New Beginnings
A thoughtful, multi-layered record from Lenard Simpson
Records discussed in this post:
New Beginnings, Lenard Simpson, alto sax and compositions, with Julius Tucker, piano, Runere Brooks, bass, and Samuel Jewell, drums, and with Richard Gibbs, organ on “Welcome”
How much do jazz records need “concepts”? In contrast with some other music I have written about lately—e.g., Ashes and Diamonds, Slow Water—this record, a brilliant first offering from saxophonist and composer Lenard Simpson, is not explicitly presented as a single, connected listening experience. But the more I listened, the more I began to feel that its structure invites this approach. The first track, “Welcome,” is fairly long, at 11 minutes, and does not have a traditional “bookended” jazz improvisation structure (song, improvisation, song): instead it begins, on fire, with a high, urgent melody accompanied by organ, and an ingenious, circular form that lends itself to ever-more-earth-shaking fills from drummer Samuel Jewell before repeating. This then moves into a sort of trio solo for organist Richard Gibbs and bassist Runere Brooks with Jewell: I say trio solo, as opposed to an organ solo, because the musical material here is pretty limited: just three chords from Gibbs, and while the organ continues to make mesmerizing changes of timbre and modulation, it stays mostly in one place, and thus feels more like a standard approach to a drum solo, though that doesn’t seem quite accurate either. But after another climax, around the center of the track, we have a brief pause, and then the organ is replaced by piano (Julius Tucker, who then plays on the rest of the record), and we begin a new section of the piece—related, to be sure, by tonality and rhythm to the opening melody, but we never come back to that: we’ve moved into a different zone.
The next several tracks seem to me to continue what the first track has started. The second track kind of settles the band into a territory of modern jazz writing that feels like its center of gravity: exploiting asymmetries of form and rhythm, feeling time in multiple levels of intensity simultaneously, and bringing warmth and generosity of spirit to the whole affair—you feel listening to this record that you have just stumbled into the most happening, joyous get-together that you could wish to find—and that is actually how it felt when the band was playing at the Showcase. Most of the tracks that follow seem to have at least a plausible relation to each other, so that at times it can be hard to tell when we have moved to the next. All of this is to say that while there is no explicit pretense that everything is connected—it feels connected.
Indeed, one is tempted to just go ahead and write a “program” describing this record. From an in medias res opening through various stages and developments—it isn’t hard to imagine characters, a plot, conflicts and complications. I may be a little more inclined in this direction because as it happened I found myself listening to it on a long plane ride, which is a place where my mind seems often most susceptible to giving me flashes of synesthesia and other kinds of imaginative associations with music. But I sometimes hear people speak about “heroic” jazz solos with a little bit of skepticism—and if that means that every solo has to end in some kind of blistering rain of virtuosity, leaving the stage a smoking ruin, then yes—I’m against that as a reflex or a crutch as much as any other reflex or crutch. But there’s often something that it would be nice to call heroism on this record, where Simpson, supported by this thrilling band, seems like the kind of hero you want to root for, rescuing the persecuted, conquering forces of evil, and doing it all with modesty and a smile. It’s not at all the only kind of “story” that happens here, but, well, sometimes it does and that seems absolutely great.
OK, now on to a few more detailed comments on some of the music.
So the start seems to throw us, as I already mentioned, into the middle of things: the drums playing heavily on the beats, in the popular style, and maybe in jazz a bit more usual to find this as a big arrival point after we’ve made our way through a lot of development. Not here. Here it’s as if Simpson says: this is where our energy is at, right out of the gate—so hang on. I transcribed the chord pattern for the first section: it creates a sense that we are constantly modulating upward, but that is a pleasing illusion. The form makes use of inverted chords and plenty of diminished harmony in ways that are for me a deeply appealing component of modern jazz vocabulary—it’s been showing up in my own writing for sure, and it is also a feature of for example, some of Matt Ulery’s recent writing.
The second track seems to follow directly from the first (and the first already seemed to have at least two movements, if not two or three separable pieces under its umbrella):
I also analyzed this one a bit for fun: it begins with a figure in seven, played a capella by Simpson. The figure strikes me as characteristically modest, questioning, more of a nudge in the direction of a conversation than a push. (OK, so “Welcome” isn’t like this at all, but still.) We then move to a more complicated phrase, and a more complex rhythmic structure, built on a 17-beat pattern: this has a bit more to say, and plenty for the band to work with as Simpson builds a long solo over its asymmetries and intricacies. A third, somewhat simpler section provides space to Tucker for a solo where he stretches correspondingly further harmonically and rhythmically. I’m reminded here of the structure of the Twin Talk piece I discussed a while back, “Teddy”: this also seems a tripartite, three-phase animal of a tune; and the way to open things up for improvisation becomes just slowing down our progression from one phase to the next: Simpson’s solo happens over phase 2; Tucker’s over phase 3.
I feel Twin Talk perhaps even more allied with the next track, “David’s Dance.” Here a flexible groove develops, in which Jewell shows just how much he can do with a shaker and few taps of his fingers on drums: in the space this opens we get a pleasing colloquy between Simpson and bassist Brooks (for a time by themselves), and also an angular, punchy, good-humored solo from Tucker.
The album’s first ballad, “But I Never Left,” feels connected to the great tradition of jazz ballads—Coltrane’s “Naima,” or Wayne Shorter’s “Infant Eyes”—particularly in the indeterminacy of the the opening chords over a pedal, that eventually slides to a resolution: question and answer. Brooks on bass has the first solo over those indeterminate, questioning chords, and then Simpson takes over in perhaps my favorite buildup of the entire record. In part I love it because of the moment when Tucker stirs things with thickened and downward-inverted chords, as if making a serious invitation that Simpson and the rest of the band are only too ready to take up. Here and everywhere, Simpson and Tucker are a miracle of sympathy: melodic and rhythmic ideas flow effortlessly and joyously between them, such that it is often hard to tell who is leading or following.
The next track, “Release,” showcases Tucker at the top, and leads up to a long, lovely, gradually fading duo with Simpson: it’s another display of the versatility of this band and Simpson’s thoughtfulness as a composer and bandleader to provide so many different colors and combinations from the basic materials of the quartet.
I leave the rest of the record to you, faithful readers. Throughout there is immense trust between the musicians, so that all risks seem possible, seem covered by the other members of the team. It makes this record positively glow.