The Angels Sang

I recently wrote a short piece for Chamber Music magazine about a new album, Vital Spark, which brings together music written by the late Kenny Wheeler performed by his longtime associates including bassist Dave Holland and vocalist Norman Winstone, along with a 25-voice choir interpreting poetry by the likes of William Blake, Stevie Smith, and Langston Hughes. It’s an absorbing project that should be explored by anyone familiar with Wheeler’s estimable body of work.

The recording also put me in mind of the superb album Angel Song, released under Wheeler’s name in 1997 on ECM Records. The album features nine Wheeler compositions, but for me the project deserves to be credited equally to all four participants: Wheeler (on trumpet and flugelhorn), Holland, guitarist Bill Frisell, and the venerable alto saxophonist Lee Konitz. (I’ve read that drummer Jack DeJohnette was meant to be in the studio but was ultimately unable to attend.) Each man is essential, and each displays some of the finest work of his career. Angel Song is a quiet recording — a chamber-jazz endeavor exuding reflective lyricism. Above all, it is a project bursting with melody.

Melody — that blessed word. The older I get, the more I appreciate the power of musical lines that find strength and substance in memorable melodic shapes, not only in composition but in improvisation. A striking opening and closing theme that inspires instrumental solos echoing the lyrical solidity of the established melody is a thing of lasting beauty. Call me retrograde, but that unity of melodic thinking still feeds my passion for jazz.

It all goes back to the first recordings that gave me the jazz bug. As I look back to 1972, it sounds like the cliché of clichés. The breakthrough album was Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, the ur recording, which to this day I recommend to any novice listener curious about this odd thing called jazz. The 1959 album inhabits its own world: with texture, atmosphere, lyricism, and serious improvisation. Subdued in volume and tempo, Kind of Blue was cloaked in a mysterious aura that pulled you in despite the unfamiliarity of its musical context. But what it also had in abundance — at least for a teenager immersed in the rock and pop music of the early 1970s — was melody.

Medium-tempo tunes like “So What,” “All Blues,” and “Freddie Freeloader” were built on simple melodies that instantly found a home in your heart. The slower compositions, “Blue in Green” and “Flamenco Sketches,” had a more elusive character, but after a few listens their melodies, too, became indelible. The improvisations by the giants on hand — trumpeter Davis, pianist Bill Evans, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, and alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley — no matter how prolix (as in the case of those from the two saxophonists), seemed to grow organically from the contours of the stated melody. Thanks to this strong melodic undertow, it all felt of a piece, and thus understandable. Maybe jazz wasn’t so forbidding after all.

Angel Song, while no Kind of Blue in either overall quality or lasting impact, nonetheless shares that same fealty to the power of melody. Wheeler wrote strong themes that are essential to each performance rather than serving merely as structural frames for improvisation. These compositions establish the album’s introspective mood; much like Kind of Blue, Angel Song is of a piece. And like great actors in a tight-knit ensemble, each soloist stays in character. Wheeler, who cultivated an inward style that somehow escaped the overarching influence of Davis, is consistently compelling, as is the ever-adroit Holland.

But Konitz and Frisell remain the stars of the session, never raising their voices to make a point. Konitz is as acutely lyrical as he has ever been, which is high praise indeed. Frisell, for his part, displays a remarkable ability to shape and guide a performance — both in his deft accompaniment and in his singular improvisations — while melding seamlessly into the whole.

Angel Song, again like Kind of Blue, announced itself as an instant masterpiece and remains so today. Melody, take a bow.