KALIA VANDEVER - Regrowth

They say the magic of jazz is elusive, a substance particularly subject to the shared feeling in the room the moment musicians pick up their instruments. Playing a piece even just twice never yields the same results. So how should one approach that fluid borderland between composition and improvisation? Kalia Vandever, a young composer and trombonist based in New York, directs her instruments through her own compositions as if guiding a journey inside a taut elastic band of rhythms and melodic cues. Her touch is often intimate and graceful, yet the tracks she writes open up like a net, driven by a pronounced choral lyricism and a series of ideas borrowed from the art of free interpretation.

“Regrowth” is a record with a well-defined personality, yet it also sounds like the product of a tightly-knit sextet; Immanuel Wilkins (saxophone), Lee Meadvin (guitar), Paul Cornish (piano), Nick Dunston (double bass) and Connor Parks (drums) are not mere session players but integral parts of a dialogue in which the timbres of horns, strings and percussion blend with the composer's austere trombone tone, functioning like a mini-orchestra. The theme of regrowth suggested by the title becomes perceptible precisely when the instruments chase one another, making for a listen that's gripping on several levels at once.

“Soft” opens the collection like a quiet Sunday-morning gospel, almost hinting at the entrance of Tom Waits's voice, but instead Kalia steps aside for her instrumentalists: trombone and saxophone intertwine affectionately over a sparing rhythm section, now stretching out, now folding back into the initial melodic ostinato, building a progression that never loses sight of the original theme's sober, elegiac touch. “False Memories” starts from the same premise but soon turns more extroverted, including a stern piano interlude and a closing drum solo that drags itself along like a wounded animal.

Dominated once again by piano in a continuous rise and fall of snappy notes and softened arpeggios, “Passing Thoughts” offers the record's nervier side, a feeling that carries through into the jarring, vaguely free-jazz cacophony of “An Unwelcome Visit”, where the unwelcome guest is quite literally shown the door.

The use of guitar is also notable, perhaps because it's less common in the traditional jazz setup; here the instrument adorns the textures of “Lift”, but it curiously also finds a place in the atmospheric, ambient slowness of “More Of The Good Stuff Later”, arpeggiating throughout the track like a pendulum clock, while the rest of the instruments try to stir the stillness, creating a mini-rhapsody in under seven minutes.

A recording that's ultimately quite simple but one that highlights the talents of a musician already well on her way to developing her own language. Worth noting, in fact, is her work alongside Joel Ross, Moses Sumney and the experimental collective tilt, among others, as well as a string of session appearances in the noisy world of pop, with the likes of Harry Styles and Lizzo.

In short, young Kalia is quietly present just about everywhere, but the moment she focuses her ideas, her touch produces gripping sonic filigrees, shaped by a clear, richly varied tone that's never out of place. “Regrowth” may for now be just a small drop in the ocean of contemporary jazz, but if you've read this far, you might as well give it a listen.

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10/11/2022