Human Qualities – Schapiro17

Human Qualities is the follow-up to the 2020 debut, New Shoes: Kind of Blue at 60.

This recording brings back the 17 members of the progressive New York big band. Unlike New Shoes, which offers a thematic focus on Kind of Blue, Human Qualities features seven Jon Schapiro originals and one arrangement – featuring a powerhouse rhythm section, fiercely swinging ensembles, and sterling solo work.

trumpets: Bryan Davis, Andy Gravish, Eddie Allen, Noyes Bartholomew
trombones: Alex Jeun, Deborah Weisz, Nick Grinder, Walter Harris
saxophones: Rob Wilkerson, Candace DeBartolo, Paul Carlon, Rob Middleton, Matt Hong
piano: Roberta Piket; guitar: Sebastian Noelle; bass: Evan Gregor; drums: Jon Wikan

DOWNBEAT says:  “…ensemble is powered by a first-rate rhythm section…Schapiro’s writing is what really does the trick, fleshing out his ideas through lean, deftly coloristic ensemble passages that manage to convey small-band dynamics with a big-band toolkit…”

The set opens with “Count Me Out”, with roots dug deep into Kansas City, and a destination far from Basie. Rob Middleton, Deborah Weisz, and Roberta Piket handle the solos, maintaining the high energy level. “Tango” is a feature for baritonist Matt Hong, whose work is lyrical and logical. “Hmmm” is close to a shuffle, allowing the band to blow off steam. Andy Gravish and Paul Carlon, on trumpet and tenor respectively, feed off of and contribute to the band’s drive. “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, a Schapiro arrangement, features Eddie Allen, whose bright, lyrical trumpet offsets the darker qualities of the orchestration.

The title track opens as an exercise in counterpoint before giving way to a sharp and crisp alto solo from Rob Wilkerson. Nick Grinder’s subsequent trombone solo is dark and cerebral. Roberta Piket joins the return to a contrapuntal mentality, both dynamic and linear, cutting across the orchestration. “Hallelujah,” a dirge, is abstract and muted. Edgy tenor and guitar work from Carlon and Sebastian Noelle make the track a highlight for listeners who like tension in their music. Drummer Jon Wikan has space to add his own idiosyncratic rhythmic layer. “A Bounce in Her Step” is best categorized as bebop. With no clear tonal center early in the chart, listeners hear the chart’s more bebop-oriented rhythms. Walter Harris and Rob Wilkerson take full advantage of the solo space. Bouncy and funky, “House Money” is a showcase for the Alex Jeun’s forceful and kinetic trombone.

REVIEW:

…The album starts with Count Me Out, a tribute to Basie and his wonderful bands. This one is a pretty simple tune, but Rob Middleton gets a tenor sax solo that starts out pretty good and just keeps getting better. At about the 2:20 mark, Schapiro throws in a completely different beat, a bit slower but more ominous, kind of like a walking beat in a minor key, and the trumpet figures are equally ominous as well as bitonal. Following this, Deborah Weisz gets a fine trombone solo as the background writing becomes ever denser and even a bit eerier. Roberta Piket tries to jolly things up with some Basie-like piano, but eventually she succumbs to the strange atmosphere and joins in rather than fighting the mood. She then leads the band into a sort of medium-tempo funk beat, with drummer Jon Wikan playing some very strange, asymmetrical figures behind her, the reeds and muted trumpets…then suddenly, the Basie-like vibe returns, now clothed in ominous extended chords despite the valiant efforts of the reed section to re-establish the happy mood of the opening. You might call this a cross between Count Basie and Charles Mingus’ Weird Nightmare.

Similarly, Tango really is a tango but it’s not. I dare anyone out there to come up with an Astor Piazzolla tango as well-written and imaginative as this one…such apiece simply doesn’t exist. Jon Schapiro can certainly create interesting moods, and this one, though also a bit on the dark side, is difficult to describe. You’ve just got to hear it. Matt Hong gets the meaty baritone sax solo, and it’s a very fine one that comes and goes throughout, but once again the star of this track is the writing. I get so many jazz band recordings for review that claim to be “innovative” that really aren’t, they just recycle older orchestral charts that haven’t been heard in a half-century, but Schapiro’s writing really IS innovative. He sounds like no one else while still leaning on certain established jazz forms. I’m willing to bet that he is a student of Bartók and Shostakovich as well as of Pete Rugolo, Marius Constant and the Mingus of Epitaph. His mind works in mysterious ways, yet all of them are utterly fascinating.

