David Binney, 'South' (2003)

in

At the end of Playing Changes is a list: The 129 Essential Albums of the Twenty-First Century (So Far). I organized these by year, and then alphabetically by artist name. I'll be running them down here, in that order. (No one appears more than once as a leader, though there’s ample overlap in personnel.)

My earliest recollection of seeing alto saxophonist David Binney is from 1998 or so, just after I moved to New York. He was playing at The Internet Café, a narrow, sweaty room in the East Village that had about as much cachet and charm as the name would suggest.

Binney was there with a band called Lan Xang, which he formed with tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Jeff Hirschfield. I'd admired the group's self-titled debut, released in 1997 on Binney's own label, Mythology Records. The sound of the band in close quarters — by which I mean McCaslin had the bell of his tenor in my face — was a visceral thrill, even if some others in the room were obviously there to check their email.

R-1147522-1282719859.jpeg.jpg

I came to understand that self-determinacy is a hallmark of Binney's artistic profile, along with the compulsion to hybridize. By the early 2000s I was seeing him regularly at the 55 Bar and Cornelia Street Café, always with a terrific band combining volatile heat and a sleek feeling of lift.

One such group featured Chris Potter on tenor saxophone, Uri Caine on piano, Adam Rogers on guitar, Scott Colley on bass and Brian Blade on drums. They recorded an album called South for ACT Records in 2000, though it took a few more years to see release in the United States.

The album is a hyper-articulate postbop sprint, with every member of the group functioning at his peak — and pointing in the general direction of future bands like Chris Potter's Underground and the Donny McCaslin Quartet (more on those later). Listen here for the braided, dark-hued saxophone lines, for the tidal swell of rhythm, for an inexorable forward pull at every moment, with every move. 

South is available for purchase at Amazon, or can be streamed on Spotify.

Wayne Shorter Quartet, 'Footprints Live!' (2002)

in

At the end of Playing Changes is a list: The 129 Essential Albums of the Twenty-First Century (So Far). I organized these by year, and then alphabetically by artist name. I'll be running them down here, in that order. (No one appears more than once as a leader, though there’s ample overlap in personnel.)

The postmillennial Wayne Shorter Quartet — Shorter on saxophones, Danilo Pérez on piano, John Patitucci on bass, Brian Blade on drums — receives a fair amount of attention in Playing Changes. To my mind it's one of the most influential working bands of the last 20 years, for the way that it bridges the eternal verities of jazz with a heady sense of unfolding possibility in the here and now. And now. And now. And... now. 

Perhaps you recall the seismic impact of this band when it first emerged. Shorter hadn't led an acoustic combo of this sort in years, even decades. His fusionesque output in the 1990s had been divisive, both heralded and disparaged. So now here comes a new configuration, featuring the grand master backed by a younger rhythm team fresh off its success on Pérez's Motherland (which has already turned up here).

Footprints_Live!.jpg

The 129 Essential Albums list is precisely that, a tally of recordings. And Footprints Live! — the first official release by this magical quartet, culled from several European concerts — fits that bill. But for many observers of the scene, this band left its impression well before releasing any product. If you saw the new Wayne Shorter Quartet on tour in 2001, you probably remember the thrill of hearing familiar material turned inside out, or outside in. Shorter wasn't playing, as some folks say. Yet he most definitely came to play.

In a sense, I could have selected one of the band's later albums — like Without a Net, from 2013 — and felt satisfied with my choice. But the importance of Footprints Live! as a historical document, a statement in and of its time, can hardly be overlooked. It was a dispatch from enigmatic coordinates, but also evidence of "the jazz tradition" in brilliant, destabilizing flux.

Because I see the album as a harbinger of the band, I'm going to break from my custom here and post footage of a live performance, rather than a track off the release. Here is a version of "Footprints" captured at the 2001 Newport Jazz Festival, a couple of weeks after the concerts chronicled on the record.

From the top of the clip, this is music full of pointed challenge: listen for how the first atonal fillip by Pérez provokes an "Uh-oh!" just a few seconds in. Listen, too, for how much elasticity and license Shorter brings to an articulation of the theme. This is one of his most iconic compositions, and he's pulling it apart like taffy. The rest of the band follows his lead, edging out onto precarious territory, without ever missing a step.

Purchase Footprints Live! at Amazon, or stream it on Spotify or Apple Music.

Brian Blade Fellowship, 'Perceptual' (2000)

in

At the end of Playing Changes is a list: The 129 Essential Albums of the Twenty-First Century (So Far). I organized these by year, and then alphabetically by artist name. I'll be running them down here, in that order. (No one appears more than once as a leader, though there’s ample overlap in personnel.)

Brian Blade Fellowship released its self-titled debut album in 1998 — one year after Blade, a drummer with a beautiful touch and an elastic sense of time, first formed the band. From the start, it had a sound remarkable for its soft glow and insinuative forward pull, along with a harmonic signature informed by the Southern gospel and folk music of Blade's upbringing. 

Brian_Blade_-_Perceptual.jpg

By the time the Fellowship made a second album, Perceptual, it was no longer a revelation to hear this cauldron of sounds. But Blade and his pianist-coproducer, Jon Cowherd, had forged an ever-stronger bond, figuring out what worked best within their style. The signature of The Pat Metheny Group is obvious, framed more or less as an homage, but there was so much else in this music besides — notably a forthright commitment to deep melody and a graceful play of tension and release. Blade had only played drums on the first album; here he also provides some vocals and acoustic guitar. The other guitarists on the album are Kurt Rosenwinkel (acoustic and electric), Dave Easley (pedal steel) and yes, Daniel Lanois (all of the above). Joni Mitchell even lends a guest vocal on one track.

But if you want sense of what made Perceptual so powerful then, and so enduring today, try "Evinrude-Fifty (Trembling)," the album's second track. Beginning in an expectant hum, it opens up to an imploring melody, carried aloft by Rosenwinkel and alto saxophonist Myron Walden. Then comes a dark, bluesy riff and a chorus like the skyward release of a pack of doves, as Walden harmonizes with tenor saxophonist Melvin Butler. There's more: a crisp piano solo by Cowherd, a wicked pedal steel turn by Easley. Pure bliss.

Buy Perceptual at Amazon or stream it on Spotify.