Understory: Live at the Village Vanguard (Edition)
Ben Wendel
Released October 2024
DownBeat Four-and-a-Half-Star Review
JazzTimes 2024 Year in Review
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_ng0pFdFfd6ekrT7oNyWSk-C7624WGkK6M
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About:
Understory: Live at the Village Vanguard is the new album from master saxophonist Ben Wendel featuring the superstar team of Gerald Clayton – Piano, Linda May Han Oh – Bass, Vocals and Obed Calvaire – Drums. Recorded at possibly the most storied of all jazz venues, this is a vibrant, effervescent album bursting with vitality and energy, scintillating with musicianship and virtuosity.
Understory: Live at the Village Vanguard is Wendel’s first live album and follows his Grammy nominated release All One. The Village Vanguard is one of the most famous of jazz venues, known for groundbreaking performances by everyone from Bill Evans to Miles Davis, Coltrane to Roland Kirk. It’s every jazz musician’s dream to play here. It offers a sense of that history, and a unique ambience to any recording, one that Understory: live at the Village Vanguard fully embraces.
Understory: Live at the Village Vanguard, sees Wendel resume the themes of tension, contrast and conflict that he worked out in his first Edition album High Heart. If there’s an identity flowing through all Ben’s albums it is this feeling of continually pushing the boundaries, not settling for the obvious or the expected. Where High Heart focussed on the tension between high art and low art, between digital and analogue, quick to produce and slow to produce, mass and individual, Understory: Live at the Village Vanguard zooms in on the tension within his own identity as an artist on the one hand and as a musician. It picks at the difference between his role as a ‘jazz’ musician and his questing for more progressive forms of expression. While this is in one sense the most ‘jazz’ album he has made (and it works brilliantly as a live jazz record, bursting with energy and ideas), Wendel elevates his sound with pedals, and his compositions extend to the outer reaches of his band’s ability, commanding a deep musicianship. There are good reasons why Wendel has cultivated a devoted and faithful fan base. His continual questing for the new allied to his instrumental prowess and compositional talent make him a special musician who stands out even in the great company of his peers. The tensions inherent in his work and his identity lift Understory: Live at the Village Vanguard out of ordinary and into the realms of the legendary recordings made at this storied club.
Track Listing:
1. Lu (Ben Wendel) 10:25
2. Proof (Ben Wendel) 11:01
3. On the Trail (Ferde Grofé) 9:56
4. Scosh (Ben Wendel) 10:26
5. Jean & Renata (Ben Wendel) 7:54
6. I Saw You Say (Ben Wendel) 8:00
7. Tao (Ben Wendel) 8:18
Personnel:
Ben Wendel: tenor saxophone, effects
Gerald Clayton: piano
Linda May Han Oh: bass, vocals
Obed Calvaire: drums
Recorded live at the Village Vanguard, 4-6 November, 2022 by Chris Allen, assisted by Andrew Kochinka
Mixed by Chris Allen
Mastered by Nate Wood at Kerseboom Mastering
Album artwork & letterpress printing by Oli Bentley, Split
Photo by Josh Goleman
Produced by Ben Wendel
Executive producer: Dave Stapleton & Tom Korkidis
Review:
On 2023’s All One, saxophonist-composer Wendel created chorales of multilayered woodwinds in support of a list of guest soloists. It was a dreamy concoction, though strictly a product of the studio. An antidote to that orderly approach, Wendel lets loose and wails with abandon on this live outing while also letting the music simmer and breathe as each piece evolves. One of the most formidable post-Michael Brecker tenor saxophonists on the scene today, Wendel distinguishes himself from the opening track, “Lu,” as a being in command of the full range of his horn. And the percolating rhythm tandem of bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Obed Calvaire pushes him to some exhilarating heights on these seven tracks. The herky-jerky head on “Proof,” Wendel’s clever contrafact of Thelonious Monk’s “Evidence,” presents pianist Gerald Clayton with some rhythmic challenges before he breaks free to burn on the uptempo swing section. And Wendel responds in kind with a heated Brecker-ian solo of his own. The quartet reinvents Ferde Grofé’s “On the Trail,” which had its first public performance in 1931 by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, by incorporating hip counterpoint phases and an overall vibe of cool. The laid back second line groover “Scosh,” an obvious nod to John Scofield, finds Calvaire incorporating Bill Stewart’s trademark flam f ills, while the tender ballad “Jean & Renata” has Wendel creating a mellow ambiance with echo effects on his sax (a la ‘70s John Klemmer). Thoughtful compositions, sparkling interplay, with killer solos from the leader.
Bill Milkowski (DownBeat)
