#brian charette

Prené’s project also benefits from the sizeable ace in the deck that is organist Brian Charette. With drummer Jordan Young completing the package they form a trio that doesn’t have any specific instrumental precedence in the music. Chops? Check. Solid setlist? Check. Group chemistry? Again, check. Where a subjective obstacle manifests is in Prené’s very vehicle for improvisation, something he ironically notes in the story of how he adopted the instrument. It’s that sort of candor that goes a good way toward countering any lasting concern. 

Originally a student of the diatonic (blues) harmonica, Prené at first found the rounded edges and smooth action of the chromatic off-putting. Absent edges and metallic dissonance of its cerulean cousin it can come across like a neutered accordion, particularly in ballad settings. Prené’s versatility and agility with a line shore up some of the tonal deficiencies and sameness that can creep in across the program. His colleagues regularly recoup the rest with clever support and Charette’s consistently creative solos that refrain from stealing the show.

The material is also uniformly engaging from the Charette-scripted Sonny Rollins contrafact “Air on a Sunny String” to a cover of “Milestones” that Prené personalizes intensely via a link chain of luminous choruses. “46th Street” nods to his side career as an educator and founder New York Harmonica School with a syncopated groove and slow-burn melodic release that is precisely Charette’s forte. The album caps with “Bad April Fool,” another original where this time Prené breaks out his old diatonic over an old school blues shuffle. The difference is immediate and striking with the perhaps unintended effect of posing the question: what if he had approached the entire album with it instead?

Altoist Mike DiRubbo is the only holdover from Charette’s preceding incarnations. Flautist Itai Kriss, tenorist Kenny Brooks and bass clarinetist Karel Ruzicka are the relative new recruits. Drummer Brian Fishler ably shifts between engine room and accent duties and all five men sound totally dialed in to Charette’s designs. “Fried Birds” has a lush, stop-start, little big band vibe as a relay of terse statements opens up amongst the horns before solos proper. “Elephant Memory” has a melodic tag reminiscent of The Stylistics “People Make the World Go Round” that benefits from the layered sonorities of the reeds and flute. Charette plays the hoary warhorse “Harlem Nocturne” surprisingly straight, once again reveling in the rich, cumulative sound of his colleagues while coaxing a viscous incremental beat.

“Silver Lining” brings the funk and gives Fishler a chance to engage the pocket against a ripe bass ostinato by the leader while the horns riff opulently. Ruzicka, DiRubbo, Brooks and Kriss each deliver individualized improvisations that ride rather than erode the groove and picturing Charette’s pleasure at how well the piece comes off proves no problem. Outfitted with bright unison passages and slanted counterpoint, “As If to Say” feels almost like a ballad rejoinder while the disc’s title piece traffics in similar structural consensus in the service of emotive openness. “Cherokee” is the set’s other relic, given an extended rendering as a rare instance where Charette seizes initial solo honors for himself.

Three more originals close out the program and bring the project well into double-album territory in terms of duration. Fishler functions as fulcrum on the slow-burn, Janus-faced “Want” and the kinetically-charged “Frenzy,” while “Low Tide” brings the set full circle with final soulful salvos from the horns. Charette’s spent much of the last year focusing on solo projects that augment his organ with electronics and sampling. Solo home performance snippets are regular additions to his Facebook page. All this is to say that he’s been staying active, biding his time like so many peers in anticipation of a return in access to in-person audiences. Here’s hoping that interim is almost at an end.

Charette’s earlier effort had the distinction of shaping Madonna’s “Borderline” and the Hall & Oates staple “Sara Smile” into credible jazz creations. Here, the cant calibrates toward originals with only a warmly-whirring after-hours take on Billy Strayhorn’s evergreen “Chelsea Bridge” and a lush, perfume-scented rendering of Duke Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss” falling outside the personally minted purview. “Yolk” percolates on the plush combination of chugging bassline and a syncopated righthand improvisation while “Girls” works like an interlocking suite of laidback patterns across its relatively expansive six-and-a-half minutes. 

Track titles relay Charette’s subtle and varied sense of humor. “Good Tipper” embodies both optimism and generosity through the way in which chordal variations are stacked onto a brisk tempo and not-a-second-wasted duration. “Silicone Doll” riffs on another Strayhorn standard spun from satin from a chromatic standpoint. “Hungarian Bolero” and “Aligned Arpeggio” wed comedy to musical specifics, the first coming on like some haunted Zamboni soundtrack while the second uses the titular progression for luminous ballad purposes that sound almost fugue-like before veering unexpectedly into dub. A complex assemblage of switches, pedals, keys, and motors, the B-3 was always destined for more than stereotypes and derision. Charette proves this to be true and here’s hoping folks are paying attention this time around.

Coleman had the bittersweet good fortune of being hired into the Davis Quintet in the liminal period between John Coltrane’s departure and Wayne Shorter’s hire. As with Sonny Stitt, Hank Mobley and Sam Rivers, his impact on the epochal ensemble was consequently given comparatively short shrift despite Davis’ on-the-record assertion that he “played everything almost perfectly.” Precision was perhaps part of the problem. Given the singular natures of both his predecessor and successor, Coleman’s “Salisbury steak and potatoes” sound just didn’t stand out in such heterodox company. The saxophonist took his dismissal in stride though, parlaying a subsequent stream of sideman dates including posts with organists Shirley Scott, John Patton, and John Patterson. Those experiences serve him well with Charette who abstains from the more experimental side of his output in favor of populist standards and covers.

“Stella by Starlight” is a direct salute to Coleman’s tenure with Miles, just as “Maiden Voyage” dials into his part in the eponymous Blue Note album by Hancock. “Body and Soul” and “Autumn Leaves” represent more conventional tenor fodder, but Charette puts appreciable English on each through the nimble use of pedals and effects. The younger Coleman keeps a fluid beat and Juris sounds like he’s having fun with both the fills and on the occasions where solo junctures swing his way. Charette’s gospel-inflected slow blues “Father and Son”, the only original of the session references both the Colemans’ familial bonds and the artistic affiliation shared by esteemed sideman and ostensible leader that started with  the common denominator of George, Jr. A rousing rendering of aged sax staple “Tenor Madness” signals the session’s terminus with George, Sr. romping through one final blow. Fortunately, a return trip is as convenient and extant as the allocation of time for the cuing of a second spin.