The Sophisticated and Swinging Sound of "The Ali Ryerson Quartet"

 

The accomplished flutist, Ali Ryerson has released her seventeenth recording simply titled The Ali Ryerson Quartet on her self-produced ACR music label. If you love good music this will certainly put a smile on your face. 

New York born Ryerson has been playing the flute she first took it up at age of eight. Ryerson comes from a musical family that boasts a maternal grandmother Allison-her namesake- who once played professional piano on the vaudeville circuit. Her father, Art ,was an accomplished guitarist who played in the Paul Whiteman Band before becoming a respected studio musician in NYC. His guitar work could be heard on recordings including albums from Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan and Frank Sinatra to name a few. He was also an early adopter of the seven string electric guitar along with the inventor George Van Eps and Bucky Pizzarelli.

Ryerson attended the Hartt School of Music in Hartford CT in the late 1970’s and graduated with a degree in Music.  She studied mostly classical music having taken lessons with the foremost orchestral flutist Julius Baker as being the most influential to her. She credits her  playing jazz with her horn playing brothers on gigs as giving her the jazz bug. Her playing of jazz is self-taught and claims her influences are trumpet players like Chet Baker and Clifford Brown. “In essence, I am a trumpet player who plays flute.”

Ryerson has been know for her sophisticated, intimate sound and inherent ability to swing. She was the driving force between the Jazz Flute Big Band Project and its recording Game Changer  from 2013, where she enlisted nineteen flutist and a rhythm section to reimagine some of the music of Oliver Nelson, Clifford Brown, Wayne Shorter and others for an all flute band. She had an enduring work relationship with the guitarist Joe Beck for almost ten years and recorded two albums with him. Ryerson is also a sort after educator giving on line lessons to aspiring flutists on Lessonface.

Ali Ryerson(photo credit unknown)

Ryerson’s sound has a light, enjoyable, bebop sensibility that assures the music always swings. She also has absorbed the love of Brazilian music in her playing and that can be an important aspect of her playing. Ryerson's mature tone and astute delivery can only be achieved with years of dedication and by playing with talented top notch musicians over the years. 

Ryerson is joined by pianist Larry Ham, bassist Lou Pappas and drummer Tom Melito, a seasoned group, on this album. The Ali Ryerson album captures your attention with its mastery, tonal warmth and sophisticated swing. It brings a smile to your face and delivers an enjotyable listening experience.

The opener “Chuck’s Time/Solar” is a mashup of Ryerson’s opening changes titled “Chuck’s Time” and the main theme, a song credited to Miles Davis but contended to have been actually written by the guitarist Chuck Wayne, and titled “Solar.” Ryerson opens this swinging blues with a circuitous line on her C flute in step with her bandmates matching her lines. There is a buoyancy to Ryerson’s flute solo work here that is pure joy.  Ham takes a elegant solo about halfway through, and Pappas adds a plucky bass solo before Melito’s drum work offers his own response. These guys are having fun and it shows.

Ryerson’s “Cold Snap” is a soulful song that utilizes ascending and descending lines that capture your attention as the band carries the graceful pulse. Ham steps up with a creative, uncluttered solo. Ryerson comes back in with another solo that brims with creative explorations. Pappas offers another interpretation of where he wants to take the music on his bass solo. As the title implies, this one has a snap.

Thad Jones’ iconic “Three and One” is deftly navigated by the bass and flute on the opening and shows the simpatico these two have. Pappas’ bass plucks with a resonation that hums on his top-notch solo. Ryerson’s flute is liquid and loose. Her notes melt in the air. Ham’s piano solo work is clear, unadorned and succinct. It is a tribute to Jones that his composition can be reinterpreted so rewardingly by an astute artist like Ryerson. 

The flutist takes her reimagination of bassist Steve Swallow’s “Falling Grace” and titles it “Flying in Spain/Falling Grace.”  The band creates a breezy sway over which Ryerson’s  flute dances with her own graceful lines. Pappas nicely counters Ali's flute with bouncy lines in time with Melito’s subdued snare. Ham offers his own melodic solo and Pappas adds a brief bass feature, before the group returns to the melody together, ending with a delicate coda.