Hmmm opens with a strong boogie beat which leads into the attractive but quirky melodic line. Nearly all of the trumpet section writing here uses discords, but as usual Schapiro somehow manages to pull all the different elements together to form a quirky but perfect whole. I can hear where he borrows a few voicing ideas from Gil Evans, too, but there are so many different elements at work here that, once again, it’s hard to pin him down. Andy Gravish’s trumpet solo, though not particularly daring, nonetheless sparkles, providing some upper-register fireworks to this otherwise ominous-sounding piece. Gravish returns again in the final chorus, sparring with Paul Carlon’s tenor before sparking the ride-out.

I’m glad that the liner notes told me that The First Time Ever is a Ewan McColl song “made famous by Roberta Flack,” because I had never heard of it before. (Sorry, I’m not a pop or soul singer fan.)  As annotator Ingrid Jensen puts it, “Poignant bass clarinet entrances and low, lush, static voicings set the tone for this beautiful and ear-bending arrangement.” I would add that it also offers a relatively calm respite from the wildly innovative tracks that preceded it. Piket and trumpeter Eddie Allen add some colorful solos to it as well.

To quote Jensen once again, “The title track [Human Qualities]…is a wild trip through contrapuntal lands of weaving and building orchestral imagery resolving neatly in a unison land that sets up the ever-lively and luscious alto playing of Rob Wilkerson.” This is clearly the most complex piece so far in this album, a real gem that holds your attention from start to finish, yet for all its complexity the somewhat steady beat gives the soloists something to hang on to.  The counterpoint becomes denser during Piket’s piano solo, at which time the tempo picks up a bit, too. It’s a little masterpiece.

Despite its title, Hallelujah doesn’t sound like a very celebratory piece; its dark, quirky melodic line and whole-tone accompaniment, played at a somewhat slow tempo, give it an ominous feeling. Some strange sounds (possibly a synthesizer along with electric guitar?) are heard in the background during the rhythm section break, then an electric guitar solo which fades into nothingness, after which the bass plays with acoustic guitar in the background before low unison trumpet figures come in. More counterpoint ensues when the saxes play a unison figure in an opposing meter against the muted trumpets.

A Bounce in Her Step returns to a swing beat, but once again Schapiro’s writing is complex and contrapuntal, here resembling some of the better “cool school” charts of the 1950s with his own twist. The album closes with House Money, a piece that again opens up with a bit of a Basie feel (but more of a strip-club sort of beat on the tom-toms) with growl trumpet interjections over the snaky, repeated sax section lick before moving out a bit to solo. Growl trombone is also heard in the person of Alex Jeun. Kind of like Ellington meets Basie meets Stravinsky.

But oh! All of my descriptions above may not prepare you for what you’ll hear on this CD. Yes, highly recommended.

-The Art Music Lounge, © 2021 Lynn René Bayley

REVIEW:

REVIEW:

Composer-arranger Jon Schapiro represents a different side of the tradition on Human Qualities with his 17-piece big band, Schapiro17. Schapiro’s sophisticated and detailed arrangements are more in the Charles Mingus/Gil Evans/Maria Schneider line, modern post-bop just this side of abstraction. You may not want to dance to it the way you would to Charleton’s band, but it rewards careful listening and analysis.

Schapiro has credentials from Brown University, the Manhattan School of Music, and New York University, where he studied with Jim McNeely (composer-arranger for that fertile ground of emerging big band modernism, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band). Schapiro spent several years in the hothouse of the BMI Writing Classes, where top New York jazz musicians workshopped each other’s arrangements.

Human Qualities features seven Schapiro originals, plus a cover of Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” The composer gravitates toward suspended, minor, and unresolved sounds, so the music is consistently engaging and mysterious. This could be a score for a hip postmodern film noir. It isn’t as programmatic or ambitious as Schneider’s late music, but it shares many of the same techniques and spiky melodic contours.

The disc opens with a swinger, “Count Me Out,” that summarizes Schapiro17’s aesthetic. The title is a good one — it’s like Count Basie, until it isn’t, once it becomes more contemporary and almost dissolves into abstraction at the conclusion. There’s a strong sense of tension and suspense with shifts in meter during the tenor solo from Rob Middleton (who plays brilliantly throughout the album).

There are a variety of rhythms on Human Qualities, demonstrating the range of the composer and the orchestra. “Tango” features Matt Hong’s baritone sax, Walter Harris on bass trombone, and Sebastian Noelle on bass. It’s bass-heavy throughout, not something you usually think of in terms of Argentinian music. It’s not so much a tango as someone’s dream of a tango after a night of drinking. You could think of Hong’s baritone sax as doing a dance with the band and, as in a real tango, there’s an alternation of fast and slow, leading and following. Like a good tango,the performance is always a bit dangerously sexy.

