If you think you know the work of either pianist Sullivan Fortner or trumpeter Theo Croker. Stop. Think again.
This year both have already delivered two very stylistically different albums.
Croker is typically a nu jazz player – crossing over into dancier, more commercial sounds at times as on Dream Manifest.
Fortner usually goes far more trad than here and can tap into his New Orleans roots as on the tremendous Toussaint-esque Southern Nights.
I haven’t lived with this album for too long but admire its very different approach. There’s a sublime melancholia and a deft almost “ECM” flavour to it. ACT – arch rivals of ECM in Germany – rarely tap into that quintessential chamber jazz, austere soundsphere that Manfred Eicher has made world famous.
Their own approach is wildly eclectic and not dominated by just one producer although Siggi Loch for years developed what he wanted ACT to be, shaping the direction, investing hugely in building a family of artists some of whom stay a while others who are in the fam for good.
Close your eyes here and know nothing about who’s on the record or who is playing and you might make comparisons with what say Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith convey together although Play isn’t as far out.
Their album together called Defiant Life is a useful contrast.
Wadada has made an even more austere record with Sylvie Courvoisier which is less of a match, more a fractured consciousness that mirrors a certain dystopian sense of malaise.
