Mario Pavone - Street Songs

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 54:05
Size: 123.8 MB
Styles: Bop, Avant garde
Year: 2014
Art: Front

[5:12] 1. Elkna
[3:27] 2. Streetsongs
[4:42] 3. Cobalt Stories
[4:17] 4. Short Story
[7:26] 5. Alban Berg
[8:43] 6. Mythos
[8:11] 7. The Dom
[6:04] 8. Deez
[5:59] 9. Eyto

Mario Pavone: bass; Dave Ballou: cornet,flugelhorn; Peter Madsen: piano; Adam Matlock: accordion; Carl Testa; bass; Steve Johns: drums.

Listing an accordion in a jazz sextet's lineup evokes either thoughts of avant-garde leanings or maybe kitschy hipsterism. Not so for bassist Mario Pavone. Street Songs includes Adam Matlock's bellows-driven squeezebox, not as a gimcrack ornament, but a link to the immigrant working class neighborhood music of Pavone's post-WW II youth. The musician's history is significant because his bass has anchored modern music including bands by innovators such as Paul Bley, Bill Dixon, Thomas Chapin, Anthony Braxton, and Wadada Leo Smith. As a leader he has released two dozen sessions with his previous being Arc Trio (Playscape, 2013). Pavone also leads his Orange Double Tenor sextet with Tony Malaby and Jimmy Greene.

This sextet swaps the tenors for a second bassist, Carl Testa, and accordionist. The remainder of the bandmates are his frequent collaborators, drummer Steve Johns, pianist Peter Madsen, and trumpeter Dave Ballou. As customary for Pavone-led groups, the music contains compelling compositions by the bassist and smart arrangements, the duties shared by Pavone, Ballou, and Steven Bernstein.

He navigates the opening track "Elkna" with a marching tone. Muted trumpet plays off the deep tones and tight bends of the piece. Matlock's accordion parades with the bass allowing for Madsen's Monk-like notes to spill forth. Pavone favors an intricate weave to his music with tight turns on "Streetsong," a sly and squiggly dance between players "Cobalt Stories," but also an urbane sense of swing, "Alban Berg." Ballou's horn completes the music here with crystal notes, gutbucket blats, and skittering waterbug expressions. The accordion flavors the music by separating the bowed bass of Testa from the plucked one of Pavone on "Deez." Its bellowed sounds make even the most cosmopolitan arrangements seem at home in the old neighborhood. ~Mark Corroto

Street Songs mc
Street Songs zippy

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Mario Pavone - Boom

Styles: Jazz, Post Bop
Year: 2004
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 52:10
Size: 137,7 MB
Art: Front

(3:40)  1. Julian
(5:56)  2. Not Five Kimono
(6:18)  3. Arkadia
(0:18)  4. Po
(8:43)  5. Bad Birdie
(3:23)  6. Short Yellow
(6:10)  7. Arc
(6:16)  8. Bastos
(6:33)  9. Interior Boom
(4:49) 10. Out and About

Mario Pavone brings in a stripped down version of the band he has worked with in the recent past for Boom. He couldn't have done better than choose these three players. They chip in and put all the pieces together so compactly that it would be hard to imagine any other band reaching in and reacting to the music as marvellously as they have done. With the exception of two tunes from Thomas Chapin, the music was composed by Pavone. There is much that goes on here. To tip the hat to that cliché, Pavone wears a coat of many colours. And thank the stars he does. He writes with an ear for melody, but it is his intuition in adding the breadth and the scope, in the constant reshaping of the song, that makes his music so exceptional. The blues hue "Bastos" mainly through the piano of Peter Madsen as he swerves the phrases in during his conversation with Tony Malaby, whose tenor initially grounds the movement in earthy notes and then takes flight soaring in short thrusts. Malaby turns around and offers soaring, long lines that float in luminous grace on "Arc," a ballad that has an intense emotional core. If one tune has to be chosen to profile the interplay which takes music to a higher plateau, then "Not Five Kimono" serves the purpose well. The tune never settles into a defined groove. The landscape keeps shifting, the drive coming from Matt Wilson, whose time and meter direct the tempo as Malaby dissects and probes on the soprano. The shifting sands of time come on "Arkadia," which opens on a sprightly note, only to deceive. The head stated, Pavone takes over the reins. He makes every note on the bass tell a story, no matter if it comes in single exclamation or in a flurry. And when he gets into the sway, the band grabs on to his leash and goes out with a swinging good time. Finally there's "Out and About," a Chapin tune. Pavone scampers, Malaby jabs before getting linear, form and structure volatile and malleable. Madsen changes that, romping along to Wilson's marching beat before it all goes out on a folksy step-to. And if truth be told, there's never a dull moment! ~ Jerry D'Souza https://www.allaboutjazz.com/boom-mario-pavone-playscape-recordings-review-by-jerry-dsouza.php

Personnel: Mario Pavone--bass; Tony Malaby--tenor and soprano saxophones; Peter Madsen--piano; Matt Wilson--drums

Boom

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Mario Pavone Dialect Trio - Chrome

Styles: Contemporary Jazz 
Year: 2017
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 51:32
Size: 118,5 MB
Art: Front

(5:01)  1. Cobalt
(5:01)  2. Glass 10
(3:10)  3. Ellipse
(8:12)  4. Ancestors
(6:56)  5. Beige
(6:38)  6. The Lizards
(5:06)  7. Conic
(2:55)  8. Bley
(4:28)  9. Chrome
(4:02) 10. Continuing

Piano trios seeking a level of parity of instrumental input are common. Those who achieve a high level of piano/bass/drums democracy develop a group sound born of a melding of musical personalities. With strong personalities all around as on the Mario Pavone Dialect Trio a beautiful tumult is born. Chrome is bassist Pavone's second Dialect Trio release, following 2015's Blue Dialect (Playscape Recordings). A big part of the allure of Chrome is the head-bumping and elbow throwing between the three free-spirited cohorts Pavone, pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. All leaders in their own rights with Pavone sitting in the veteran's chair the voices clash and clamber and somehow keep things coherent and approachable, from the bump and bounce of "Glass 10" to the sneaking-through-the-back-streets vibe of "Ancestors," and on into "The Lizards (for Jim Jarmusch)," with it thorny, rolling-through-a-thunderstorm groove. Mitchell and Sorey aren't exactly rising stars anymore; they've been around and now can be counted as relative newcomers to the top tier of jazz artists a level they've reached via, in Tyshawn Sorey's case, four sometimes challenging but always compelling releases on Pi Recordings, including 2017's marvelous Verisimilitude, the drummer's own brooding, individualistic take on the piano trio; and Matt Mitchell with his work on Tim Berne's high-and-outside Snake Oil recordings on ECM Records, and his put-it-in-the bank Best Release of 2017 spot for Forage (Pi Recordings, 2017), a vibrant, sometimes combustable solo piano  exploration of the tunes of Tim Berne. A look at three three names on the CD's cover, pre-listening, said "dream team." That turned out to be true with Chrome. ~ Dan McClenaghan https://www.allaboutjazz.com/chrome-mario-pavone-playscape-recordings-review-by-dan-mcclenaghan.php
 

Personnel: Mario Pavone: bass; Matt Mitchel: piano; Tyshawn Sorey: drums.

Chrome

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