Dorham’s was released last summer. Titled Blue Bossa in the Bronx: Live From the Blue Morocco, the recording is from a 1967 performance and features Dorham on trumpet, Sonny Red on alto sax, Cedar Walton on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Denis Charles on drums. The title of the album cones from Dorham’s 1963 composition called “Blue Bossa,” which neatly blends bebop and bossa nova styles. The recording opens with a twelve minute take on this tune; by the time the subsequent tune begins—written by Charlie Parker—the listener is inside the Blue Morocco, smoky room, glasses of beer and some of the coolest jazz musicians in the five boroughs that evening.

Dorham was a sideman before he began recording with his own ensembles. He played with Billy Eckstine, Charlie Parker, Art Blakey and Horace Silver’s Jazz Messengers and Hal Roach. There were probably others I am forgetting here. Those in the know—fellow jazz musicians, jazz critics and radio deejays—called Dorham a musician’s musician, an acknowledgment that is both a high compliment and an occasional curse, especially when bills need to be paid. It seems reasonable to assume that Dorham’s years of playing in ensembles led by others provided him with a certain understanding about accompaniment, the spotlight and lack thereof, and the meaning of professionalism, not to mention the nature of ego. If one considers those possible lessons when listening to the performance being written about here, they might hear a confidence of a player capable of playing what he hears while anticipating what comes next. There’s also a gentle humility that resonates within each tune and every solo. The piano steps forward and Dorham moves into the shadows; the same can be said about the saxophone’s presence and the always important bottom—the drums and bass.

2024 was the hundredth anniversary of Kenny Dorham’s birth. Resonance Records assembled and released Blue Bossa in the Bronx to mark that event. Listening to the final measures of “The Theme,” the last tune on the disc as I write this makes me happy enough to blow out all one hundred candles on Dorham’s centennial birthday cake.

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