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Bernie Senensky Quartet/Quintet Don’t Look Back CELLAR LIVE [74:43]

 

Don't Look Back (Senensky) [9:05]

I Hear A Rhapsody (J.Baker, D.Gasparre) [8:49]

Floating (Senensky) [6:35]

Together (Senensky) [6:02]

May In June (Mover) [6:07]

The Mover (Senensky) [6:24]

Jump For Joe (Senensky) [7:31]

The Latest (Hank Mobley) [4:33]

Danse Encore (Senensky) [6:48]

One Is Enough (Senensky) [6:26]

Who Cares (G.Gershwin) [6:17]

Bernie Senensky (piano)

Sam Noto (trumpet)

Bob Mover (alto sax)

Neil Swainson (bass)

Barry Elmes (drums)

Rec. Jazz Partners Studio, Toronto, December 21-22, 1989.

By the time this recording was made in 1989 (it’s a shame that it has had to wait more than 30 years to be issued) all five of these musicians had been playing top quality jazz for a good few years. Had they chosen to ‘look back’ they could have been excused a certain pride; but it is clear from the album’s title and the music to be heard on it that these excellent musicians preferred, musically speaking, to live very much in the present and play without nostalgic refections. Though none of the five could be called one of the ‘greats’ of jazz, they were/all musicians of high standing in the world of jazz and all regularly played with many undisputed ‘greats’ of the music. It is worth, I think, illustrating the stylistic range evident in the background of these musicians.

The leader, pianist Bernie Senensky (born in Winnipeg in 1944) became a well-established figure on the jazz community in Toronto from the 1960s onwards. There he frequently accompanied visiting musicians, showing himself to be a thoroughly versatile pianist. His versatility, indeed, was such that an exhaustive list (if it possible to compile one) of those he worked with – in Toronto and elsewhere – would be huge. Amongst the names such a list would include one might mention Chet Baker, Art Blakey, Terry Gibbs, Art Pepper, Art Farmer, Eddie Henderson, Scott Hamilton, Bobby Watson, Gary Bartz and Pharoah Sanders. As even this short list suggests, Senensky began in bop and hard bop, but his abilities and interests took him well beyond the boundaries of those idioms. With his sophisticated harmonic sense and gift for melodic invention, Senenky has never needed to look back too much.

Trumpeter Sam Noto (born 1930 in Buffalo, New York) initially made his name as a gifted section player, working (often as lead trumpet) with two very different big bands, those led by Stan Kenton and Count Basie. In the 1960s he spent some time working in the show bands of Las Vegas, before relocating to Toronto, where he worked regularly with Rob McConnell’s big band, The Boss Brass. In the 1970s and 1980s he found greater appreciation as a soloist, making a series of small group recordings for the Xanadu and Unisson labels (such as Entrance and Act One, both 1987,Notes to You, 1977, Noto-Riety, 1978, Sam Noto 2-4-5, 1986 and Sam Noto Duo, 1987) – on the last of these, the duo consisted of Noto and bassist Neil Swainson, the two being reunited in the recording under review. Other musicians appearing in these groups led by Noto included pianists Barry Harris, Jimmy Rowles and Dolo Coker as well as saxophonists such as Joe Romano, Ronnie Cuber and Pat La Barbera.

Bassist Neil Swainson (born in British Columbia in 19510 has been a mainstay of Canadian jazz since the 1970s. he moved to Toronto in 1977. At various times he appeared on records led by, inter alia, trumpeter Woody Shaw and pianists Jay McShann and Walter Norris. From 1988 to 2011 he was the regular bassist of George Shearing, touring – and recording – extensively with the pianist. He has also worked with figures such as George Coleman, Joanne Brackeen and Lee Konitz. When, in 1989, he made his first album as a leader, 49^th Parallel (released by Concord) his band included Woody Shaw and tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson.

Saxophonist Bob Mover – he plays soprano, tenor and alto saxophones, but sticks to the alto here – was born (in Boston, Massachusetts) in 1952. From the early 1970s he was based in New York and was a regular presence in many of the the city’s jazz clubs. In 1973 he spent several months in a band led by Charles Mingus at the Five Spot and also worked with Chet Baker, including a European tour; in 1981 he made a second European tour with the trumpeter. 1977 saw the first album recorded under his leadership, On the Move, his band including the trumpeter Tom Harrell, pianist Mike Nock and bassist George Mraz. In 1983 he left New York for Montreal, teaching at Concordia University. While in Montreal he recorded, in January 1986, his fifth album as a leader, The Night Bathers (Justin Time) in a trio, along with avant-garde pianist Paul Bley and guitarist John Abercombie. Between 1987 and 1997, Mover based himself in Toronto, teaching at the city’s York University and playing locally (as on the album here reviewed), while also finding time, in 1988, to play some European gigs with the pianist Walter Davis Jr. He later returned to New York to play and teach. Abundant information on Mover’s very various career – along with an extensive discography – can be found at Noal Cohen’s Jazz History website ( https://attictoys.com/bob-mover/ ).

Of the five musicians on this album, drummer Barry Elmes is perhaps the least well-known in Europe. In 1995 he toured China, Japan and South Korea as part of the Oliver Jones trio and in 2000 led his own quintet on a visit to Chile. He, like the others, is an accomplished musician who has frequently kept distinguished jazz company. Born in Ontario in 1952, Elmes has been prominent on the Canadian jazz scene since at least the 1980s. He has worked with such major talents as Tommy Flanagan, Cedar Walton, Joe Henderson, Charlie Haden and John Abercrombie. Since 1992 he has led the Barry Elmes Quintet, the personnel of which has included Canadian stars such as guitarists Reg Schwager, Lorne Losky and Ed Bickert, trumpeters Kevin Turcotte and Brian O’Kane, and saxophonist Mike Murley. This quintet has recorded several well-received albums and toured extensively. As a sideman, Elmes has appeared on albums led or co-led by, amongst others, Joe Henderson, Cedar Walton, Dizzy Gillespie, Don Thompson and Fraser MacPherson. He has taught for some years (part time) at York University.

