Word of Mouth Music

Being a jazz musician in 2010 requires mastering at least a century’s worth of information. Being a good jazz composer means not only having this information but being able to create melodies that compel the listener to hit the repeat button. Kurt Rosenwinkel’s pieces can be complex (check into “Turns” from this disc to find out how complex) but there is a sense of melody that makes his work compelling in a way few others of his generation have managed.

Lately, Rosenwinkel, who put out several small band CDs over the 00’s, seems to have taken a break for reassessment. Last year, this took the form of a standards CD. This year, he has taken part in a big band project featuring rearrangements of his own past material.

The standards disc was a pleasure. This big band CD, though, reminds me that even the greatest jazz small-band composers (Monk, Mingus) have outings in their catalog where adaptations for large ensembles failed to click. The arrangers here have the skill to deal with Rosenwinkel’s thorny chords, but have a weakness for brassy bombast that at its worst (which arrives, unfortunately, in the final passage of the disc at the conclusion of “Path of the Heart”) sounds like you’ve stumbled into Tonight Show terrain by mistake.

At times, though, a different, better disc peeks through. Some sections, like the long intro to “The Cloister” or the sax interlude near the end of “Zhivago,” hint at a more persuasive re-imagining of Rosenwinkel’s music. And, under it all, there is still plenty of the playing and writing of Rosenwinkel, who meets the challenge of making fresh statements on these familiar pieces, and has the support of rhythm sections who’ve evidently studied the New York style of his regular groups.

Despite the flaws, Our Secret World is worth examination. However, it does leave me hoping he gets back to the business of adding to his small-band repertoire next time out.