Ahmad Jamal
Emerald City Nights; Live at The Penthouse, 1963-64
(Jazz Detective Records)
★★★★★

THESE previously undiscovered 1963-64 recorded sessions of pianist Ahmad Jamal are sonic jewels.

Recorded live at Seattle’s Penthouse Club, they bring back a jazz epoch bursting with new freedoms.

Just listen how Jamal zooms up and down his keys on Minor Adjustments, how he gives new shape, space and time to Ellingtonian moves in his version of Squatty Roo, and how brilliantly he plays on the cusp of familiar melodies like But Not for Me or Tangerine.

In the midst of Bogota there is a sudden allusion to Greig’s Anitra’s Dance from the Peer Gynt Suite. Suddenly, it seems there are no limits to the music he can encompass. 

My favourite track is Keep On Keeping On! a timeless slogan of its times which pours out its relentless energies with drummer Chuck Lambkin and bassist Jamal Nasser in full accord with the irrepressible Jamal, who is still going strong today at 94.

Helena Kay’s Kim Trio + Peter Johnstone
Golden Sands
(Sulis Records)
★★★★

PERTH-BORN tenor saxophonist Helena Kay’s second album has a beautiful poise and assurance, that radiates from every groove.

With Kim Trio stalwarts bassist Calum Gourlay and drummer David Ingamells, plus pianist Peter Johnstone, her nine self-composed album tunes stretch from the Shetlands to London to New York.

She is an instinctive melodist. Hear her on Amor Amargo with its easy Big Apple swing above Gourlay’s dancing bass, or the ascents and cadences of Xian Impressions, where Johnstone's inventive pianism takes many surprising turns.

Kay’s Shetland roots are expressed with power and love in the title tune and Da Dratsie (a Shetland otter), with its swimmer’s impulse, is full of nature’s wonder and movement.

Her praise-tune to the indefatigable jazz-woman Carla Bley is full of sonic respect and admiration, and the full variety of the album is expressed in her love of darts: Double 7.

She thrives and prospers with every note.

Gordon Grdina, Mark Helias and Matthew Shipp
Pathways
(Attaboygirl Records)
★★★★★

THE improvising trio of guitarist and oud virtuoso Gordon Grdina of Vancouver; Wilmington, Delaware-born pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist Mark Helias of New Jersey are together again on their compelling album, Pathways.

It is the crystal lucidity of their notes that marks this record, and the extraordinary unity of their collective musicianship.

Hear their brilliance on the memorable Deep Dive or the complex rhythmic multiplicity of Trimeter.

The intensity of the ways in which they coil their sounds together to make each track a timbral poem, gives the listener the illusion that this is one artist playing three instruments.

Shipp’s piano grounds the trio and the stringed beauty and artistry of the notes of Grdina and Helias carry away the entirety of the soundscape.

The track expressively called Amalgam describes the completeness of this listening experience: the ears that hear are side by side with the hands that play.