Maria Schneider, the former Gil Evans composing apprentice from Minnesota, takes her late and legendary mentor's lead in making the jazz orchestra sound more ambiguous and richly sensuous than has been usual for that frequently slam-bang institution.
Schneider's performance was very different from London saxophonist Jason Yarde's collaboration with classical pianist Joanna MacGregor and the Britten Sinfonia strings last week, or US star Charles Lloyd's east-west world-music dialogue at the weekend. The shows were united, however, by the festival's impulse to steer jazz improvisation away from hot licks toward a spontaneous language more melodically unpredictable, responsively musical, and in the moment.
Schneider's luxurious harmonies and overlaid melodies make a thicker brew than that of Gil Evans, and some of her casually introduced horn motifs were good enough to suggest whole pieces, rather than glimpses come and gone. But if the music could use a little thinning, it was more than made up for by the diaphanous flute sound behind Ingrid Jensen's flugelhorn on Scenes from Childhood, the long trombone exhalations behind a dialogue for flugel and soprano sax, and the softly staccato Gil Evans chords behind Donny McCaslin's tenor sax on the exultant Hang Gliding.
Jason Yarde shared a semi-classical bill with Joanna MacGregor and a vigorous Britten Sinfonia string quintet at the Wigmore Hall, with MacGregor devoting much of the music to a Shostakovich piano piece (though it does have a walking bassline in it), John Dowland, and her own boldly percussive variations on Astor Piazzolla.
Yarde's idiom-vaulting work does occasionally suggest someone trying to make a working clock out of parts gathered from several, but his pieces are full of fresh ideas. So was the unusual trio led by Charles Lloyd at the Barbican on Saturday, built around dazzling improvised dialogues between Indian percussion maestro Zakir Hussein and drummer Eric Harland. Preceding the trio had been Tomasz Stanko and his virtuosic, Herbie Hancockish group led by rising piano star Marcin Wasilewski. Stanko can be abstract and ethereal, but this was a fierce, tingling, rhythmically urgent performance of new material the Polish trumpet pioneer is due to record.
