Garry Booth’s set includes a lyrical live album and some fabulous first timers
JAZZ CHOICE Dazzling double debut
New York guitarist Mary Halvorson sets out her stall with this remarkable dual selection
Mary Halvorson
Amaryllis
Mary Halvorson (guitar), Jacob Garchik (trombone), Adam O’Farrill (trumpet) et al
Nonesuch 7559791273
Belladonna
Mary Halvorson (guitar), Mivos Quartet
Nonesuch 7559791037
Mary Halvorson has been lighting up New York’s alt-jazz scene for 15 years, with a palette that ranges from jagged monochrome etching to glowing technicolour soundscaping. But a bigger stage surely beckons, this stunning Nonesuch double debut confirming the 41 year old as an original thinker on a par with Anthony Braxton – even Ornette Coleman.
Amaryllis is a powerful six-song suite executed by a newly formed sextet of dynamic improvisers. Full of sonic surprises, the music nevertheless retains a coherent thread with arrangements that frequently place Halvorson more as a texturalist than soloist. The band is a revelation, its dazzling brass and ringing vibraharp carried aloft by a surging rhythm section.
By contrast, Belladonna’s five pieces were through-composed for the Mivos Quartet and augmented by Halvorson’s guitar improvisations. Without the band there’s more focus on Halvorson’s technique; longer, sonorous lines are strung with bright notes or cranky counterpoint melodies overlaying the quartet’s intense and precise accompaniment. ★★★★★
July round-up
Prolific trumpeter, composer Dave Douglas is a restless soul. His latest music, Secular Psalms, was commissioned by Ghent’s Handelsbeurs Concert Hall to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Ghent Altarpiece painted by Jan van Eyck. His response – a suite of 10 pieces – is as multidimensional and intriguing as the storied masterpiece itself. Tapping into Latin Mass, medieval folk songs, the early renaissance composer Guillaume DuFay, as well as improvised music, and making use of lute and serpent plus electronics, vocals and conventional jazz instruments, Douglas has produced an unearthly epic that’s pure genius. (Greenleaf GRE1090) ★★★★★ American guitarist John Scofield has been making hip, small-group jazz music for nearly 50 years and this eponymously titled album is his debut as a solo artist. It took an enforced lockdown, with only a loop machine for company, to persuade him to develop a more ‘delicate’ approach. Seclusion also added a mischievous warped factor to his technique. The sound is still recognisably ‘Sco’ – reverberating, even clangourous – but with added note bending. The selection has
