Carmen Sandim: Play Doh
Ropeadope Records

Love of family and friends informs Carmen Sandim's Play Doh to a greater degree than the average jazz recording, which not only lends the release a pronounced personal quality but makes the pianist's material resonate all the more vividly. Its album title, while a seeming allusion to the joy of childhood, actually derives from a three-note phrase Sandim's two children sang during playtime, and the opening number, “Aruru, Juju” (“Go to sleep, Juju”), was written with her son in mind. Two other songs, “Isaura” and “Aura-Celia,” honour Sandim's grandmother and mother and thus further exemplify the thematic emphasis on familial bonds.

Friends are key to the project, too. Pianist Art Lande, whose relationship with Sandim as mentor, teacher, and friend extends back many years, produced the album (plus inspired the track “Waiting for Art,” which she wrote upon discovering she was an hour early for a lesson). And it was through Lande that Sandim recruited many of the musicians featured on the album, he having assembled them for weeklong retreats at Pompanuck Farm in upstate New York where bonds were nurtured. The ties between the players—the pianist alongside Shane Endsley (trumpet), Bruce Williamson (reeds), Alex Heitlinger (trombone), Khabu Doug Young (guitar), Bill McCrossen (bass), and Dru Heller (drums)—is bolstered by the warmth of the breezy Brazilian rhythms that occasionally infuse Sandim's sophomore release.

She's a Brazilian native but credits the bassist with knowing more Brazilian music than her, which in turn helped bring this dimension of her music to the fore; Heller's amazing technical facility also inspired her to write longer and more intricately structured pieces, knowing he could meet that challenge (see “Me Gusta La Angustia” and the title track, which impress as particularly ambitious compositions with richly contrapuntal arrangements). Play Doh's anything but a one-genre affair, however, as contemporary jazz is also tackled in these quartet and septet performances and rock, too, as evidenced by Young's guitar-heavy roar in “Undergrowth.”

Album opener “Aruru, Juju” follows an enticing bass-piano intro with sultry jazz-funk rhythms, luscious horn textures, and an intricate design that's not so complicated the material sacrifices swing. Augmenting a characteristically elegant solo statement by Sandim, Heitlinger offers an authoritative, full-throated one of his own, the band fluidly segueing between ensemble episodes and brief solos until the piece achieves a quasi-ecstatic resolution.

Arranged for quartet, the lilting, brightly melodic “Aura-Celia” allows the rapport between Sandim, Young, McCrossen, and Heller to declare itself vibrantly, the leader again artfully directing the flow with rousing interjections, the guitarist amplifying the music's swing with a singing turn of his own, and Heller alternating between freeform expression and funk in his own spotlight. Darker in tone is “Undergrowth,” understandably so given Sandim's description of it as her “cathartic breakup song”; Young's playing is again memorable, this time for the rawness of the scalding, blues-rock aggression he brings to the performance. He also figures prominently on the later quartet piece, “Waiting for Art,” whose mood is conspicuously brighter by comparison and elevated by the lyrical splendour of its soulful melodic line.

January 2020