The tenaciously ingenious Massachusetts-born guitarist Mary Halvorson swapped classical violin for an electrical guitar when she heard Jimi Hendrix at 11, and a biology diploma for a life in music when she met avant-jazz composing, sax-improvising legend Anthony Braxton at a university jazz workshop. Halvorson has since solid a 20-year profession embracing a number of DownBeat journal greatest guitar awards, dozens of albums as a visitor or chief, a MacArthur Basis “genius grant” and far else.
Halvorson’s present double launch, Amaryllis and Belladonna, reveals how far this singleminded authentic has come, and affords a glimpse of how far she could go. Amaryllis was principally conceived for a six-piece improv band; Belladonna for New York’s contemporary-classical Mivos string quartet – however each periods affirm how years of jaggedly lyrical solo and ensemble improvising and a quirkily subversive affection for mainstream music (a passion shared with Braxton) have now nurtured a composer of unpredictable however warmly expressive character.
Amaryllis exposes avant-funk, quick bass-walking jazz, jubilant brass choruses and slow-sighing rumination to eloquent improvising from younger vibraphone authentic Patricia Brennan, Latin-jazz trumpet star Arturo O’Farrill, the tersely punchy Jacob Garchik (trombone) and Nick Dunston (bass), mercurial drummer Tomas Fujiwara, and Halvorson herself.
Belladonna is quieter, however it nonetheless buzzes with contrasts: sleek sways of string concord in opposition to Halvorson’s guitar-chord throb and chattery ascents (Nodding Yellow), slurred whale-song sounds over drifting background hums (Moonburn), squealing note-bends inside nearly Django Reinhardt-like runs (Flying Music), rollercoaster melody filled with hard-accented turns and fast-strummed resolutions (Belladonna). These are new landmarks in Halvorson’s already inimitable discography.
Additionally out this month
American drummer, vibraphonist and composer Ches Smith provides guitar star Invoice Frisell to his trio with violist Mat Maneri and pianist Craig Taborn on Interpret It Effectively (Pyroclastic Data) – a mixture of delicate sound-painting, country-bluesy guitar, and a few hard-rocking climaxes. Sons of Kemet saxophonist and composer Shabaka Hutchings’ Afrikan Tradition (Impulse!) swaps Kemet’s ecstatic ensemble dances for a studio-layered solo reverie with African koras and mbiras, and Japan’s ethereally whispering shakuhachi flutes. It’s an outlet for a personal and deeper spirituality in Shabaka (he goes by that title alone now), although there’s nonetheless loads of visceral pleasure in its whirling crescendos. And the quietly virtuosic UK vocalist Brigitte Beraha is at her delicately airborne, rhythmically audacious greatest together with her carefully entwined Lucid Dreamers band (together with nice saxophonist George Crowley) and a few sparing digital assist on the idiomatically wide-ranging Blink (Let Me Out Data).
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