Though the essence of jazz is improvisation, the art form is inseparable from composition. From the start, Louis Armstrong’s famous trumpet breaks were interludes in King Oliver’s rigorous compositions, and some of Armstrong’s apparently spontaneous solos were in fact composed.
The great modernistic shift in jazz in the late twenties came through the elaborate compositions and arrangements of Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington’s bands. Even in the bebop years, the liberated improvisations were based on the complex harmonic structures of popular songs as well as those of original compositions by Thelonious Monk, Tadd Dameron, and others. The bassist Charles Mingus entered history less as a soloist than as a genius composer and bandleader. Even so-called “free jazz” owes much to compositions, such as those of Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler. Coleman’s “Free Jazz,” a “collective improvisation,” is significantly structured, with its sections apportioned to individual soloists, and with its collective improvisations, by accompanying them, taking a role formerly occupied by big-band charts and riffs.
So it’s no surprise that today’s historically informed and conservatory-centric jazz gives composition the attention it deserves. The thrilling interweave of composition and improvisation is among the many delights of “Navigation,” a new set of two CDs and two LPs (or digital downloads) by the virtuosic cornettist Taylor Ho Bynum and his band. (In the interest of full disclosure, Bynum is a contributor to this Web site and a lifelong friend of its editor, Nicholas Thompson.)
Each disk of “Navigation” is devoted to a different realization, or a “Possibility Abstract,” of the same work; “X” and “XI” (the LPs) and “XII” and “XIII” (the CDs) all run about forty-five minutes, except for the fifty-four-minute “XII.” Each of these performances is a spontaneous combination of the six compositional nodes that comprise “Navigation,” with different arrangements and strikingly different improvisations.
I started with the CDs. “Possibility Abstract XII” makes Bynum’s neoclassical inspiration apparent from the start, with a lyrical introduction for unaccompanied winds—Jim Hobbs’s alto saxophone and Bill Lowe’s bass trombone—that offers reminiscences of music by Ellington, Mingus, and Coleman (a hint of “Lonely Woman”) before breaking into a slow shuffle beat that sets the tone for a solo by Bynum, with its shades of Rex Stewart, Roy Eldridge, and the antic avant-gardist Lester Bowie. But Bynum wears his scholarship gracefully; his musical inspiration and wit are utterly personal and sincere.
Bill Lowe’s bass trombone growls with the gruff humor of the early Ellington collaborator Tricky Sam Nanton, and, as the beat picks up and the two percussionists, Tomas Fujiwara and Chad Taylor, embroider freely around it, the guitarist Mary Halvorson, with her calmly stinging tones pitching in behind Lowe, delivers a jaunty yet crystalline solo of her own. Hobbs’s alto-sax style reminds me of the sixties luminary John Tchicai, with his slightly nasal, intimate tone and his burrowing into melodies for nugget-like motifs. Ken Filiano, playing acoustic bass, keeps a pulse going so rapidly that, at the soloists’ will, it breaks off into free rhythm, which the drummers, lightly and intricately, sound happy to adorn. Even the most wildly free and beatless passages have a danceable swing, conjuring images of a kaleidoscopically whirling jazz ballet.
The first performance includes a striking section for bass, vibraphones, and guitar that reminds me of one of the most ethereal yet heavily swinging modern-jazz recordings, Grant Green’s “Street of Dreams.” A daringly high-pitched bass solo, bowed à la Alan Silva, is underpinned by a strong bluesy backbeat, and is followed by some warm and radiant avant-funk that Halvorson shreds like Sonny Sharrock in his early days.
“XIII” is a looser version of the work, more of a soloist’s springboard. It starts with quiet strumming, squealing, scraping, a sort of primordial musical ooze of lyrical yearning that finds Bynum playing in the realm of Bill Dixon (whom he cites in his notes as an influence), testing the range of his horn in high, fluttery whispers. A languorous duet for alto sax and guitar is backed by a polyrhythmic percussion flurry, until Hobbs slowly breaks free of the framework and cuts loose with an increasingly rapid, furious, almost angry-sounding solo that’s one of the highlights of the set. Another swaggering dance-club bass line launches Bynum on a thrillingly darting and dashing high-note cornet solo, followed by a keening solo by Hobbs that has an Ellingtonian flourish.
For all their sonic invention and rhythmic charge, the performances of “Navigation” have an essentially narrative feel, as if the combinations and improvisations reflected the musicians’ personal relations and dialectical negotiations. The recording conveys a sense not of harmonic and melodic abstractions but of mini-events that coalesce into a drama which, thanks to Bynum’s alluring compositions and inspiring leadership, isn’t just that of musicians at work; it’s the entire tradition, casting its own challenging spotlight on them as they create, knowingly, humbly, but freely and proudly. “Navigation” tells a very big story—and captures a big swath of the modern musician’s life—in its wise and quiet way.
Here is a taste:
