Playing archetypally no nonsense meat and potatoes tunes written largely by M. T. B. drummer Bill Stewart, with the inclusion of Walter Smith III’s woozy ‘ACE’ as penultimate track – Blue Note sax star Smith is also on the record with Stewart and (Brad Mehldau trio) fellow M. T. B. mucker, double bassist Larry Grenadier.
No smoke and mirrors
Live at the Village Vanguard includes a longer version of Stewart’s ‘Mynah’ that fans with still at least partially functioning memories and the helpful aid of magnifying glass and deerstalker will know was on 1997 Criss Cross Jazz release Telepathy, an album that Grenadier was also on back in the day and that the bassist adds a lot of atmosphere to on the new version.
Also here are a few Snide Remarks (Blue Note, 1995) numbers: the piece ‘Space Acres’ that had Telepathy pianist Bill Carrothers – over playing the Derry jazz festival soon – on it. Plus there’s the one (with a big solo exploration found on the new album) called ‘7.5’, which appears sequenced at the end of the upcoming album.
The Criss Cross continuum stylistically is matched as the Dutch label enters a new golden age in the A&R department once again and keeps it real for the post bop and straightahead diaspora starved of the real McCoy (only Smoke Sessions Records are as good for this kind of thing in all indiedom but Criss Cross has a far more extensive back catalogue).
Incandescence (Pirouet, 2008) number ‘See Ya’ is also among the pieces on this new live in New York album in a beautifully slow treatment where Smith is simmeringly compelling and on which the audience noise capture is likeable.
Drawn from gigs done in the Village at the Vanguard recorded over five nights in late September 2023, Stewart had played with the trio before for week long stints in 2018 and the previous year. He says:
“I was also thinking of the famous tenor-bass-drums recordings by Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson at the Vanguard. So I felt it was time to document the trio playing in the room.”
Lesser known choice
A further Stewart number cryptically entitled ‘How Long Is Jazz?’ appeared on Stewart, Goldings, Hays 2005 album Keynote Speakers which is hard to find (cover art above the video – although we note on YouTube that some intrepid jazzers in the know are already covering the piece). Grenadier is great on this track and the audience go, by their standards anyway, a bit more potty.
The Smith track ‘ACE’ appeared twinklingly on 2018’s In Common (Whirlwind) an album that had Marcus Gilmore of classic Vijay Iyer Historicity era Noughties renown, on it and works well in context.
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