Serenity (Unit Records)
As a listener, I welcome this album for a couple of reasons. First, it provides what for those of us based in the US is a rare opportunity to hear more of Andy Scherrer and the other members of his talented quintet. It also draws some overdue attention to the writing talents of one of the most celebrated tenor saxophonists of the past 40 years.
My limited exposure to Scherrer is understandable, given his base of operations in Switzerland, his commitment as an educator (at the Hochschule in Berne) and delayed emergence as a leader on recordings, and the far too widely accepted presumption of inferiority on my side of the Atlantic that keeps so many great European musicians from working in the Western Hemisphere. I have, however, been lucky enough to have actually heard Scherrer in person, when the Vienna Art Orchestra visited Montreal as part of its 20th anniversary tour, and to have enjoyed the excellent and extremely belated debut recording under Scherrer’s name, the 1999 Second Step (TCB). Those instances were enough to make me an Andy Scherrer fan.
I’ve long been a fan of Joe Henderson’s music – by which I mean his compositions – as well, and have always felt odd that I did not have more company. After all, Henderson (1937-2001) was an influential presence as a player from the time of his first recordings in 1963, and one of the most celebrated soloists on any instrument in the decade before his death. Yet too many slept on his original compositions, as the limited number of his tunes reproduced in the ubiquitous Real Book illustrates. The odd trajectory Henderson followed as a professional musician may explain why so many have taken so long to show the appreciation that Scherrer demonstrates throughout this program.
Henderson’s career falls into three phases, and most of his music emerged in the first phase, from his signing with Blue Note in 1963 to the end of his Milestone contract in 1976. This period saw a slew of Henderson recordings, most of which included original music; but it also saw Henderson leading bands infrequently. Much of his time, and a great deal of his impact, derived from his work as a sideman, to the point that his solos on Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” and Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father” tended to register more strongly with the wider jazz audience than his statements on his own originals. Even “Recorda Me,” one of the few Henderson tunes that did find its way into general circulation first heard on Page One, was eclipsed by a similarly grooved opus from the same album, Kenny Dorham’s “Blue Bossa.”
It did not help that Henderson spent the late 1970s and all of the ‘80s living up to his nickname The Phantom. He made few recordings during this period, organized working groups only intermittently, and when he did appear often found himself among unfamiliar accompanists. These circumstances do not encourage further writing, or provide optimal chances to play challenging material. When Henderson finally did emerge for a triumphant phase three in 1991, it was with the first of a series of tribute albums that found him focusing on the music of Strayhorn, Miles Davis, Jobim and Gershwin rather than his own creations. The accolades Henderson gathered in his final years, plus what had then become the rather limited nature of his working book, only cast his compositional gifts further into the background.
Andy Scherrer was paying attention, however, and has honored Joe Henderson with a model retrospective. Rather than use his working quartet, which was heard to such great advantage on Second Step and Remember Mal Waldron (TCB) , Scherrer turned to an equally talented group including four members of a younger jazz generation (Scherrer was born in 1946, the other musicians between 1963 and 1977). Trumpeter Matthieu Michel is a fellow member of the Vienna Art Orchestra; while pianist Jean-Paul Brodbeck, bassist Fabian Gisler and drummer Dominic Egli are the working rhythm section of one of Scherrer’s former students, saxophonist Domenic Landolf. As a quartet minus Michel, the musicians performed the present program at the 2002 BeJazz Winter Festival in Berne. More than a year later, with the great Dutch recording engineer Max Bolleman in the booth and Michel’s flugelhorn and trumpet added to the initial quartet, Scherrer documented the music that had been so warmly received at BeJazz.
Scherrer has taken a contrasting approach to the two titles associated with Henderson’s Blue Note period (1963-66). “A Shade of Jade” maintains the format and tempo of Henderson’s original septet recording, and also incorporates the ritardando at the end of the main phrase that the composer introduced in later versions of the tune. Scherrer announces from the intro that he is not going to offer mere imitations of Henderson in his solos here, although there are points of identity in the aggressive phrasing and tonal variety. “Jade” is an example of what might be called classic Henderson writing, with its tight, modal main melody generating a tension that its more harmonically expansive bridge releases, and the band rises to the challenge.
“Serenity,” in contrast, is virtually reconceived in this duet for tenor and piano. The beautiful 14-bar melody, which hints at the blues before resolving in a most original manner, is usually taken at the relaxed medium swing tempo of the original quintet recording, whereas Scherrer and Brodbeck play it rubato, improvising in turn before finally stating the theme at the close. Credit Scherrer for this most effective concept, and for avoiding the opportunity to simply display technical prowess in favor of more heartfelt creativity.
“If You’re Not Part of the Solution, You’re Part of the Problem” and “Gazelle” were both introduced in 1970 by a truly all-star Henderson working band that included Woody Shaw, George Cables, Ron McClure and Lenny White. The merger of jazz and rock into something that ultimately became known as fusion was in the air, and the original recording of each piece featured electric keyboard and funky drum patterns; but Henderson’s compositions, filled as they were with slippery shifts of rhythm, were hardly commercial pastiches. Scherrer stays true to each tune’s original contours in performances that are charged yet totally acoustic. Gisler’s introductory meditation on “If You’re Not…” is another example of a new and effective spin on the material, and the two-horns, one-mind ensemble playing of the leader and Michel on both is as impressive as their solo contributions.
The collectively improvised “Maxéline” can also be traced back to Henderson’s Milestone period, inspired as it was by his 1968 quartet improvisation “The Bead Game.” While there is little point in comparing the matter of the two performances, the distinct difference in manner deserves comment. While collective improvisation dates back to early jazz history, it had not been used widely by bop-oriented modernists such as Henderson, and there is an audible hesitancy in “The Bead Game” as the musicians wait to hear where the music will lead. Scherrer and his colleagues, drawing upon a more lengthy experience with free and other styles of playing, simply flow together in a seamless creation.
Billy Strayhorn’s “Blood Count” was heard on the Lush Life album that launched Henderson’s comeback in the ‘90s and, like Henderson, Scherrer takes it as a quartet feature. The piece was Strayhorn’s valedictory effort, with its title referring to the cancer that was to claim his life, and it had also become associated with Stan Getz, an early influence on Henderson who provided several moving readings of the piece during his own declining years. Scherrer explores the inherent beauty of “Blood Count,” neither enslaved nor intimidated by earlier performances, with a typically restrained and eloquent Brodbeck solo in the mix.
Scherrer’s “Blues for Joe” is a perfect closer, loose and relaxed; with a melody full of stops and starts that implies a wealth of avenues for exploration. It finds the primary soloists in characteristic form, with Michel sustaining his warm sound even in agitated moments, Scherrer developing ideas in a clear though hardly predictable manner that gives great structure and rhythmic force to his complete statement, and Brodbeck displaying gorgeous touch and head-shaking groove in perfect proportion. Such individual and collective skills are born of a serenity that goes beyond a mere song-title reference, to that point of creative assurance from which all of the best jazz emanates.
Die CD «Serenity: A Tribute to Joe Henderson» ist auf Unit Records erschienen.