There are still more rhythms: “House Money” has a New Orleans feel with an Ellingtonian vibe thanks to Alex Jeun’s charismatic trombone solo with plunger mute and call-and-response with the loose-limbed orchestra. “Hmmm” continues the variety with a shuffle rhythm on the drums and a distilled boogie-woogie on piano, but the composition doesn’t follow the blues form. Trumpeter Andy Gravish plays bop trumpet over an old-fashioned piano style — all with modern changes — and the resulting postmodern effect has a Mingus feel to it (especially in the stomping out-chorus). “A Bounce in Her Step” is a traditional bop swinger, and it’s a game to recognize all the Charlie Parker fragments quoted and extemporized on in the arrangement. There are swells from the reeds and low brass cushions for the soloists,. It’s a good track for appreciating Schapiro’s use of dynamics — individual voices never get lost in these deep and layered arrangements. “Hallelujah” starts with a trance feel before finding a Peruvian groove that takes the listener on an exotic meditative journey.

“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” with soloist Eddy Allen on trumpet, isn’t lush or dreamy like Roberta Flack’s version. It’s much darker. This is a song about a real face, with (as the album title says) human qualities. There are interjections from brass, like something from Gil Evans’ collaboration with Miles Davis on Porgy and Bess. Perhaps it’s no accident that Allen uses some Davis-like slurs and bends on the trumpet, too. A hint of sourness in the harmonies is resolved by the spirit of the trumpet solo. Complex attitudes and perspectives dominate this creative and insightful arrangement. Sometimes there is more than one reaction, simultaneously, when we first see a loved one’s face.

Finally, I must pay tribute to the forceful, delightful, poetic, and genuinely insightful liner notes from trumpeter Ingrid Jensen. A veteran player from Maria Schneider’s orchestra and many other ensembles, Jensen knows the good stuff when she hears it. Her connection with Schapiro17 is presumably through the drummer Jon Wikan, whom Jensen frequently uses on her own recordings. “Having played a fair amount of big band music in my 35 plus years on the scene, to hear such honest music full of nods and bows to the past, while staying clear of derivative drawings, is both an achievement and a gift,” she writes.

I’ll let Jensen have the final words: “I found this run of words in my rhyming dictionary to help me with my Ingrid-out-of-water search for the ultimate in verbal summations for Jon and his band of musical Heroines and Heroes. In a Seussian way, here goes…Dinging, flinging, pinging, ringing, bringing, springing, stringing, singing, tinging, winging, thinging, zinging, twisting (I added that) and swinging.”

-Allen Michie for Artsfuse.org

REVIEW:

Following its splendid premiere recording, an exploration of Miles Davis’ unrivaled album Kind Of Blue (Capitol Records, 1959), composer/arranger Jon Schapiro’s 17-member ensemble broadens its horizons on Human Qualities, pairing seven of the maestro’s astute and adventurous charts with the Roberta Flack best-seller, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” This time around, Schapiro proves that he need rely on nothing more than his own considerable experience as a jazz artist to create an album that expresses his point of view and accomplishes its purpose.

When that posture involves straight-ahead swinging it is very good indeed; and even when it doesn’t, it is seldom less than engaging. The emphatic Basie spirit is alive and well on the sunny opener, “Count Me In,” with pianist Roberta Piketsitting in for the Count, and guitarist Sebastian Noelle for Freddie Green, on an irrepressible groover that calls to mind Basie’s early era, one that produced such classic riffs as “One O’Clock Jump” and “Lester Leaps In.” Stalwart solos courtesy of Piket, tenor Rob Middleton (channeling his inner Lester Young) and trombonist Deborah Weisz. “Tango,” which follows, is a laid-back version of the fiery Latin dance showcasing Matt Hong’s supple baritone. The lower end of Piket’s keyboard is the launching pad for “Hmmm,” a rhythmic powerhouse whose enticing melody and lively shout-outs by brass and reeds lead to muscular solos by trumpeter Andy Gravish and tenor Paul Carlon, some brisk four-bar exchanges and more of Piket’s barrelhouse licks.

Schapiro’s low-key arrangement of the album’s lone ballad, “The First Time,” whose amiable solos are delivered by Piket and trumpeter Eddie Allen, precedes the contrapuntal “Human Qualities,” wherein Piket’s piano plays hide-and-seek with brass and reeds before alto saxophonist Rob Wilkerson and trombonist Nick Grinder take their turns, engirding the ensemble and drummer Jon Wikan as the tempo undergoes subtle changes, and Piket resurfaces to draw some shapely lines in the sand, while Wilkerson and Grinder trade fours before brass and reeds wrap the package. The dirge-like “Hallelujah,” which follows, opens well enough on the wings of Carlon’s ardent tenor but overstays its welcome long before the 11:39 playing time has run its course. Happily, the group vitality returns on “A Bounce in Her Step,” whose cool-bop cadences call to mind the West Coast scene of well over half a century ago. The carefree melody draws from Charlie Parker’s “Billie’s Bounce” and other themes, while the well-aimed solos are delivered by Wilkerson and trombonist Walter Harris. The album ends with a rocking second- line excursion to New Orleans to wager some “House Money” as Alex Jeun’s muted wah-wah trombone enhances the tune’s upbeat mood. Wikan and the rhythm section (Piket, Noelle, bassist Evan Gregor) are sharp and sturdy here, as they are on every number.

