Nadje Noordhuis and James Shipp: Multitudes
Little Mystery Records

Anyone who fell under the potent spell of Nadje Noordhuis's late-2022 album Full Circle might be surprised at how radically different Multitudes, her new collaboration with longtime musical partner James Shipp, is from that quartet release. Whereas Full Circle features the Australian trumpeter-and-flugelhornist joined by pianist Fred Hersch, bassist Thomas Morgan, and drummer Rudy Royston on a terrific jazz date, Multitudes, in its dense layering of trumpet, keyboards, percussion, and synthesizer textures, recalls Mark Isham's Castalia more than anything straight-up jazz-related.

Don't interpret that to mean that the new recording suffers next to Full Circle; Multitudes offers many rewards, though it needs to be appreciated for the different project that it is and assessed on its own terms. A bit of background first: it's not the first album the duo have produced, that being Indigo, issued on Little Mystery in 2017. After they created that recording, which largely features Noordhuis playing horns and Shipp vibes, they began to imagine a follow-up that would suggest the playing of a large ensemble, though one still crafted by them alone (hence the Whitman-evoking album title).

Splitting writing duties—only one of the new album's ten tracks, “Encantamento,” is credited to both—and using trial-and-error in the methodical development of the material, the two entered Brooklyn's Bunker Studio in early 2022 to begin formally documenting what they'd created. Further editing and another studio session followed, with Multitudes the result. While the album might sound as if Noordhuis's soloing against detailed backdrops her partner fashioned for her, instrumentation was shared more evenly, she credited with horns, vocals, piano, mellotron, and recorder and he mallet instruments, synthesizers, percussion, piano, and mellotron. That said, there's no disputing the lead voice is Noordhuis's (see Shipp's title track, for instance, where she solos authoritatively against a slowly blossoming backdrop), and the music's all the better for it.

On the opening “Snow Line,” her lustrous horn gleams alongside his vibes and synthesizers, the cymbals-sweetened arrangement conjuring images of sparkling, snow-covered vistas. Here and elsewhere, soloing's thoughtfully woven into the fabric of the composition. Up next is “These Days”—not a Jackson Browne cover but rather an original by Noordhuis, and a wholly enticing one at that. With a buoyant and slightly funky rhythm base providing animation and synths resplendent shimmer, her multi-layered horns spiritedly declaim a regal song. With an arrangement so full and rich, one could even mistake the song's slow, celestial midsection for an unreleased out-take from Castalia. While the melodic lightness of “Lumino” and “Rainbow” accentuates the duo's pop side, Shipp's mallet playing adds a funky, almost South American feel to the production. If his “Candlestick Carol” sounds a tad melancholy by comparison, it might have to do with the fact that he wrote it on Christmas day with his family far away.

July 2023