City Life: Music of Gregg Hill

The double-album City Life: Music of Gregg Hill is the third recording of Hill compositions that trombonist Michael Dease has released; and although 7 of the 18 compositions are by others, Hill is also a co-producer of the set. For this project, Dease goes way beyond his and fellow Michigander Hill's usual reliance on Mid-American musicians. Instead, Dease surrounds himself with bonafide A-list jazz musicians on these New York sessions, consisting of separate trio and quintet discs. The trio disc pairs Dease with Linda May Han Oh (bass) and Jeff "Tain" Watts (drums), joined on the quintet disc by Nicole Glover (tenor) and Geoffrey Keezer (piano). Additionally, Dease's young (single digit) daughter, Brooklyn, provides wordless, chanted vocals on two versions of "Movie Theme" with the trio. Although he never employs the arsenal of mutes and plungers common to many jazz trombonists, Dease commands a formidable array of tonal and timbral techniques on his open horn. On the album title track, a trio number, he conjures up two notes (a dyad) with harmonics, and on the same track he also plays a section of his solo on just the trombone mouthpiece. elsewhere he stutters, slurs, cascades, blares and brays out notes as easily as he summons a lush, burnished Tommy Dorsey tone on ballads. each disc contains a composition by his trombone idol, J.J. Johnson. The trio track, "Sweet Georgia Gillespie", is pure, uptempo bebop. The quintet track, "enigma", finds him taking a backseat to Glover's saxophone lead on the ballad, then soloing assertively before joining in the soothing ballad finale. Hill's compositions, brought to vibrant life by his and Dease's inventive arrangements, often subvert convention. Tunes often change up tempos, sometimes even time signatures, or, in the case of the trio's "Catalyst", are deceptive about what they actually are. "Double Bill", a trio track, mixes up meters from bass and drums under a Dease solo incorporating quotes from "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise"; and the quintet album closer, "Lafayette Square", a nod to New Orleans, is cast in 2/4 time, with the leader mimicking a Big easy second line trumpet. The most appealing and captivating aspect of City Life is its embrace of that hoary old jazz description: the sound of surprise. These tracks abound in that element of surprise, from the constantly varied ensemble approaches to the shifting combinations such as the tenor saxophone-drums dual solo on "The Classic II" or Keezer's dueling left and right hand lines in numerous solos—and most of all, Dease's constantly changing, shape-shifting approaches to improvising, always avoiding the obvious.