I have always loved Jerome Kern’s” Yesterdays” ever since I listened to Hampton Hawes, Red Mitchell and Chuck Thompson version recorded back in 1955.  That trio could just really swing. There was unhampered freedom in the way they played and  Ryerson's  take “Before Today/Yesterdays" play it with the same kind of vim and vigor as the Hawes trio did! The group is locked in so well and they create individual ideas that both complimentary as well as inventive and lively. Pappas bass maintains the unfailing walk and Melito’s drum work is tasty. Hain offers subtle accompaniment and a nicely played solo, but it is Ryerson’s astute energizing of the melody with her own fertile ideas that makes this one so much fun.

“The Island” is a famous Brazilian ballad written by Ivan Lins with lyrics by Alan Bergman. It is a lush love song that has been sung by some of the most famous chanteuses, including Sarah Vaughan, Barbara Streisand and Patti Austin. This version loses nothing by not having a singer. Ryerson’s richly toned alto flute is the lead voice on this and she makes it all her own. The music throbs with emotion and pathos. Authentic, beautiful and moving.

The album continues with Cole Porter’s reimagined “What is This Thing Called Love.”  Ryerson’s playing always carries the music with authority and style. Her playing is clear and not breathy, but always adds to the music.

“Ali Cat Blues” is a blues-based, bebop inspired Ryerson composition.  There is some Charlie Parker in the woman’s flute. Ryerson sails and soars like a bird riding the thermals navigating the self-imposed labyrinth she creates with her music. The music is delightfully challenging and yet they all make the execution seem so simple. You can’t help not tap your feet.

“Nada Como Ter Amor” is a Brazilian nova bossa composition from Carlos Lyra where Ryerson and company getting into the Rio vibe. “Boppin’ Low” is another Ryerson composition that returns to the straight ahead/ bebop style that she and her band seem to seem to thrive so well on. The final cut on the album is titled Fé, another Brazilian bossa inspired composition, that has Ryerson’s light and airy flute hovering over the rhythmic groove that the band creates and maintains. There is a freedom, a  gossamer-like lightness  to this music and Ryerson captures this weightless feel to perfection.

Baritone Sax Ace Claire Daly offers a trip back to 52nd Street on Vu Vu for Frances w George Garzone

Baritone saxophonist Claire Daly released her latest album VuVu for Frances on July 7, 2023. It is a dual saxophone session that makes you feel like you have been transported by a time machine to a night, sometime in the past, represented by the light-filled cover photograph of a vibrant night of jazz on the scene of 52^nd Street in New York. 52^nd Street between 5^th Avenue and 7^th Avenue – known for both its clubs and bustling street life – was an active entertainment district northeast of Times Square for thirty years between the late 1930s and the 1960s. Daly, along with her cohort tenor titan George Garzone, take us through a splendid aural remembrance of that time, that feel, that glamour and that sound.  The band is composed of Daly and Garzone on the front line, with veteran musical artists Jon Davis on piano, Dave Hofstra on bass, and David F. Gibson on drums.

The album is a homage of sorts to Frances, purportedly Frances Ballantyne, a longtime New Yorker friend of Daly, who is now over ninety years of age. In her prime, Frances was a spirited patron of the many clubs that offered a diverse selection of entertainment in all of its permutations. She could see top-notch comedy or racy Burlesque at places like Leon and Eddies and the showier Club Samoa. Some places featured Dixieland and swing could be danced to at clubs like Kelly’s Stable and “21”. The Onyx, the Three Deuces, and the original Birdland, which was on Broadway just south of 52^nd Street, specialized in more progressive music like bebop and later R & B. The degradation of the area was spurred on by real estate development pressures, illicit drug use, prostitution and Father Time led “The Street” to its eventual demise.  

