Fabian Almazan: This Land Abounds With Life
Biophilia Records

Linda May Han Oh: Aventurine
Biophilia Records

This Land Abounds With Life, a fine trio set by pianist Fabian Almazan, and Aventurine, an ambitious chamber jazz recording by bassist Linda May Han Oh, speak highly on behalf of Biophilia, the label Almazan founded in 2011. Both releases reflect its commitment to environmentally responsible packaging in presenting origami-inspired designs with download codes in place of CDs or plastics; tying the releases together further, Oh is the bassist on both. Besides a significant contrast in ensemble size, another difference has to do with personnel: whereas drummer Henry Cole performs on Almazan's release, Chess Smith appears on Oh's, and Matt Mitchell's the pianist on her release, not Almazan. Said differences notwithstanding, both offer thoroughly satisfying listening experiences.

Malaysia-born, Perth-raised, and now Harlem-based, Oh has performed with Pat Metheny, Dave Douglas, Joe Lovano, Terri Lyne Carrington, and others. Just as her career as a musician and bandleader has enjoyed a steady rise, so too can a similar arc be discerned in her five recordings. Following her 2009 debut, Entry , a trio date featuring trumpet, bass, and drums, she coupled two soloists with a piano-based rhythm section on Initial Here three years later. It, 2013's Sun Pictures, and 2017's Walk Against Wind set the stage for Aventurine, which, with its strings, vocalists, and jazz-and-classical fusion, offers the fullest culmination of her vision to date.

In essence, three units perform on Aventurine, though not all appear on every track. The core octet features Oh (acoustic and electric basses), Mitchell, Smith, alto/soprano saxophonist Greg Ward, and string players Benni von Gutzeit (viola), Jeremy Harman (cello), and Sara Caswell and Fung Chern Hwei (violins), while the vocal quintet Invenio (Gian Slater, Louisa Rankin, Josh Kyle, Andrew Murray, Jonathan Skovron) appears on about one-quarter of the fourteen pieces. The material wasn't thrown together quickly, some pieces being recent and others going back ten to thirteen years. As such, the music has undergone substantial development as it's been workshopped and refined. Neither was the album title arbitrarily chosen, aventurine being a translucent, shimmering mineral that's seen as symbolizing creativity and evolution, qualities evidenced by the musical presentation.

The opening title track is a mere five minutes, yet Oh packs incredible detail into its framework, beginning with a luscious, strings-only intro. That part quickly blossoms into a strings-and-quartet sequence featuring rapid-fire piano and sax runs. The pace abruptly cools, clearing the stage for a lyrical display featuring strings, acoustic flourishes, and ultimately a breezy vocal outpouring. Yet while Oh's complex compositions are marked by formally delineated pathways (a few settings play like fully through-composed pieces), she still ensures there's solo space for Mitchell and Ward. If a piece occasionally verges on being too complex, give Oh credit for tackling the challenges the orchestral jazz recording poses.

Unlike some jazz projects where strings seem like afterthoughts, they're fully integrated into her intricate structures, the music fluidly collapsing the divide between the core unit and string players. The seamlessness with which the elements cohere is heard to memorable effect in “Kirigami,” a ballad-styled rendering that sees Oh's solo intertwine with the strings like it's the most natural thing in the world. As a result, Aventurine assumes the character of a chamber jazz recording in the truest sense.

With Smith and Oh digging into a low-end funk groove and Mitchell and Ward trading solos, “Au Privave” emphasizes less its origins as Charlie Parker's bebop classic and becomes something closer to an M-Base jam. Bill Evans' “Time Remembered” receives an elegiac reimagining whereby classical strings merge with Mitchell's delicate voicings and Oh's thoughtful embroidery. Derived from a traditional Chinese folk song, “Song Yue Rao” (Moon in the Pines) tickles the ear with singsong melodies, Oh demonstrating again her gift for integrating multiple elements into a cohesive design. With the melody exuding a hoedown character, the violins take on a fiddle-like quality, and by adhering to a repetition of the theme the strings enable the others to express themselves with abandon. Though the penultimate “Satuit” arrives late in the album, don't overlook this melodic gem, especially when the leader contributes one of her jazziest turns to the performance.

Oh solos here and there, at the opening of “Rest Your Weary Head Part 2,” for example, but Aventurine more emphasizes her persona as composer, arranger, and bandleader. It's, in short, an ensemble recording that weaves solos into its arrangements with circumspection as opposed to being a recording where structures are used as springboards for individual expression. That said, there's no denying the album's elevated by the calibre of musicianship Ward, Mitchell, Smith, and Oh herself bring to it. Had it been presented as a quartet-only recording, their playing alone would have earned the album its recommendation.

Like Oh, Almazan came to Harlem circuitously, having been raised in Miami and born in Cuba. As much as This Land Abounds With Life plays like a New York album, it also reflects those other locales, Cuba especially. Partnering with Oh and Cole, Almazan supplements piano with dashes of percussion and electronics, and a string quartet (violinists Megan Gould and Monica Davis, violist Karen Waltuch, cellist Eleanor Norton) adds embellishments to one track, the recording otherwise a pure piano trio affair. While that format obviously doesn't allow for the same breadth of instrumental colour as heard on Aventurine, there's no modicum of emotion in play on This Land Abounds With Life. True to the title, the recording teems with an abundance of expression and no shortage of powerful moments courtesy of a sensibility informed by jazz, classical, and folk.

The album opens on a frenetic high with “Benjamin,” titled after the donkey in Animal Farm for reasons known only to Almazan; if the pianist wishes to show listeners how tight a unit the trio is, the five-minute statement certainly makes a convincing argument, the leader executing runs at dazzling speed and his partners with him at every turn. The trio debuted as a unit in 2011, and its years together are reflected in the sharpness of their interactions. The album's longest cut at thirteen minutes, “The Everglades” guides the listener through the wetland's various temperaments, from the peaceful ambiance that in the opening minutes suggests the sun rising on a becalmed winter's day to aggressive passages that evoke the rage of a summer lightning storm. As impressive as Almazan's playing is at a fast tempo, it's in the slower passages that his musicianship truly shines, a memorable example the slow concluding section of “The Everglades.” In this trio context, Oh's granted many opportunities to assert herself as a soloist and does so with authority (see her extended turn on “Folklorism” as an example); Cole, on the other hand, eschews soloing, opting instead to provide solid support to his partners.

Almazan's Cuban roots come to the fore in “The Poets,” which begins with a cell phone recording of the poet El Macaguero de Pinar speaking. “Songs of the Forgotten” does something similar in weaving into its gentle swing field recordings of birds from the Havana neighbourhood where Almazan grew up. For “The Nomads,” the pianist wanted the vibrancy of Caribbean energy to come through, which it does in an ebullient, rhythmically stop-starting tune whose jaunty swing's got as much to do with rock and funk as jazz. Dedicated to Nelson Mandela, “Jaula” (Spanish for ‘cage') grew out of a vision that likened Mandela's imprisonment during apartheid to a caged bird. The impact of Almazan's 2013 visit to the apartheid museum in Johannesburg is vividly relayed in the resonant power of this densely layered solo piano performance.

June 2019