Flutist and composer Jamie Baum has been writing for and recording with a septet or “Septet+” for 25 years. She has used this band to cover all kinds of music — a proper trait of the 21st-century strain of jazz that mixes structure with freedoms, forms of music from around the world, and a thousand other inputs.
What Times are These takes her latest version of the expanded septet and adds singers and spoken word elements. Baum’s enchanting writing is combined with poetry from Marge Piercy, Tracy K. Smith, Adrienne Rich, Naomi Nye, and others. The use of voices makes the music bracing, direct, and electric.
To my ears, it is her best recording. It takes a complex New Jazz composition and vaults it into a listener’s heart through the inclusion of literature and the human voice. It is a revelation.
The opening track, with its powerful percussion and blocks of horns—including Jonathan Finlayson’s trumpet, Sam Sadigursky on alto sax and clarinet, and Chris Komer’s French horn in addition to flute—and Morse code piano (the wonderful Venezuelan Luis Perdomo) and percussion (Keita Ogawa), acts as a potent overture, grabbing our attention but not giving away the variations that will follow.
Then, the wonders start flowing. Jamie Baum narrates the poem “To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy, accompanied by piano and clarinet, before the band ease into a hypnotic arrangement that uses throbbing electric bass, minimalist piano, gentle cascades of horns, and then a fine electric guitar solo from Brad Shepik to stir the blood.
Finlayson recites “An Old Story” (a poem by former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith) over a burbling funk groove (bassist Ricky Rodriguez sounds positively James Jamerson-esque) before Aubrey Johnson sings the poem as a jagged, arresting melody in a locked-up ensemble with the horns. Johnson also sings as a nonverbal ensemble member on the wordless “Dreams”—blending with precision and grace. The leader takes a thoughtful solo here, showing how commanding and full-bodied her sound is, particularly on the alto flute.
Vocalist Sara Serpa is featured three times to marvelous effect, bringing to life the words of three different poets. “What Kinds of Times are These” sets disturbing verses by Adrienne Rich into an angular but limber melody. Piano and winds play syncopated long tones, but Shepik’s guitar solos with fluent grace and doubles and duets with Serpa. Her vocal puts shades of hope into two other different sets of words. Naomi Nye’s “My Grandmother in the Stars” is a story of lament, of losing an earthly connection to a loved one. However, Baum lights the harmonies with a yearning to connect — and Sam Sadigursky adds a saxophone solo of such poignance that your heart may be buoyed rather than broken. Finally, Serpa sings “I am Wrestling with Despair” by Piercy, using her light and precise tone to set up one of the session’s best improvisations from trumpeter Finlayson.
It is indisputable that so much of this record features songs of sorrow. But a point of joy, ironically, is “Sorrow Song”, which sets Lucille Clifton’s poem about the suffering of children in war to an irresistible groove. Vocal artist Kokayi contributes an opening rap and ripping hook sung with Johnson as well as the recitation. Baum and Shepik solo with power on a track that juxtaposes tragedy and the life impulse of dance. It works so well because of the contrast.
The other track I can’t get out of my head is “In Those Years”, featuring vocalist Theo Bleckmann singing the Adrienne Rich to a Jamie Baum melody poem over a pulsing dotted-rhythm figure by piano and horns. This performance is so much more, however: with a gorgeous layering of voices on the introductions, a riveting middle section in which Bleckmann sings words and phrases from the poem in repetitive minimalism against Perdomo’s fluttering piano arpeggios, and story-telling solos from Sadigursky and Perdomo that build in intensity as the band pushes them.
In these two performances, the strengths of What Times Are These are plain. Jamie Baum’s writing and larger conception of the project bring together multiple voices and modes but focus them through her lucid and organized composition style. “Sorrow Song” uses rap, poetry, M-Base-style jazz groove, at least four distinct solo “voices”, and the blended voice of her septet’s wind section to create a clear but complex statement. “In Those Years” may jump from a tone poem to groove to pointillistic minimalism to mid-tempo modern jazz, but each transition makes musical sense and creates a flowing drama that relates to the words that Baum is illuminating.
To my ears, this is Baum’s most ambitious and best album, and it’s a cogent example of how 21st-century jazz has been developing. It is not one thing, and it is certainly not required to be one thing that doesn’t stray from the verities of jazz as it stood 50 or 60 years ago. Always omnivorous, this creative music is best when it dares to reach across boundaries of all kinds — but it only works when the artist has a strong vision that allows multiple strands to be woven into a beautifully conceived tapestry.
Jamie Baum has done that to thrilling effect on What Times Are These, merging powerful poetry, sophisticated arrangement and composition for her talented septet, diverse voices (singers and jazz improvisers), and a range of historical influences not restricted to one tradition or tonality. For all that range, the result is Baum’s own.