Opus Five liner notes
The Evident Charms and Secret Powers of Five
For all the myriad varieties and contextual possibilities under the
rubric of what makes for a valid jazz group, there is something distinctively
powerful and tradition-enriched about the number five. Smaller groups tighten up
the focus on individual voices involved, and often frame a specified protagonist
leader, while larger groupings accentuate the greater good of the team. By
contrast, the quintet format, especially in the conventional format of trumpet
and tenor sax up front, with a piano-bass-drums rhythm section beneath and
around the front line, can seem the ideal middle zone, with enough textural and
diversity and enough close-knit intimacy to keep things lively and interesting,
for musicians and listeners alike.
No doubt, the power of five has become a standard bearer of jazz ensemble instrumentation, and for good reason and with solid historical roots. In effect, of course, the quintet was solidified roughly fifty years ago through the inspired auspices of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis’ great mid-‘60s quintet, iconic groups which still emanate ripple effects of influence on subsequent quintets, into the indefinite future. In the cooperative group known, fittingly and philosophically, as Opus Five, the lessons and echoes of the Blakey/Miles paradigms are assuredly in place, as a model of how to operate in this mode. But sturdy traditional jazz values aside, they also bring to this model their own fresh ideas and concepts of where to take the venture, genre-wise and arrangement-wise.
While individual highs are part of the equation on this recording, the stronger
collective intent is to find points of artistic collusion, to fully celebrate
the “fiveness” of the situation. There may intentionally be no specified leader
in the group with formidable horn players, tenor saxist Seamus Blake and
trumpeter Alex Sipiagin at the fore, bassist Boris Kozlov and drummer Donald
Edward in the rhythm foundation, and pianist David Kikoski in the ensemble
middle ground. Yet the component parts add up to an impressive and balanced
whole of an ensemble personality.
New York is bustling with a wealth of robust jazz players worth hearing, who
have wended their way from various global corners – this group is a kind of
American-Russian-British summit meeting, a few times removed. Gatherings of
players can have varying degrees of fateful collective rapport, and Opus Five is
a fine example of a blessed grouping of individuals, emboldened by their
connective and democratic chemistry.
One common denominator with this empathetic handful of jazz musicians is the
extended legacy of Charles Mingus’ dynastic, posthumous reach. Sipiagin, the
Russian-born trumpet master who has lived in NYC since 1991 and has been
involved with different Mingus-related projects among other connections, and he
puts in stellar work on this session, on both trumpet and flugelhorn. His
sympathetic alliance with the British-born NYC jazz pillar Blake, also a Mingus
band regular, is evident in the easy interplay and organic looseness and
eloquence of their interactions –even just the way of treating and wriggling
around a melody. The Mingus connection continues with Kikoski, giving the right
touch and heat to suit the tune at hand on this session, on both acoustic and
electric piano, as well as longtime Mingus band rhythm players, bassist Kozlov –
another Russian-in-New-York - and drummer Edwards, Louisiana-born and longtime
drummer of note on the NYC jazz scene.
At times, the band’s presumed conventionality disguises its sidelong
maneuvers into areas of musical sophistication, not always immediately apparent
in the fluid flow of the music. What sounds like an easy-does-it medium grooving
introductory tunes, pianist George Cables’ cool and supple composition “Think of
Me,” is, in fact, a tune in 9/4, but which succeeds in an easy pulse without
drawing undue attention to the oddity of its meter. Cables’ song, which opens
with its climbing suspended chords on electric piano, is a very fine place for
the quintet to start the journey of this record, as a link to jazz tradition
with a musical twist subtly folded into the music’s fabric.
Kikoski’s original “Baker’s Dozen” is a doubly-playful title in that its meter
lays into an 11/8 grid, versus the 13 equation of the typical “baker’s dozen.”
Tension and release do an intriguing dance in Kikoski’s tune, as the tumbling
unison bass-piano line beneath the languid, long-toned melody of the A section
opens out into a more ornate, major-toned B section. The pianist himself
supplies a solo interlude and a solo on the out section of the tune.
Bassist Kozlov, an inspired songsmith apart from his solidity on his
instrument, supplies two strong originals to the set. “Tallysman” is a
propulsive, fast neo-hard bop vehicle, whose links to the Blakey m.o. can be
detected in the composition and groupthink of the track, as well as the subtle
interweaving of the two horn players’ parts. Easier-going, at least on the
surface and basic feel, Kozlov’s wittily-named “Nostalgia in Time” (a meaningful
parsing of Mingus’ “Nostalgia in Times Square”) looks back to earlier jazz
models, in hard bop and a semblance of soul-jazz resonance, with a trumpet solo
of subdued, focused fire, and one of Blake’s several hot, well-crafted turns of
soloistic phrase heard on the date.
Throughout, Blake acquits himself beautifully, bringing his versatile
strengths to bear in his engaging solo on the gentle waltz “Asami’s Playland,”
with a sensitivity reminiscent of the saxist’s work on John Scofield’s balladic
enterprise, Quiet. Elsewhere, Blake
essays in an understated and poetic fashion, in stylistic synchronicity with the
lingering memory of Stan Getz’ Braziliana,
on Toninho Horta’s lovely, bittersweet-flavored bossa nova “Ton to Tom,” the
eloquent valentine to Horta’s legendary countryman Antonio “Tom” Jobim. It’s not
surprising, in fact, when thing take a logical Brazilian turn on the album,
under the eclectic circumstances of the session. It opens in an extra-slow and
soulful mode, with the rhythm section easing into the lyrical mood, and the horn
players (with Sipiagin waxing mellower on flugelhorn) take their time – and
tweak the sense of time – while moving around Horta’s seductively twining chord
changes and searching melody line.
Just when we thought we understood the artistic parameters set forth by
the group, the finale of the album sequence pulls us in seemingly opposing but
ultimately symbiotic directions. The Russian folk song “Sokol,” a nod in the
direction of the heritage of the band’s two Russian émigrés, presents the
album’s simplest melody, a chant-like plaint, but is set into the track which is
also the longest on the record, and the one which finds the band venturing
furthest into an abstract, “outside” zone.
What begins in a rhythmically open interplay of bass and drum gestures, settles
into a looping melodic statement elasticized between the two horn players and
set into different modes of harmonic relief by the rhythm section. A free
improvisation passage, with the horn players engaging in a collective improv
dialogue on a theme of controlled abandon, eases into a roiling 6/8 groove and
then fast swing under Kikoski’s piano solo. Edwards’ impressive, motivically
integrated drum solo leads back to the circular, folkloric head, finally
paraphrased by Kikoski on the warm, ringing tones of his Rhodes electric piano
to close.
Small surprises, generous affirmations of tradition, formidable playing and new
ideas abound on this Opus Five outing. The musical evidence here syncs up with a
historicist continuum, in terms of a deeply understood language and a contextual
basis rearing back to early jazz quintet models of half a century hence. But,
most importantly, the all-important Heat of the Moment is never forsaken: a
sense of spontaneous excitement and lived-in musicality is in the offing, and in
the expressive ensemble math. Five voices speak as one, and as five singular
parts, in the time-honored jazz manner.
--Josef Woodard
(contributor to Down Beat, the Los Angeles Times, Jazz Times, and many other publications. He is currently working on a biography of Charles Lloyd.)