Emma Dayhuff Innovations & Lineage The Chicago Project review

The double bassist leader Emma Dayhuff is with percussionist Kahil El’Zabar, saxophonist Isaiah Collier (who also plays piano on the album) and singer Dee Alexander.

It’s been a good year for live recordings and this riff heavy slice of freedom adds to that trend.

Recorded in April last year at a place called Cafe Coda on Williamson Street in Madison, Wisconsin – described on its own website as “Madison’s premiere venue for jazz” – exploratory vocals and vamps are knitted well together on opener ‘Just Look Fly.’

Most of the pieces are exceptionally long, some too much so. But put that frustration to one side. Because this is about being sucked into a world where the exits are less important than the entrances and the long haul trumps short term thinking and negativity.

Rooted in riffs and vamps and a certain spiritual healing, saxophonist Isaiah Collier ably provides the latter on the tender ‘When the Light Hits.’ His style lands somewhere between James Brandon Lewis and David Murray.

There’s a great, sprawlingly compelling, vocal from Dee Alexander – reminiscent of the style of Gil Scott-Heron interpreter Charenee Wade – on this deeply cogitating Henry Huff number.

Later I was taken by the saxist’s role on Hank Mobley Soul Station classic ‘Dig Dis‘ not at all done in a businessman bounce style you sometimes hear in relaxed winebar settings when new generation fans like UK saxist Alec Harper tackle the style. If you know British bassist Paula Gardiner’s graceful work then what Emma Dayhuff does here will chime. The American is also as fine a technician as the far more experimental Linda May Han Oh and sometimes plays in much more avant-garde settings although the parameters of this release are deliberately delineated into a less panoramic framework than you’ll find on new work of Oh’s such as on Strange Heavens. If you don’t know either players, no matter. As a crib the Dayhuff sound is tonally very meaningful and there’s a lot of poise to what she does at the centre of the sound where the beat is measured out with precision. Overall I’d say however that the David Murray collaborator Kahil El’Zabar on his own tune ‘Katon’ is the most inspirational at shaping the sound with even the most tentative of touches and adopting a griot like mystical persona at all times key.

Followers will know the piece from 2020’s Spirit Groove which is even better. Overall, these are thought provoking sounds that reward frequent replay and meditation upon.
Get this on the Division 81 imprint on Bandcamp and other platforms. Dayhuff is also in pianist Rachel Eckroth’s touring trio who play Ronnie Scott’s on 15 October & Dayhuff’s Esthesis Quartet colleague drummer Tina Raymond, according to the Ronnie’s site information, is to complete the Eckroth trio personnel for that autumnal occasion.