Matt Bauder & Day in Pictures - Nightshades (2014) Lossless

Tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Matt Bauder is one of those young musicains who has an equal capacity to play in and out of the formal idiomatic conventions. When with Memorize the Sky he goes out, profiting from his studies with the innovative composers Anthony Braxton, Alvin Lucier and Ron Kuivila. Conversely, his band Day in Pictures (now reformed by replacing Angelica Sanchez for Kris Davis) operates completely in jazz domains, and does it very much according to the tradition. The truth is that the jazz tradition has defined a space for freedom right from the start, and Bauder is a master of combining that freedom with form.

There’s a retro feeling all over, going back to Fifties jazz, however the perspectives and devices that underly the music presented in “Nightshades” are uniquely modern. You get all the swing you can imagine, but never in obvious ways, the harmonic constructions are unusually sophisticated, reflecting Bauder’s appreciation of American new music, and the thematic melodies have an elegancy only paralleled by the best pop and folk tunes. Not to mention the improvised interventions, full of drive and spontaneous creativity, precisely what you want from an authentic and committed jazz opus. Yes, you got it: this is a luxury of a record.