Bone head

Ray Anderson cooks in Montreal

by Ed Hazell

No other North American jazz festival balances popular appeal and artistic integrity better than the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. Purists might wince to see folk-rocker Bruce Cockburn appearing among the 18th annual festival's 106 indoor concerts, but no one would take issue with a series that paired two keyboardists -- such as Cyrus Chestnut and James Williams -- each night of the 10-day extravaganza. And this year, the first of two "Invitation" series, which gives artists the chance to present several different bands over the course of four or five nights, belonged to trombonist Ray Anderson, who like the festival itself knows how to reach a wide audience and take artistic risks.

On the first night he stuck his neck farthest out, presenting two of his most advanced working trios: BassDrumBone, with bassist Mark Helias and drummer Gerry Hemingway; and his European trio with guitarist Christy Doran and drummer Han Bennink. The 20-year-old BassDrumBone, who have a new album on Enja due later this summer, have lost none of their exploratory excitement. If anything, the passing decades have made the members more subtle and attuned to one another. Their elegant interplay generated music of rapidly shifting timbres, rhythms, and glancing allusions to reggae, marching bands, and contemporary classical music.

The second trio, only a few years old and with two CDs on hat Art, put on one hilarious show, thanks primarily to the manic Bennink, the Jim Carrey of avant-garde drumming. Doran's thick, screeching sounds act as a sonic binder between Anderson's sputtering and fragmented lines and Bennink's comical, force-of-nature onslaught. They bent and warped everything in their path, but not from any destructive or alienating impulses. Their approach is joyful, overflowing with vitality, and it produces some of the most likable and invigorating new music being made today.

Anderson's molten sound and vocal inflections make him one of the most immediately recognizable players in jazz. The second night teamed him with three equally strong trombone voices -- George Lewis, Craig Harris, and Gary Valente -- in Slide Ride. Together since 1993, this was a quartet with a sense of humor to match their sonic power. (The trombone still attracts jokesters.) On a program of original compositions and arrangements contributed by each member, they drew on the jazz tradition, making Tricky Sam Nanton yah-yahs with their mutes and tailgating New Orleans slides in the collective ensembles. But there were also the sounds of sloppy wet kisses, equine whinnies, and elephant snorts mixed in among graceful arabesques, gospel quartet voicings, and lush Ellingtonian sentiment.

Part of the drama of Anderson's music arises from the tension he sets up when he pushes established forms into new shapes. So the third night of the series, billed as "Ray Anderson Plays and Sings the Blues," balanced a down-home blues feel against his irrepressible humor and his urge to stretch things to the breaking point. He premiered a stellar quintet -- Amina Claudine Myers on piano, Hammond B-3, and providing vocals; guitarist Dave Tronzo; bassist Lonnie Plaxico; and drummer Charli Persip -- who took a few songs to get in the groove. But once they eased into "Damaged But Good," with Myers and Anderson trading vocal choruses, the band really took off. Anderson danced and mugged with abandon but was all business when he solo'd, maintaining a blues feeling even when he pushed off farthest from the tune through masterful use of mutes, growling and moaning like a Delta blues player one minute and sweetly singing like a church chorus the next. The songs themselves, with lyrics by Anderson's wife, Jackie Raven, were unsentimental, ironic, and literate without being too arty. At a time when most original jazz songs are achingly sincere and utterly humorless, they were a breath of fresh air.

The fourth evening featured the Pocket Brass Band, with trumpeter Jack Walrath, tuba player Bob Stewart, and Persip again on drums. Although only a year and a half old, with just a few performances together, they proved to be the solidest and funkiest of all the bands Anderson fronted. Stewart was a relentless groove machine, the Bootsy Collins of the tuba, pushing the band forward through the New Orleans-styled tunes. Walrath's passionate post-bop voice was a good contrast to Anderson, who once again blitzed the material. On "Peace in Our Time," he worked simple riffs into frenzied blurs that soared upward in corkscrew patterns and finally broke free of the composition's orbit. "I like to keep one ear cocked to the second line, and one ear pointed to the sky," Anderson had explained earlier that day. "That's what I like to do with all my music."