#ninjazz

When it comes to making sound together, the bi-national quartet Ad Hoc is quite compatible.  Trumpeter Tomasz Dąbrowski, who composed eight of the album’s nine tunes, is a Pole who lives in Denmark. His c.v., which includes work with Rudi Mahall, Ikue Mori and Jamaladeen Tacuma, promises inside/outside versatility, and a look at his discography reveals a penchant for playing in bands that don’t have a harmony instrument. The rest of the band comes from Japan. Veteran pianist Hiroshi Minami has been the house pianist at Tokyo’s Pit Inn jazz club, but he’s also spent years working in Boston and Copenhagen. The rhythm section of Hiroki Chiba (bass, electronics) and Hiroshi Tsuboi (drums) is younger and a bit more tuned in to abstract exploration, but also capable of conventionally swinging accompaniment. 

Whichever way Dąbrowski wants to swing, there’s someone in the band who has his back and someone else to propose another way of playing things. He and Minami patiently glide in tandem formation over the other musicians’ low boil on “Penalty Fare.”  And when trumpet and bowed bass get into a close and intricate grapple on “Lines for Bogdan,” piano and drums push from either side, flipping from light drizzle to stormy surge. The choice to work with a pianist often draws patiently forthright melodies from the trumpeter; if he grew up with fantasies of stepping into Freddie Hubbard’s spot in the VSOP band, he gets to work a few of them out here. But Chiba in particular keeps Dąbrowski in touch with more abstract realms, often to great effect; one wishes for more of the sparking electronic processing he employs on “Corrosive Power.” When it comes communicating through tune and timbre, this is an ensemble with plenty to say.