If there is such a thing as a sophomore jinx, Schapiro manages to avoid it with ease on Human Qualities, a worthy successor to the Schapiro 17’s impressive debut. Let us hope that the third time, whenever that happens, is also a charm.

-Jack Bowers for AllAboutJazz.com

REVIEW:

Schapiro 17 is an ensemble led by composer/arranger Jon Schapiro, conceived in 2012, whose previous release New Shoes: Kind Of Blue At 60, a fresh take on the Miles Davis classic album, received a very favourable review from Gordon Jack in August last year. Its follow up, Human Qualities, is a totally different proposition, containing seven of the composer’s originals and Ewan MacColl’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.

The Basie-like introduction to Count Me Out is a total blind, as this is soon discarded to introduce a thoroughly modern Rob Middleton saxophone solo punctuated by blasts from the horns, before entering a period of languor replaced by a passage of call and response. This is nicely balanced by the genuine rhythms of Tango, dominated by the baritone of Matt Hong.

Hmmm has a shuffle beat around boppish tendencies, with some of its best moments coming from the exchanges between trumpet and saxophone – this contrasts nicely with the imaginative arrangement of the popular MacColl piece, which is carried along by a nice and light swing.

The title track, a medium-tempo piece, has some pleasing examples of sections offset against each other, some bluesy alto from Rob Wilkerson, and a series of contrasting passages. Hallelujah, however, belies its title with a brooding opening, eventually giving way to a Latin groove serving as a backdrop to the electric guitar of Sebastian Noelle.

The music is rounded off by A Bounce In Her Step, based on Billie’s Bounce and House Money, very much Ellington inspired, complete with Nanton-like trombone from Alex Jeun.

Schapiro’s approach is very much of the moment, although as indicated, never dismissive of the past, so his talents should appeal to big band devotees both ancient and modern.

-Peter Gamble for Jazz Journal

REVIEW:

Composer-arranger Jon Schapiro, currently a professor at Yeshiva University, formed Schapiro17 as a vehicle for his writing and to showcase some of New York’s top musicians. The members on this recording are trumpets: Bryan Davis, Andy Gravish, Eddie Allen, Noyes Bartholomew; trombones: Alex Jeun, Deborah Weisz, Nick Grinder, Walter Harris saxophones: Rob Wilkerson, Candace DeBartolo, Paul Carlon, Rob Middleton, Matt Hong piano: Roberta Piket; guitar: Sebastian Noelle; bass: Evan Gregor; and drums: Jon Wikan.

This big band opens like a modern New Testament Count Basie Band with the opening “Count Me Out.” This composition transforms itself into a more contemporary vein with Rob Middleton’s remarkable tenor sax, a piano interlude by Roberta Piket that evokes Duke Ellington, and Deborah Weisz’s wooly trombone solo. This results in a memorable performance. “Tango” opens with bassist Noelle in duet with baritone saxophonist Matt Hong before the reeds and full band join. Schapiro’s scoring provides a turbulent setting for Hong’s rambunctious solo. Then there is the driving, irresistible groove of “Hmmm” with Piket laying down a barrelhouse piano progression for the high energy horns, Andy Gravish’s scorching trumpet, and Paul Carlon’s high-spirited tenor sax solo. All of this exceptional music is set against Schapiro’s top-flight arrangement to builds up to an explosive climax.

The one song that Schapiro did not write is an evocative rendition of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Schapiro initially provides a haunting setting for Eddie Allen’s mournful trumpet. Against the brooding atmosphere, Allen’s trumpet becomes a bit more luminous. The title track is built around a fair amount of counterpoint by the ensemble. It also has dynamic solos from Rob Wilkerson on alto sax and Nick Grinder on trombone. These two trade-off with each other with their counterpoint playing over Schapiro’s dense, volatile arrangement.

The remainder of this recording is full of the same superior ensemble playing, marvelous and imaginative arrangements, and terrific solos by the ensemble’s members. Guitarist Noelle especially shines on “Hallelujah.” On “A Bounce in Her Step,” Schapiro imaginatively incorporates various bebop phrases, especially from “Billie’s Bounce.” Drummer Joe Wikan lays down a funky groove while Alex Jeun’s growling trombone evokes Tricky Sam Nanton on the closing selection, “House Money.”

With the fabulous music on this album, Schapiro17’s “Human Qualities” is an outstanding contemporary big band recording that sounds fresh with repeated hearings.

-In a Blue Mood