“Live at the Freight” was named one of the 10 best recordings of 2014 by Ken Weiss (Cadence, Jazz Inside) and Duck Baker (The Absolute Sound, New York Jazz Record)
Live at the Freight, New Artists Records
Connie Crothers, piano
Jessica Jones, tenor sax
Grego Applegate Edwards
Gapplegate Music Review, 2013
Connie Crothers is one of the living masters of the jazz piano legacy, no question. She has made album after album of original cutting-edge piano jazz, yet she also encompasses the entire tradition. Lately she hasn't channeled as much of that tradition on disk as she used to. But then enter Live at the Freight (New Artists 1056). It's Connie and the rather underrecorded Jessica Jones on alto sax, in a series of duets recorded live at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley, summer 2011. It's a studied, exciting exercise in rethinking bop-and-after tradition, freely interpreted for the avant sensibilities of today. They tackle some of the old chestnuts like "All the Things You Are" and "There Will Never Be Another You," go full throttle into some free improvisations, and end with a Jessica Jones original. In the process you hear some first-level interaction between Jessica and Connie. Jessica turns out to be quite well matched with Ms. Crothers. Like Connie, Ms. Jones has thoroughly absorbed the tradition and makes of it something very personal and modern-free. It's a wonderful series of dual improvisations to be heard here. Connie is on a roll with all the considerable pianism she has to devote to the music. She encompasses the harmonic implications of both the music channeled and the immediacy of her freely inventive partner, melodically countering Ms. Jones' very creative line weavings with those of her own. They play their way in and out of the melodic-harmonic particulars of the standards with a thoughtful vibrancy, then soar in the freely devised sections. Live at the Freight has it all. Jessica Jones at her impressive best, a post-Bird flying gracefully, skillfully, creatively. Connie Crothers taking the music apart and putting it back together in her very own way, confirming why she is so important to the scene. This one takes flight and takes you far. You will not be disappointed.
Brian Questa
The Free Jazz Collective
April 30, 2014
This was one of the most delightful musical surprises I’ve ever come across. I expected exceptional playing, but I wasn’t expecting such a kick in the face. (A pleasant kick in the face) That’s exactly what I got—some of the most sobering jazz improvisation on record. This is a noble addition to the great jazz duos in the history—Jim Hall and Bill Evans, Ellington and Blanton, Horace Parlan and Archie Shepp, to name my favorites. Jessica Jones and Connie Crothers’ effort, Live and the Freight, is every bit as memorable as the aforementioned duos, and every bit as worthy. I promise you, I cannot think of a better example of a performance so grounded in the jazz tradition, and yet so effortlessly unbounded. The tunes on this album are free improvisation, and the free improvisations are tunes.
Connie Crothers is a master pianist, unrivaled in the scene today. Her fearless playing, with its risks and endless directions, can leave one breathless. I get the distinct perception—only possible from a handful of players in history—that she is truly improvising at every single moment, responding to the input from Jessica Jones, the exigencies of the moment, and her own musical motives, unanimously. To Jones’ smooth bluesy phrasing, Crothers sometimes plays the obliging accompanist—other times, the devil’s advocate. Pushing and pulling between the blues and the upper extensions of the now, Jones’ tendency is to blend, like the harmonization of instrumental tone itself, as she becomes the third hand at Connie Crothers’ piano.
Years into the future, this album will continue to present information to its listeners. Each track is filled with a wealth of knowledge and command. It can be a difficult experience to hear the entire album in one sitting: the thoughts brewed in me from a single track last for days. One must prepare for this one. Here is an album you may not discover on a “greatest hits” list for albums of 2014 from your typical jazz blog —for that very reason, you’re going to want to hear this.
Robert Iannapollo
Cadence
April/May/June 2014
Looking at her discography, one would assume that pianist Connie Crothers finds the duet format a fruitful form of expression. Nearly half of her 26 recordings have been in the format. Prior duets have been with Max Roach (“Swish,” one of the unheralded recordings of the 1980s), Kevin Norton, Ken Filiano and fellow pianist David Arner. Her most recent release, Live at the Freight, is a set of duets with tenor saxophonist Jessica Jones.
Crothers was a student of Lennie Tristano and has developed into an individual stylist (sure one of Tristano’s dictums) of great breadth and range. She can be a free improviser as well as an individual interpreter of standards and the song form. Tenor saxophonist Jones, although not as well known, has been releasing recordings since the mid 1990s. She leads her own quartet, has recorded several albums under her own name and also recorded with Joseph Jarman, Don Cherry and Mark Taylor.
Crothers and Jones seem a perfect match. Live at The Freight is a set of standards and one tune by Jones (“Family”), separated by improvisations. Jones’ tenor has a rich, singing tone with an added bite and attack when the music gets heated, which is much of the time on this disc. These two dive into “All the Things You Are” from the git-go, playfully dissecting it and reassembling it in a variety of ways. Crothers’ highly sophisticated harmonic palette is evident throughout and she provides Jones with a wide number of options. Jones’ flights take unexpected turns and twists on well-worn material and the two give this music new life. The set concludes with a warm Jones original, “Family,” which winds things down nicely.
Live at the Freight is a strong set of duets that show two of today’s finest players at the peak of their powers.
By Brent Black
Critical Jazz
2013 (5 Stars)
A stealth recording deserving of wide spread critical acclaim! Straight up, Jessica Jones and Connie Crothers Live at the Freight is an absolute gem!