Even these necessarily incomplete accoints make it clear that all five of these players have won the respect of important and demanding figures in the jazz world, and that all of them have, across long careers (already of some considerable length in 1989) demonstrated an ability to make valuable contributions in many different musical contexts.

Initially, I wondered whether these musicians had played together at all regularly (in and around Toronto) before the recording was made. The cohesiveness of the music-making and the speed and clarity of the interplay between the performers make one imagine so. But such qualities might simply reflect the high professional competence and experience which the players brought to the studio – perhaps reinforced by some basic rehearsal. The answer to my question became somewhat clearer when I found online ( https://jazz.fm/bernie-senensky-dont-look-back-album/ ) the edited text of an interview with Bernie Senensky on the occasion of the ‘rediscovery’ of this album. Senensky confirms that both Bob Mover and Sam Noto were living in Toronto at the time and that they were “part of the [Toronto] scene”. Senensky also reports that the album “was recorded at trumpet player John McLeod’s house. He had a bunch of musicians who collaborated in the studio, and a label called Unity Records. It was Barry Elmes, Neil Swainson and a bunch of musicians around that time. John had the studio at his house. The living room was where we played, upstairs was the recording [booth]. Lots of recordings were done there. I did about four or five, a lot of them with New York musicians who had come to Toronto to play at the clubs like Bourbon Street. Gary Bartz was one, and a couple of others.” I hope some more of these recordings come to light.

The programme is made up of eight originals by Senensky, one tune by Bob Mover and three ‘standards’. As well as being the title track, Senensky’s ‘Don’t Look Back’ also opens the disc, full of hard bop rhythms after an opening statement full of tight ensemble playing. Bob Mover’s solo here illustrates how well he can play in the idiom of Phil Woods and Jackie Mclean (who both, of course, like Mover, have Charlie Parker as their musical ‘father’) without ever sounding merely derivative of either. Sam Noto takes a solo which is bright in sound and lucid in structure and invention. Senensky’s work, both as soloist and accompanist is vibrant and attractive. This track would not have sounded out of place on many a Blue Note disc of the 1960s. After this opening track I felt sure that I was in safe hands, musically speaking, and looked forward to hearing more.

Most of the tracks have things to recommend them. ‘Jump for Joe’, for example, with its bluesy bounce wouldn’t have been out of place in the book of one of Horace Silver’s bands of the 1960s. It has the flavour (without direct indebtedness) of a Silver band like the one which made Song for My Father in 1963. Bob Mover’s solo on this track is very impressive and those by Senensky and Swainson which follow are also memorable. The band’s account of Hank Mobley’s ‘The Latest’, belongs to a slightly earlier idiom, reminiscent of some of the best sessions recorded by Prestige in the 1950s. Mobley’s own recording of the tune can be heard on Mobley’s 2nd Message, recorded in 1956 and issued by Prestige in 1957. Though Mover is not as distinctive a soloist as Mobley, he helps to make this 1989 version subtle and intelligent. Here, as elsewhere on the disc Swainson and Elmes prove, with Senensky, to be an admirable rhythm section.

Mover’s ‘May in June’ is a swinging waltz played by a quartet (minus Noto) on which the composer plays with engaging lyricism and is clearly stimulated by Senensky’s incisive accompaniment. Noto is also absent from ‘Who Cares’ and ‘I Hear A Rhapsody’. Both Gershwin’s ‘Who Cares’ and ‘I Hear A Rhapsody’ (a 1940 song by Jack Baker and Dick Gasparre which was a 1941 hit for singer Bob Carroll and the Charlie Barnet big band) are taken at fairly rapid tempos (compare, for example, this account of ‘Who Cares’ with that by the Bill Evans Trio of 1963 (on Time Remembered). The fast tempos don’t trouble Bob Mover at all – he tackles the material with fluency and imagination. I should perhaps confess that listening to this disc has given me a fuller appreciation of Mover than I hitherto had; it has encouraged me to listen again (or, indeed, for the first time) to other recordings by him – the experience has been a pleasurable one, in which I made a number of ‘discoveries’. On the present CD Mover is as thoroughly assured on the slow ‘Danse Encore’ as he is on the faster tracks mentioned above; ‘Danse Encore’, by Senensky is a tune that deserves to be explored by other musicians.

All in all, this is, it has to be admitted, not an album the rediscovery of which will necessitate any rewriting of jazz history; nor is it a disc of startling originality. It is, though, full of high-quality modern jazz played by a group who can all be described as minor masters. I use the epithet ‘minor’ (by which I do not mean ‘bad’ or inadequate) because they were not great originators, but assured masters of a tradition established by the ‘great’ masters.

This is an album which is warmly recommended to all who are fond of the main currents of modern jazz between the 1950s and the end of the 1970s – or to those who want to know more about the development of the Canadian jazz scene (too often overlooked and underrated in Europe). I believe that all five of the musicians heard on this disc are still alive; they can surely now be allowed to ‘look back’ at Don’t Look Back with considerable satisfaction and pride.

Glyn Pursglove

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