Tineke Postma, Aria, Edition ****1/2

'Sankalpa' from Tineke Postma sets the bar high. A second under 5 minutes it is the double bass you predominantly hear first plodding along with drums in lock step behind. Then the Dutch saxophonist comes in. It's a high register melodic shard at …

Published: 5 May 2023. Updated: 30 days.

'Sankalpa' from Tineke Postma sets the bar high. A second under 5 minutes it is the double bass you predominantly hear first plodding along with drums in lock step behind. Then the Dutch saxophonist comes in. It's a high register melodic shard at first which is then harmonised by the guitar of Ben Monder. The double bass of Robert Landfermann continues its own melody behind. Then drums, played by Tristan Renfrow, seem so independent rhythmically.

'Frede' isn't exactly mournful, its ache is something Postma on the album on alto and soprano saxes does so well and Monder on this track circles in for his solo a little like the way Jakob Bro operates. New tunes reveal once again that Postma is a persuasive writer - her writing style sits well with the imagistic panoramas you find on a Wayne Shorter record like 1+1 - and the mood shifts whether in the hurtle of 'The Sky Is Everywhere' where Monder teeters on the point of murderously ripping a punk hole in the fabric of the group play or the more colour saturated things again Monder does on 'Still Another Day.'

There isn't anything safe here and in the fractured splintering of the shards of rapture all four players maintain on this studio album recorded in the German city of Osnabrück last spring you can't guess what's next. At heart Monder and Postma have some sort of uncanny understanding of each other's every turn in their back and forths and Monder while sometimes dystopian does not shy away from the pristine either in his opening statement on 'Idyll for Ellemis' that Postma in turn responds to so plangently. I don't really come away thinking of anything operatic about all this (although that is part of the point of the inspiration of the album apparently) but that doesn't really matter. Given the quality here there are so many multiple interpretations of response possible which is just one reason why this latest album from the remarkable Postma - taking up the mantle of Lee Konitz and making a paradigm shift that contributes so much to the state of the art - works so well. SG

Tineke Postma, photo: press

Out today

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Dave Storey Trio, Circeo, Clonmell Jazz Social ****

Dancing in the dark: raw, bohemian, graceful tenor from James Allsopp is the sort of sound ideally you might hear mysteriously. Picture standing outside a club. You can't get inside. Stranded, barred by a bouncer who doesn't like the cut of your jib

Published: 5 May 2023. Updated: 30 days.

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Dancing in the dark: raw, bohemian, graceful tenor from James Allsopp is the sort of sound ideally you might hear mysteriously. Picture standing outside a club. You can't get inside. Stranded, barred by a bouncer who doesn't like the cut of your jib - for having the temerity to breathe in other words. Suddenly there is that sound coming from somewhere. You end up stopped dead in your tracks. The vents allow the sound to escape and rebel against the jobsworth that scuppered your plans. Next day back in the squalid office cubicle you call home and where you spend most waking hours you are somehow changed because of that fleeting experience of having heard some kind of truth that came out of someone's saxophone, one in collision with the ever seductive numbers mingling in the ever open spreadsheet in front of you.

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The feeling when there is a person in a given room, on a given record, who has that mysterious attribute, charisma and yet doesn't really seem to do very much but certainly inspires everyone else to be themselves is a factor here. Dave Storey, the very one, isn't much known. He sounds a bit like Paul Clarvis, the expert at less-is-more percussiveness and succinct distillation of emotion. Most of the tunes are Allsopp's, a much better known player than the leader, and they are very well gathered, little vignettes that don't claim to be a symphony or anything grand but somehow are just that. Allsopp isn't being ever so 'umble to the point of humdrum - it just sounds natural. Anything bassist Conor Chaplin is on, completing the trio, is a good sign of quality. Allsopp the more he goes on enters a Mark Turner universe but into the near-freeness on 'Gemelli' there are three ''voices'' one song, the tumble of tom, slight tonal shifting amid a velvety softness of saxophone, fabulous jingling of sax keys from Allsopp when you get to the meat of the improvisation and gutsy emoting all part of the recipe as Allsopp - Geronimo - reaches almost to the altissimo heights. The icing on the cake is the very moving take on 'Body and Soul' that Coleman Hawkins made jazz history with in 1939. Waltz irrespective of time signature in the wonder of why we're here at the sheer sorcery and winning audacity of it all. Out today

Dave Storey, photo: Clonmell Jazz Social