Things we like: Andrew Hill, Ohad Talmor, Joe Fonda

I told myself I wasn't going to write any more record reviews until after the election, but one can only write so many postcards to voters before needing the distraction of a different task. A few interesting artifacts have come across my desk this month, either in corporeal (CD) form, or via download. 

To begin with, Andrew Hill's A Beautiful Day, Revisited -- out November 1 on Palmetto -- is an expanded and sonically improved upgrade of a classic from a peak in the esteemed pianist-composer's recording career. In 2002, Hill and a big band he dubbed his Sextet Plus 10 played three nights at Birdland that provided the raw material for the original A Beautiful Thing. His 2000 Palmetto release Dusk -- for my two cents, maybe his finest (sorry, Point of Departure) -- had topped year-end polls in Downbeat and Jazz Times, and for the follow-up, he took the same group, augmented with three reeds and seven brass, to the stage to record a new set of material live: an audacious move. The result mixes gorgeous horn polyphony with stunning solos from reedmen Marty Ehrlich and Greg Tardy and trumpeter/musical director Ron Horton. 

Twenty years later, Palmetto founder/producer Matt Balitsaris revisited the multitracks for the album, using technology that didn't exist when A Beautiful Day was first released to fine tune the sound, bringing up elements -- solos that were off-mic, sections when they switched instruments -- that weren't optimally audible in the original mix. For Revisited, Balitsaris restored the six-minute Birdland version (including band introductions) of the closing track "11/8" (which was edited down to a minute for the original release), and added a 16-minute alternate take of the title track which shows how Hill's material -- which was rehearsed in short sections that could be resequenced in performance -- changed from night to night. The producer's work has paid off, creating a more spacious soundscape. For proof, dig the confluence of Scott Colley's bass, Jose Davila's tuba, and Nasheet Waits' drums around the leader's piano on "New Pinocchio." 

It always pleases me to hear contemporary musicians playing the music of Ornette Coleman (like Tim Berne's Broken Shadows band, who came to Texas but sadly not DFW). As long as his music is heard, he yet lives. So naturally I was interested when a friend pulled my coat to Ohad Talmor's Back to the Land, a recent release on Swiss label Intakt. Talmor's a French-born Israeli-American tenor saxophonist-composer who spent formative years in Switzerland and now lives in Brooklyn. He was mentored by Ornette's associate Dewey Redman (his first teacher) and Lee Konitz, with whom he played and co-led bands for three decades.

The spark for Back to the Land came from three DAT tapes Talmor found in Konitz's collection following his mentor's death in 2020. The tapes documented the May 1998 rehearsals in Ornette's loft of a Coleman-Konitz-Charlie Haden-Billy Higgins quartet that played a single gig, at that year's Umbria Jazz Festival. Coleman had written ten new, unnamed pieces for the date that were never subsequently published, until now. Talmor transcribed the tunes and obtained permission from Ornette's estate to perform them. 

The model for Talmor's presentation of the new material is Ornette's 1987 double LP In All Languages, which featured one record of his 1959 quartet and another of his electric band Prime Time, including versions of some tunes by both ensembles. Thus, the first disc of Back to the Land features Talmor playing the pieces in short versions with his trio (Chris Tordini on bass, Eric McPherson on drums), adding vibraphonist Joel Ross and either David Virelles or Leo Genovese on piano (playing Konitz's old Steinway) for larger ensemble variations. The second disc adds live electronics (by Genovese on Moog and Sequential synths) and sound treatments (created in Ableton software and triggered by Talmor in performance), along with trumpeters Russ Johnson, Shane Endsley, and Adam O'Farrill, and (on the closing "Quintet Variations on Tune 10") harmonicist Gregoire Maret.  

In addition to inhabiting and expanding on the newly-discovered Coleman compositions, Talmor and his musicians take on some other related material: a smooth and languid take on "Kathelin Grey" (listed as "Kathlyn Grey" here) from Ornette's Song X collaboration with Pat Metheny; the main theme from Ornette's 1986 string quartet-with-drums piece Prime Design/Time Design (here entitled "New York," with a bass solo that finds Tordini exploring Charlie Haden's world of deep song); and two Redman tunes, "Mushi Mushi" (from Keith Jarrett's Bop-Be) and "Dewey's Tune" (from the first Old and New Dreams album, heard here in a quintet version with piano and vibraphone). Talmor also quotes the melody from "Peace Warriors" (a tune played twice on In All Languages) at the end of his solo on "Quartet Variations on Tune 4."

Talmor's musical archaeology and composer's craft have combined with his and his collaborators' interpretative skills to render a fitting tribute to Ornette, Dewey, and Lee, one that also stands tall on its own merits. But all tributes need not be posthumous. 

On Eyes on the Horizon -- out November 15 on the Italian label Long Song -- bassist Joe Fonda pays tribute to the trumpeter-composer Wadada Leo Smith, a mentor since the early '80s, when Fonda joined the Connecticut-based Creative Music Improvisers Forum, a cooperative co-founded by Smith and vibraphonist Bobby Naughton. The album comprises seven new Fonda compositions, inspired by his association with Smith. The quartet on the date includes Wadada as well as two other long-time Fonda collaborators: pianist Satoko Fujii, with whom the bassist has recorded five duet albums since 2015, and drummer Tiziano Tononi, with whom he's made seven albums since 2018.

Fonda's compositions have a meditative cast, seamlessly blending written and improvised sections, with strong unison themes and occasional solo and duo intervals -- most notably Smith with Fonda on the Naughton dedication "Like no other," but also Smith with Tononi on "Bright lights opus 5" and Fujii with Fonda on "We need members opus 1." Smith's ringing clarity plays well with Fujii's chordal density, Fonda and Tonini are equally expressive and supportive, and the result is chamber jazz of the highest order.