Noam Lemish: Twelve
TPR Records

Twelve impresses on multiple levels, but perhaps most of all compositionally. Each one of the six pieces by Toronto-based pianist Noam Lemish is a vivid creation splendidly performed by a chamber-sized jazz orchestra featuring stellar Canadian players. Mike Murley, Kevin Turcotte, Kelly Jefferson, William Carn, and Allison Au are names well-known to followers of the Canadian jazz scene, and of course many of the musicians are bandleaders, solo artists, and JUNO award winners in their own right. Though the ensemble's billed as a 12tet, thirteen players take part, with the fourteenth, Terry Promane, donning the role of Musical Director. He was a long-time member of Rob McConnell's Boss Brass who musically bonded with Lemish when the latter studied with him at the University of Toronto.

While Lemish's connection to the city is strong, he grew up in Israel and the United States before coming to Canada. After spending the first decade of the 2000s in the San Francisco Bay Area, he relocated to Toronto where, among other things, he teaches in York University's Department of Music. Though Twelve was selected as the album title for a number of reasons, one has to do with the fact that he's called the city home for a dozen years. Having been exposed to a variety of influences and traditions, he catalyzes his transcultural background into musical expressions that adopt a similarly broad view. His Eastern-European Jewish heritage also factors significantly into the writing.

The compositions are grounded in jazz but stretch it boldly into other genres, classical and folk to name two. They're ambitious in structure, with four pieces pushing past ten minutes and registering as rigorously designed jazz orchestra settings. To that end, much of the material's through-composed with solo episodes carefully woven into the fabric of the composition. Lemish's arrangements make full use of the instruments' textures, the result a lush, quasi-orchestral sound built from woodwinds, horns, vocals, vibes, piano, guitar, double bass, and drums. The pieces aren't programmatic, but some have roots in the composer's personal story. “Song for Lia,” for example, was written to celebrate the birth of his niece, Lia Margaret Lemish, while “Between Utopia and Destruction” draws melodically from Soviet-Jewish sources: Isaak Dunayevsky's “Lullaby,” from the 1936 film Circus, and the WWII-era Yiddish-song “Der verter un di shtern.” In the same spirit, one presumes that the big band-styled romp “Steals on Steeles” alludes to one of Toronto's better-known streets.

“Song for Lia” engages immediately for the allure of Laura Swankey's wordless vocal and the harmonious tone of the music. Intricate, polyphonic writing's in plentiful supply, the sophistication of the music testifying to Lemish's abilities as composer and arranger. First up in the soloing department is Au, who distinguishes the music with a characteristically imaginative turn; guitarist Ted Quinlan follows, his solo thoughtfully articulated and complementary to the uplifting feel of the performance.

The first of the long-form excursions, “The Nagila Mayster”—‘Nagila' a Hebrew word meaning happiness and joy and ‘Mayster' the Yiddish equivalent of the German ‘Meister'—punctuates its ponderous opening theme with Michael Davidson's vibraphone before flirting with a Cuban dance episode and then settling into a breezy section with Swankey's bright voice punctuating the 7/8 pulse. The horns of trumpeters Turcotte and Jim Lewis and trombonists Carn and Karl Silveira in particular are called upon for the performance, and, no wallflower he, Lemish contributes an authoritative solo to the second half. The ensemble sustains the inspired performance for fourteen minutes, the accomplishment all the more noteworthy for the complexity of certain passages.

December 2022