Randy Ingram, "Sky/Lift"

A couple of months ago I got an e‑mail from a friend who asked if I still reviewed jazz records. I kind of got men­tally stuck at the “still;” soon I bemusedly respon­ded that, no, not as such, I did­n’t, but I occa­sion­ally wrote about music on my blog, so, you know…

A couple of exchanges later it was determ­ined that I should recieve the new album by the artist, Randy Ingram, a jazz pian­ist who leads a quar­tet on this out­ing. It arrived in the mail addressed to “Glenn Kenny, Arbiter of Taste,” which made me laugh but is also the kind of joke that I’m apt to overthink, so in about 20 minutes I was­n’t sure wheth­er I ought to have been slightly insul­ted or not. The next thing that struck me was that I was­n’t famil­i­ar with any of the names of the oth­er musi­cians in the quar­tet (and I had­n’t been with Ingram’s, either): Mike Moreno on gui­tar, Matt Clohesy on bass, and Jochen Rueckert on bass.  I like to think that I’m fairly to pretty up-to-date on the young­er play­ers in the con­tem­por­ary jazz world, or maybe it’s just that I know a lot of the alumni of Anthony Braxton’s band or the U.S.-based roster of the Portuguese label Clean Feed or who­ever­’s reg­u­larly covered in The Wire or fea­tured at ISSUE Project Room. These play­ers would include Mary Halvorson, Peter Evans, Taylor Bo Hunum, Kris Davis, Ingrid Laubock, Drew Gresse, Chris Smith, Ralph Alessi, all the guys in Mostly Other People Do The Killing, and so on. Rather oddly, when I looked at the web­sites for the play­ers on Ingram’s record, I did­n’t see any kind of over­lap between their gig­ging and record­ing worlds and those inhab­ited by any of the above lis­ted play­ers. None. Which could mean one, or both, of two things: I’m not as well-informed as I think I am, and/or that fac­tions in con­tem­por­ary jazz are a bit more segreg­ated than you’d think. Not segreg­ated in terms of gender or race but, I don’t know, tem­pera­ment? Philosophy?

Now might be a good time to get to the record itself. It is really excep­tion­al. Ingram writes real com­pos­i­tions: not songs, not heads or themes that provide pre­text for “blow­ing,” but long melody lines, some­times artic­u­lated by the lead­er and gui­tar­ist Moreno in tan­dem. The title track, which is the record’s open­er, feels a bit like a relay race for tones taken at half-speed; after a sprightly, tink­ling open­ing from Ingram, a single long line is taken at a grace­ful but not sleepy pace by Ingram and Moreno, after which they chat ami­ably in fours before tak­ing off on solo flights, Ingram first, Moreno second.   Ingram is a canny but not a tricksy pian­ist; if he’s solo­ing, he won’t neces­sar­illy do  any­thing coun­ter­in­tu­it­ive or stealthily-genius with his left hand while his right hand is mak­ing the state­ment; no, he’ll throw in the accents and the intim­a­tions of a bass line, or maybe nudge his solo in the ribs with a dis­son­ant elbow, or raise an eye­brow of coun­ter­point, but he’s not into mis­dir­ec­tion or pres­ti­di­git­a­tion as such. Similarly, his band, while not what you’d call “reined in,” is solidly sup­port­ive but does­n’t push him as such; rather, they keep the ground tidy, but not bland, for the com­pos­i­tions. The keywords here are coher­ence and clar­ity. Both the lead play­ers favor a crisp, open tone. Moreno’s hollow-body gui­tar work seems vir­tu­ally effects-free, and when he goes for sus­tained notes you really hear his fin­ger on the fret. Ingram gives every note he pulls from the piano a con­sidered amount of weight; he’s nev­er over­bear­ing or over­load, nor does he ever let his tones approach a mode you could call impres­sion­ist­ic, let alone mushy. It is not for noth­ing that the maes­tro of mod­u­la­tion Fred Hersch is an admirer of Ingram’s.

But Ingram has a way of sur­pris­ing you when you think you’ve got him figured out. The nice thing is that the sur­prises don’t jar—Sky/Lift is a very well-integrated listen­ing experience—but do make you prick up your ears, which are then rewar­ded.  The album’s fourth track, “Time Remembered” seems clearly a title with a double or even triple mean­ing, as Ingram’s play­ing here is prac­tic­ally explos­ive, replete with spiky note clusters and dizzy­ing runs that stop well short of max­im­um dis­son­ance while still mak­ing the hairs on the back of the neck stick up, not least because of the way his inter­pol­a­tions push up against the tun­e’s meter and tempo, a shifty bot­tom that threatens to turn into quick­sand at times. After the careen­ing theme of “St. Louis,” it’s back to more com­fort­able ground; both “The Sea” and “Late Romantic” are tunes that com­pletely live up to their titles. The album’s next curve­ball, and final tune, isn’t really a  curve­ball at all, because why should­n’t a con­tem­por­ary jazz musi­cian have grown up hear­ing and lov­ing rock and roll? “Nicky“is a homage to the clas­sic rock ses­sion pian­ist Nicky Hopkins, whose lush rhythmic chord­ing enhanced and/or defined record­ings such as The Stones’ Beggar’s Banquet and Quicksilver’s Shady Grove, and who played in one of Jerry Garcia’s solo bands (which largely aspired to place jazz impro­vising tech­niques in a rock and soul con­text). Fans of Hopkins’ work will likely break out grin­ning at the rolling intro and theme of the piece, which is quint­es­sen­tial Nicky. The play­ing on the rest of the tune is the most relaxed on the album; it’s a very enjoy­able way to go out. 

You can get the record via Amazon or through the label that puts it out, Sunnyside Records.