Season Of Changes - Brian Blade

May

6

Season Of Changes - Brian Blade

≡ Category: 2000s, Fusion, Jazz Rock, Reviews |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

JAZZBONOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING

Rating:

Season Of Changes is an very innovative release, flying in the face of prevailing fashion in the jazz world.

Most jazz releases from young musicians these days are slavishly devoted to hip hop rhythms. There’s nothing of the kind to be found on Season Of Changes, which is doubly surprising considering that the leader is a drummer who, up until now, has been almost exclusively heard in thorny post bop settings. Instead, the primary influences on Season Of Changes seem to be pop music, folk music, rock, and even a bit of country.

But there’s more. The tunes on Season Of Changes studiously avoid blues tonality and virtuosity in general. Instead, the focus is on putting across the tunes themselves.

Then there’s the sound. The voicings tend to be open, with lots of triads. The fanciest the composers get is major and minor 7ths, with inverted voicings. The textures strive for prettiness.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like there isn’t any complexity — it’s just that Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band make accessibility their cardinal rule. Take the improvisations, for example. Guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, who dominates the release, tends to build his solos from arpegiations that avoid the altered scale at all costs. Tenor man Melvin Butler is more traditional in his approach, but he’s still playing altered scales over Jon Cowherd’s open voiced keyboards that almost never have a dominant flatted 7th in them.

Jon Cowherd’s comping style could somewhat uncharitably be described as McCoy Tyner lite, but that doesn’t even begin to cover it. He uses a modal approach sometimes, albeit without any harsh dissonances, but he’s just as likely to stay purely diatonic.

The result is tremendously accessible and easy on the ear, but it can also be quite powerful.

Brian Blade emerges from Season Of Changes as a surprising compositional talent, with a bent for lyricism and melody.

Again, since the emphasis seems to be on putting across the compositions, rather than improvisational grandstanding, many of the tunes are quite short.

If I have a criticism of Season Of Changes, it’s that the tunes, while engaging enough while you’re listening to them, tend not to stick in the ear. Perhaps in time, Brian Blade and the other main writer for the group, Jon Cowherd, will get better at the specialized skill of creating melodies with memorable hooks. In the meantime, I have no problem listening to these tunes repeatedly because what they lack in hooks, they make up for in mood.

And that’s another thing. In a time when seriousness of purpose is often signalled by the gnarliest, most emotionally negative tone the musicians can muster, Season Of Changes is positively ebullient. Listening to this music, you could be excused for thinking that all is right with the world.

Other than Kurt Rosenwinkle and maybe Melvin Butler, the musicians tend to recede into the background, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing a great job. It’s just that their main function is to put across the compositions and maintain a mood, not draw attention to themselves.

Brian Blade has assembled a large sonic pallette to play with: Jon Cowherd plays pump organ, Moog, and Wurlitzer in addition to acoustic piano; Myron Walden contributes alto sax and bass clarinet, and Chris Thomas ably undergirds the whole thing with his bass.

Season Of Changes, with it’s rejection of the status quo, is a breath of fresh air. It’s almost as if Brian Blade is attempting to reclaim jazz as popular music, which it stopped being about the time bebop made it’s appearance some 60 years ago. The last time I recall someone attempting that was when saxophonist Bill Evans released The Alternative Man back in 1985.

Brian Blade seems to be gambling that retaining the adventurous spirit of jazz while softpedaling dissonance and in-your-face virtuosity will allow his Fellowship Band to reach a broader audience than Evans managed. I hope he succeeds.