Common Sense Tone Sequences For Contemporary Jazz Improvisation

It's been four long years since British composer and saxophonist John Surman issued a new recording for his longtime home label, ECM. In a loose way, The Spaces in Between is the mirror image of 2003's Free and Equal, recorded with drummer Jack DeJohnette and the London Brass (though that record was a mirror of the first teaming of Surman with his longtime collaborator, double bassist Chris Laurence and the then-new Trans4mation String Quartet). Surman has been writing, arranging for, and performing with Trans4mation since that time. Whereas Coruscating was far more formal in structure, and its textures and colorings plotted in advance, here there are more opportunities for the strings to improvise and add more freely to the mix…

It's been four long years since British composer and saxophonist John Surman issued a new recording for his longtime home label, ECM. In a loose way, The Spaces in Between is the mirror image of 2003's Free and Equal, recorded with drummer Jack DeJohnette and the London Brass (though that record was a mirror of the first teaming of Surman with his longtime collaborator, double bassist Chris Laurence and the then-new Trans4mation String Quartet). Surman has been writing, arranging for, and performing with Trans4mation since that time. Whereas Coruscating was far more formal in structure, and its textures and colorings plotted in advance, here there are more opportunities for the strings to improvise and add more freely to the mix…

No composer looms over modern jazz quite like Johann Sebastian Bach, whose harmonic rigour seems to have provided the basis for bebop and all that followed. Listen to the endlessly mutating semiquavers tumbling from Charlie Parker’s saxophone and it could be the top line of a Bach fantasia; the jolting cycle of chords in John Coltrane’s Giant Steps could come straight from a Bach fugue and Bach’s contrapuntal techniques crop up in countless jazz pianists, from Bill Evans to Nina Simone. Bach certainly casts a long shadow over US pianist Brad Mehldau: even when he’s gently mutilating pieces by Radiohead, Nick Drake or the Beatles, he sounds like Glenn Gould ripping into the Goldberg Variations. Which is why it comes as no surprise to see Mehldau recording an entire album inspired by Bach. However, this is not a jazz album. Instead of riffing on Bach themes, as the likes of Jacques Loussier or the Modern Jazz Quartet have done in the past, After Bach sees Mehldau using Bach’s methodology. Mehldau plays five of Bach’s canonic 48 Preludes and Fugues, each followed by his own modern 21st-century response.

Pianist Satoko Fujii introduces a new trio with two younger and very active musicians on the Japanese jazz scene–bassist Takashi Sugawa and drummer Ittetsu Takemura–recording in 2020 at Pit Inn in Tokyo for their 3rd live date together, performing five lyrical Fujii original compositions, including "Aspirations" from her album with Leo Smith & Ikue Mori.