FRED HESS – Extended Family (2003)

Label: Tapestry Records - Catalogue # 76004-2

Format CD, Album; Country: United States

Release Date: 03/18/2003

Style: Avant-garde, Free Jazz, Modern Jazz

Distributor: City Hall

Review:

Jazz is sometimes described as a musician's music, a rarefied art form that only gains true appreciation from those whose sensibilities have been heightened by years of study. It also perhaps a reflection on the fact that jazz musicians are all too often more concerned with impressing their musician peer groups than pleasing audiences. Extended Family is an album that is only likely to please a very small number of people with extremely narrow musical interests. 

Fred Hess's latest recording is an album of original compositions for tenor, trumpet, bass and drums. It's a so-called progressive affair that showcases the leader's virtuosic tenor playing and Paul Smoker's distinctive trumpet style. It's a hard listen, but not for the right reasons. The difficulty here is maintaining interest in the music. 

The opening track "Good Question" is a 12 bar blues with an angular be-bop melody that selfconsciously avoids square phrasing. Hess's blowing opens confidently as he demonstrates his speedy technical mastery. However, none of the phrases are particularly inspired and you're left without a shadow of doubt that he's spent years obsessively practising scales and note patterns. 

Ken Filiano on bass takes the next statement which reminds you how unsuited this instrument is to jazz soloing, even in his skilled hands. Smoker's trumpet is the most distinctive of the solos,moving between bluesy phrases and rapid, scribbled runs of hidden shallows. 

"Mr and Mrs Clef Take a Vacation" is a long free piece that has little to commend it. In the liner notes it's described as an illustration depictinga couple's eventful holiday which includes a harrowingabduction by aliens. It's just like every other mediocre free jazz track you've ever heard and wish you hadn't.

This sort of line-up, which omits a harmony instrument, is extraordinarily difficult to get right. In the hands of geniuses such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, or Sonny Rollins, the harmonic void is filled by flashes of inspiration and sheer musical energy. More often, the absence of a harmonic instrument results in an empty and alienating sound.Maybe the Fred Hess Quartet, like Mr and Mrs Clef, would benefit from getting away from the alien and finding a way to connect with normal humans who enjoy music.

_ Ian Lantham, 2003

(BBC Review) 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/qhw6/

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FRED HESS QUARTET – Exposed (2001)

Label: CIMP Records - CIMP #249
Recording Date: 2001
Format: CD, Album; Country : US
Style: Avant-Garde, Free Jazz, Modern Jazz
Recorded at The Spirit Room, Rossie, NY, June 11 & 12, 2001
Produced by Robert D. Rusch
Recording Engineer: Marc D. Rusch; Liner Note Author: Robert D. Rusch

                                                                                                          Fred Hess
Review:

Boulder, Colorado doesn ’ t crop up often in serious conversations about creative improvised music. But based on the serendipitous contents of this new CIMP release perhaps it should. Fred Hess founded the Boulder Creative Music Ensemble at the onset of the Eighties and according to producer Bob Rusch the aggregate of creative improvisers continues to this day. The longevity of the ensemble illustrates a truth that is integral, but often taken for granted- grass roots mobilization and dissemination has always been the music ’ s life ’ s blood.

Joining Chicago percussionist Damon Short and CIMP staples Smoker and Filiano Hess brings to the table seven originals for the newly formed ensemble ’ s gregarious consumption. Several of the pieces have strong free-bop flavors, like the opening “ Cruise, ” which ambles along on a fluxing current from Filiano and Short after angling through an obliquely rendered head. The acronym “ JHM ” is never explained, but it ’ s musical guise exposes itself through a finger chaffing solo from Filiano replete with the bassist ’ s own muffled scat accompaniment. Short ’ s sticks caulk the cracks while applying appropriate friction to keep a flume of cymbal static alight in the bargain. Smoker opens up with a flurry of valve-guided bursts goading Hess to chomp and chew at his reed and in so doing dislodge a downpour of soaring, scalar lines. Filiano initiates “ Changing Spectra ” with watercolor washes of feather light bowed harmonics ushering the smeared tones of the horns and Short ’ s undulating array of textural accents. The track never adopts a discernable center for too long and is instead evolves as a circuitous excursion through freely associative call and response. “ Going There ” picks up right where it ’ s predecessor left off, sounding a vaguely anthemic head before locking down on a discernable rhythmic framework via Short ’ s robust traps. Unexpectedly the momentum soon dissipates into another moody musing, this time from Hess, before once again building steam. These unexpected shifts in tempo and design are both liberating and frustrating. They speak directly to the musicians ’ pact to position their own desires in a place of paramount importance.

On paper this date may not seem a deviation from the stereotypical CIMP fare- piano-less quartet takes a stab at passionate free jazz showing of formidable technique in the process. Judged by these largely superfluous (but all to prevalent) criteria it isn ’ t. But careful conscientious reveals the true . That ’ s one of the abiding beauties of improvised music. Even with what might be considered generic implements erudite musical minds can still devise exceptional methods of expression.

_ By DEREK TAYLOR, Published: March 1, 2002, AAJ



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