I’m not sure I’ll do another Week on Disc before the holidays are out, so I wanted to draw attention to Carla’s Christmas Carols (Watt), a seasonal gem by legendary pianist-composer-arranger Carla Bley, her longtime collaborator Steve Swallow on electric bass, and the superb Partyka Brass Quintet. Beautiful arranging and hip detours on “Away In a Manger,” “O Tannenbaum” and others, including Bley’s own “Jesus Maria,” a staple of the old Jimmy Giuffre/Paul Bley/Steve Swallow repertoire (it also appears on Mark Turner’s Ballad Session).
Also on the arranging front, a word of praise for Revolutions (Intuition/Sunnyside), by Jim Beard with Vince Mendoza and the Metropole Orchestra. Beard, a seasoned pianist/keyboardist with credits too numerous to mention, has honed an electric-fusiony aesthetic that puts him, arguably, in the “contemporary jazz” field. Alas, that’s music-industry code for “smooth jazz,” and Beard’s work is far too knotty and substantial to be called that. (Same goes for Stefon Harris and Julian Lage, two of this year’s “contemporary jazz” Grammy nominees.)
Anyhow, Revolutions is a fine showcase of Beard’s composing talent, not to mention Mendoza’s sweeping and highly effective orchestral-plus-band treatments. It’s tightly produced (by Beard), with zingy solo spots from guitarist Jon Herington, saxists Bob Malach and Bill Evans, trumpeter Ruud Breuls, trombonist Bart van Lier and of course Beard himself.
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