There’s Plenty of Life Beyond the Mainstream

It’s been called avant-garde jazz, Free Jazz, New Thing and New Wave, and it burst into public consciousness with the arrival of the Ornette Coleman Quartet in New York City nearly four decades ago.

But it was not quite as new as it seemed. Coleman may have become the flag-bearer for an approach to improvisation that abandoned familiar reliance upon chords and song forms, but musicians such as Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz had already ventured into similar techniques. And, ironically, it remained for John Coltrane--one of the most masterful harmonic improvisers in jazz history--to utterly transform the concept of free jazz playing.

The avant-garde has persisted, expanding into forms beyond free improvisation, weaving in and out of jazz music’s various flirtations with rock, fusion, crossover, hip-hop and rap, without ever losing its dedication to musical rule-breaking.

Canada’s Justin Time Records is one of the rare labels that persists in issuing albums that help keep alive the probing audaciousness of the avant-garde. And four of the company’s recently released CDs--”Selim Sivad: A Tribute to Miles Davis” (World Saxophone Quartet), “Live at Carlos 1: Last Night” (Hamiet Bluiett and Concept), “Saying Something for All” (Bluiett and Muhal Richard Abrams) and “Creole” (David Murray)--are examples of some of the intriguing work being done beyond the edges of the mainstream.

Bluiett, a superb baritone saxophonist, has worked with everyone from Sam Rivers and Lester Bowie to Mingus and Don Pullen. Murray, a tenor saxophonist, has demonstrated in his large catalog of recordings the capacity to move comfortably through every imaginable genre.

The Davis tribute by the World Saxophone Quartet (Bluiett, Murray, Oliver Lake and John Purcell, with drummer Jack DeJohnette and African percussionists) is a singular take on Davis--one that may not have pleased him but surely would have captured his attention. Bluiett’s 1988 live date at a New York club is a virtuosic display of his ability to move from Harry Carney-tinged ballads (“Sophisticated Lady”) to wild, horn-stretching flights of sheer imagination. The Bluiett-Abrams duet on “Saying Something,” dating to 1978 and ‘79, is a holdover from a floating, sometimes epigrammatic, often violently free improvisational style from the ‘60s that owed much to the rhythmically disjunct concert music of the period. And on “Creole,” Murray looks for connections in a range of African roots with a recording produced on Guadeloupe with Afro-Caribbean drummers and singers.

Fascinating music, all of it. Some of it is difficult, even inaccessible to casual listening. But during a time in which jazz is dominated by a retro emphasis upon postwar bop, it’s a welcome contrast to hear music that insists upon stretching the creative envelope.

Smmmoooth Jazz: Don’t like avant-garde jazz? Here’s one alternative. It’s not your father’s jazz, and it’s not the jazz that sets the feet of many younger jazz fans tapping, either. But so-called smooth jazz sells albums by the truckload and is just about the only jazz that can be heard on commercial radio stations these days.

Although there’s not much in the genre that either attempts or succeeds in competing with the creative curiosity of mainstream jazz, there is, nonetheless, a surprisingly wide range of stylistic activity. Skeptics are directed to a handy smooth jazz introduction--”Smooth Music”--just released on Mudslide Entertainment / EMI-Capitol Special Markets that emphasizes the style’s most amiable qualities.

It starts out well enough with (how’s this for smooth jazz?) Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Take Five” as the opening track. Other mainstream-leaning numbers include Chuck Mangione’s buoyant “Feels So Good,” the Jazz Crusaders’ easygoing “Are You Part of Me” and Gato Barbieri’s passionately sensual “Europa (Earth’s Cry Heaven’s Smile).” Performances by Spyro Gyra and the Rippingtons reveal some attractive jazz associations.

So far, not bad. But the album hits seriously smooth territory with contributions from Richard Elliot, Dave Koz, Candi Dulfer and the smoothest player of all, John Tesh. And that may be the point at which most mainstream jazz fans decide to take a rougher musical ride.

Riffs: The Hollywood Bowl’s “A Night in Brazil” on Aug. 5 has added 58-year-old veteran Jorge Benjor to the program. An effective mixer of styles (from samba to blues to funk), Benjor is the composer of Brazil 66’s huge hit “Mas Que Nada” and should add some rhythmic luster to a program that until now has been lacking a real headliner. . . . Jazz at Lincoln Center has received a $1 million gift from the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation supporting the creation of a new curriculum designed to introduce jazz to young students in grades four through eight. The project will develop new materials and also will draw from the Center’s Jazz for Young People concerts. Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis sees the grant as an opportunity to remedy the fact that there is “so little accurate and informed material about jazz available to teachers.”