On Vu Vu for Frances, Daly is concentrating on the music and the jazz scene. A scene where you could hear the vibe, the energy, the Vu Vu wafting onto the street like a kind of tempting ambrosia luring you into the clubs. That music, that street made Frances a lifelong fan. It also inspired Daly and the band members, who have all met Frances over the years at some of their gigs, to play for her. A personal Valentine.

Daly has a long relationship and friendship with Garzone and the two seem to be perfect foils to bring these songs to life. The thirteen songs are standards, but the key to this effort is to deliver them authentically to the spirit of this music and to the time when it flourished. Daly certainly made good on that goal. The album swings open with Daly’s big brassy bari sound on ”All the Way” stating the melody and is then smoothly countered by Garzone’s sultry tenor. These two bring great personality to the music and the rhythm section keeps it swinging with a nice piano solo by Davis to boot. I can just imagine Frances dancing to this one.

The album is filled with gems like the brash Charles Llyod tune “Sweet Georgia Bright” which finds Daly blasting some expressive lines that just percolate with fury and Garzone offers his own enthusiastic response. “Fools Rush In” is a slower, romantically languishing piece that offers some nice burlesque-like backing work by David F. Gibson on drums, a Basie Band veteran, and some deep walking bass lines by Dave Hofstra. 

Off to the races on “People Will Say We’re in Love” a Rodgers and Hammerstein song from the musical “Oklahoma” with Garzone staring this one off before Daly comes in with one of her more exuberant solos. Just the perfect inspiration for Garzone to come up with his own inventive counter, and Gibson and Hofstra get to play their own rhythmic duel with verve.

Not to be without its humor, Daly enters with her boisterous baritone interpretation of the old Rogers and Hammerstein ditty from the soundtrack of Sound of the Music, “The Lonely Goatherd.” The band is juiced by this one and the music inspires a section that features some wild mouse-like playing first pushed on by a Davis solo with Gibson and Hofstra percolating. Garzone then starts a wild session of screeching and free-blowing tenor answered with equally boisterous responses by Daly’s raucous baritone all prodded on by fiercely driven explosive drum work by Gibson. 

The sultry Ellington/Bigard song “Mood Indigo” is a joy as it takes you back to another era. Although the original recording featured clarinet work by Jimmy Hamilton leading the music, here sans the clarinet are Daly/Garzone/Davis/Hofstra and Gibson taking on the personalities of Harry Carney/Paul Gonzalez/ Ellington/Wendell Marshall and Sonny Greer from the Ellington band at the time.

The remainder of the album features Ellington’s “Warm Valley” joined with “What Am I Here For.” We have a surprising Daly vocal on little-known Steve Kuhn composition called “Hold Out Your Hand.” There is Charlie Parker/Miles Davis's bebop composition titled “Half-Nelson.”  The Hagen/Rodgers evocative classic “Harlem Nocturne” is another Frances favorite and opens with Daly’s slow, expressive baritone stating the melody. The pace quickens at the chorus and then becomes a splendid piano feature by Jon Davis, whose cascading lines are simply gorgeous. Bandleader Ray Nobles’ “The Very Thought of You” is another old-time favorite and Daly and bassist Hofstra on bow open this one in a uniquely moving way. “The Saga of Harrison Crabfeathers” is another Steve Kuhn/Seila Jordan song and features the only electric piano by Davis on the album and is probably the most post-bop, contemporary song on this album. Daly and Garzone rise to this untraveled song’s verve and give it a modern feel that may almost be too contemporary for Frances’ taste.  The finale is Rogers and Hart musical song “Manhattan” from the 1925 revue “Garrick Gaieties” and has been sung by everyone from Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Trome to The Supremes. This one swings, with some nice solo work by Davis, Garzone, and Daly, and the rhythm section of Hofstra and Gibson keeping the time impeccably.

Take Claire Daly’s Vu Vu for Frances out for a spin for yourself and get ready to feel like you’ve been transported to Frances Ballantyne’s world of music and the lights on 52^nd Street.