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The music currently accused of being jazz is exploding in 1000 different directions. Fuddy duddies like Wynton Marsalis wear tailored suits while singing choruses of "fodie odie oh"; computer hackers like saxophonist Steve Lehman reconfigure the digital 1s and 0s of software editing programs to slice and dice jazz's advanced harmonic language; Pat Metheny's scorched earth trio continues to wow his legion of fans with soaring melodies and progressive polymetric Latin rhythms; saxophonist Michael Blake melds the distant past with the uncertain future for the clearly incredible Amor de Cosmos.

If the album's title track is any indicator, the Canadian-born saxophonist has mastered Miles Davis' late ‘60s, boiling, cycling abstractionisms like no other. Using a similar lineup of players no doubt in thrall to that magic combo of trumpeter Davis, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist (and winner of this year's Best Album Grammy) Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams, Blake's sextet takes the template and runs with it. Nefertiti, ESP, Filles de Kilmanjaro and the even more experimental Bitches Brew and Live At Fillmore West are Miles Davis' classics that continue to loom large in any knowledgeable musician or jazz listener's conscious. Cerebral and explosive, furious, unpredictable and even dangerous, Miles' music of the period reflected the myriad expansions then happening on artistic, racial, societal and cultural levels.

Blake, a Canadian-born New Yorker, has worked with everyone from John Lurie's Lounge Lizards, Chubby Checker and Jack McDuff to Medeski, Martin, and Wood and the Gil Evans Orchestra.  He's been spotted in New York's downtown scene and playing with the Saturday Night Live band. The dude can and does do it all. Blake's equally talented all-Canadian band includes Sal Ferreras on marimba and percussion, Chris Gestrin on Fender Rhodes and electronics, drummer Dylan van der Schyff and bassist Andre Lachance. But even with Blake and his band's collective resume, Amor De Cosmos is a stunning surprise, a revelation.

The odd meter shifting "Temporary Constellation" swings in unlikely cadences, flowing from segments of 10/8  and 9/8 with unusual piano effects. Other songs like "The Hunt" and "Ghostlines" are entirely improvised and free, as it were, with Blake working his tenor into an animalistic sweat of screeches, whoops and cries.  Conventional modes get their due as well, from the quiescent "Infirmary" to the hard bopping "So Long Seymour." Throughout, the combination of warm sax, treated Rhodes piano and almost sullenly exotic percussion create a quixotic tableau of altering moods that will leave your head aching but sated.   

"Amor de Cosmos"

Chris Gestrin's After The City Has Gone: Quiet: Gestrin's solo double disc is equally compelling, and no less experimental. "D.S." couples meow like cello yawns with Gestrin's circular acoustic piano, the duet a dance of challenging melodies and rhythms that recalls everything from Billy Cobham's "Spanish Moss" to a flowing Keith Jarrett solo piece. It's sweet, but tart. A collision of sparse piano, clanging tin pan lids, shakers, frame drum, and guttural vocal sounds make "On the Back of A Tiger" a journey into near Vietnamese percussion terrain, the song's abrupt dislocations of rhythm offset by the pianist's beautiful chords and phrases.

Chris Gestrin
"D.S." (mp3)
from "after the city has gone: quiet"
(Songlines Recordings)

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More On This Album

Chris Gestrin
"On the back of a tiger" (mp3)
from "after the city has gone: quiet"
(Songlines Recordings)

More On This Album