Things we like: Rob Mazurek, Miha Gantar

Since 2001, Pedro Costa's estimable Portuguese label Clean Feed has been documenting some of the finest in contemporary jazz from Europe, North America, and elsewhere. I first got hip ca. 2004 via my friend Dennis Gonzalez, who cut a series of albums for the label (full disclosure: I wrote liner notes for one, Idle Wild). It was through Clean Feed releases that I had my first exposure to Kris Davis, Mary Halvorson, Ingrid Laubrock, Angelica Sanchez, and Chris Lightcap, among others. They also released worthy stuff by the likes of Tim Berne, Anthony Braxton, Mark Dresser, Marty Ehrlich, Fred Frith, Tony Malaby, Joe Morris, Nate Wooley, and many more. When Clean Feed boss Costa announced plans to cease operations at the end of 2024, The Free Jazz Collective blog published a lovefest of tributes that helped him rethink his decision, and he now plans to continue after this year.

The latest batch of Clean Feeds includes two items featuring performers we've seen here recently. 

Rob Mazurek's Milan is a follow-up to his 2017 Clean Feed release Rome. The trumpeter, best known for his work with Chicago Underground Collective, Sao Paulo Underground, and Exploding Star Orchestra, has been based in the artist's colony of Marfa, Texas, for nearly a decade, working on his visual art, leaving town to tour and record. Earlier this year, he was in Dallas as part of the Dennis Gonzalez Legacy Band; their Texas Theatre concert was recorded and the first installment will be released this fall on Astral Spirits. On June 9, Mazurek will perform with vocalist Carmina Escobar and the rhythm section of siblings Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez to close Marfa's Agave Festival.

Like Rome, Milan is a solo tour de force, broadcast live from a radio studio. Mazurek performed this music seated at a piano, which served as a resonating chamber with its sustaining pedal depressed to create more resonance, recorded at a level where there was slight feedback. Besides his voice and the piano, he played trumpet, piccolo trumpet, "magic yellow bucket" (also the title of the opening selection), bells, shakers, flutes, and percussion. 

At times, the music is spacious and minimalist; at other times, it's busy and dense (especially when Mazurek uses a sampler). Echoes of Don Cherry during his Swedish sojourn and the Art Ensemble of Chicago circa People in Sorrow abound -- the former especially in the piano-piccolo trumpet-vocal interplay on "Bar Basso," the latter in the collision of prepared piano and "small instruments" Mazurek calls "Sbagliato." "Moss Covered Hips" highlights Mazurek's trumpet virtuosity, while "Collimated and Trestled" mashes up electronica, sampled sounds of koto and North African multireed instruments (shades of Ornette's "Midnight Sunrise"), and Mazurek's wooden flute and trumpet. Always, the work is guided by a composer's intelligence and forms a unified expression.

Miha Gantar is a 26 year old pianist-composer from Slovenia, currently based in Amsterdam, and New York City is his third 5CD set (!) for Clean Feed. Like Introducing (2022) and Amsterdam (2023) before it, the new set presents the artist in a variety of settings: in a trio with bass and drums; accompanied by a string quartet; in a duo with Tennessee saxophone wunderkind Zoh Amba (who returns to Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios in a trio with Bill Orcutt and Chris Corsano on June 23); in another duo with two percussionists; and solo. With the exception of the first trio disc, which features two compositions, each disc contains a single piece, ranging in length from under 40 minutes to nearly an hour.

Ultima, the first disc, teams Gantar with bassist John Hebert and drummer Eric McPherson, who previously worked together in piano trios led by Andrew Hill and Fred Hersch (which gives you an idea of Gantar's intent here). They stay with him every step of the way as he plays inventions against a simple two-chord theme, then embroiders a more romantic one. Second disc Transitions demonstrates Gantar's aptitude at writing for strings, well played by his collaborators (including three members of the Bergamot Quartet). "Parisian Impromptu" wends its leisurely way through several dynamic shifts; a mood of unease prevails.

Third disc Sanctuary, which came with an endorsement from my buddy Phil in Missouri, is the one that really pulled me into this set, as I've been a Zoh Amba fan since seeing her play twice at last year's Molten Plains Fest. While Bhakti is probably the best recorded representation to date of her high energy blowing, I've been waiting for a record to capture the light and shade she's also capable of live (as in her Molten Plains duet with Joe McPhee). Perhaps, I thought, she only shows that side in the presence of elders. But damned if her encounter with Gantar (a couple of years older but basically a peer) doesn't showcase her subtlety and range of expression like nothing I've heard on disc till now. It helps that he gives her a light and lyrical field in which to extemporize. When I met her last year, she said she's looking for "where the kids are" in every city she plays. If she could pull some younger folks into the audience for free jazz and experimental music, that'd be something indeed.

To these ears, the freshest and most exciting sounds here come from Angels, the third disc, which teams Gantar with the tempestuous tag team of Kweku Sumbry and Jeremy Dutton on matching drum sets, to which Sumbry -- a D.C. native schooled in West Indian percussion as well as Latin, hip-hop, go-go, and reggae -- adds hand percussion. Dutton's a Houstonian who's played with notables including Vijay Iyer, and released his debut recording as a leader, Anyone is Better than Here, last year. The two drummers explode out of the gate and gallop through the track's first 15 minutes while Gantar responds with muscular chords and a percussive attack. He shifts gears and sounds like McCoy Tyner battling back against Elvin and Rashied on Meditations, anchored by rumbling bass chords. Sumbry's hand drums dominate the next section, as the drummers take up a polyrhythmic groove. Then they respond to Gantar as he crashes chords and introduces some rhythmic variations. Best disc of the set.

Finally, Towards Purity is the solo disc, with Gantar at his gentlest and most pastoral. 

New York City is a big listen, and one wonders what Gantar will do to follow releasing 15 CDs in not quite two years. (In recent memory, only late starter Allen Lowe and beloved elder Wadada Leo Smith have been more prolific.) In any event, I'm happy to have the discs with Zoh Amba and the drummers, and I'm glad Clean Feed's Pedro Costa has reconsidered folding the tent. The world can't have too many quality jazz labels.