Why? Simple...Take iconic standards performed at an exemplary level such as Duke Ellington's "In A Sentimental Mood" then carefully intermingled some highly accessible yet spontaneously energetic free jazz and you have a live duo that is crossing musical planes and welcoming everyone along for the journey. The venue is the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley and if not only the traveling improvisational aficionados radar then it well should be...
Two refer to these two ladies of jazz as fearless is the classic undersell. Anyone can share a bandstand and make great music, sharing the stage with a friend takes the music to a special place of connectivity that is on most occasions lost. You have to do more than play the notes. You have to make the music. Jones and Crothers become the music and the end result is indeed a beautiful thing. Connie Crothers is an infamous "underground" pianist long since championed by such luminaries as Lennie Tristano and Max Roach. Jessica Jones is a tenor saxophonist with the grit and resolve to hold her own on any bandstand.
"All The Things You Are" is treated as an evocative exploration of the Kern/Hammerstein classic where each in turn provides the perfect counterpoint for the other. Were it not for a working knowledge of the catalog from which they pull the Jessica Jones composition "Family" might easily pass as perhaps as a lesser known tune pulled from the Great American Songbook. The free improvisation including "Clothespins In A Row" is but a taste of the harmonic vision these two individuals have come to embrace playing free jazz in various intimate venues with other ensembles. The duet concept of piano and saxophone can on occasion come off "rehearsed" and with that flash back to the recitals most of us either attended or performed. Not here, Live at the Freight is spontaneous creativity at its finest.
Jordan Richardson
Something Else! Reviews
2013
Pianist Connie Crothers and tenor saxophonist Jessica Jones color outside the lines on Live At the Freight, a duo recording taken from a session in August of 2011 at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley.
Through the course of seven tracks, Crothers and Jones mesh their improvisational instincts with their practical talents and turn in a set of free-flowing music. The quality of thepartnership is apparent from the outset; these two artists listen as well as they play, fusing elegant and sharp lines to the underpinnings of some of the American Songbook's finest entries.
"Musically speaking and on a life level, we feel areas of enormous affinity," Crothers says of her relationship with the saxophonist. "Jessica is a great friend and we have talked about how we were shaped by growing up in Northern California and making our way as improvising musicians in New York. There's a freedom that comes from the recognition of this affinity." This sense of freedom is apparent at the outset of Live At the Freight, with an almost eccentric rendering of "All the Things You Are" by Kern and Hammerstein leading off the record. The familiarity of the melody is present but elusive, with Crothers' ivories tapping around the core and Jones' reed exploring the contours of the music rather than the basis of it.
There's also "In a Sentimental Mood." Once again, the ideological path through this Duke Ellington joint isn't so much about playing a standard as it is playing with a standard. Crothers builds tension with various piano flourishes and a spacious, intelligent solo, while Jones pushes through with muscled tones and emotional purpose.
Crothers has indeed been busy as of late, with five albums - including a four-CD box set - released last year alone. TranceFormation, a bracing and clever record featuring Andrea Wolper and Ken Filiano, seems to have at least in part laid some of the groundwork for the Freight session.
Alex Henderson
Jazz Inside
October 2013
Jazz musicians are often referred to as “inside players” or “outside players,” but the two are not mutually exclusive by any means. There are some avant-garde improvisers who play outside 100% of the time, and there are many swing, bop, post-bop, Dixieland and fusion artists who have no interest whatsoever in anything avant-garde. But there are also musicians who thrive on both the inside and the outside, and that is exactly what happens with tenor saxophonist Jessica Jones and acoustic pianist Connie Crothers on Live at the Freight. This post-bop/avant-garde CD documents an August 10, 2011 appearance at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley, California, where Jones and Crothers form an intimate, cohesive duo. The absence of drums and bass is not a problem; Jones and Crothers are fine without those instruments and say what needs to be said whether they are playing standards, Jones’ “Family” or some free-spirited improvisations.
The pacing is handled thoughtfully and handled well. Jones and Crothers play three very familiar standards: Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s “All the Things You Are,” Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood” and Harry Warren’s “There Will Never Be Another You”—and between those standards, they offer improvised performances. Much of the time, their playing is very inside. But when they do venture outside, one might hear Jones acknowledging John Coltrane’s more avant-garde side or Crothers offering some acknowledgement of the iconoclastic pianist Cecil Taylor (who is one of the most influential and innovative musicians in the history of avant-garde jazz—Taylor is right up there with Ornette Coleman and Roscoe Mtchell when it comes to being a trailblazer). Jones and Crothers’ playing can be either melodic or abstract, depending on what strikes their fancy at a given moment. They leave their options open. But the more avant-garde parts of Live at the Freight should be thought of as mildly avant-garde rather than radically avant-garde. Although Crothers has some Taylor-ish moments, she doesn’t play like that all the time. Much of her pianism on this 52-minute CD is melodic post-bop pianism. And there are times when Live at the Freight isn’t avant-garde at all.
Take, for example, Jones’ “Family,” which is the last song on the disc. “Family” is a warm, reflective, good-natured post-bop offering that lasts 10 minutes and doesn’t include any avant-garde playing at all. That selection is totally inside, and it certainly ends Live at the Freight on a congenial and accessible note.
Nonetheless, the inside/outside dynamic is an important part of the album’s appeal. And the friendly dialogue that Jones and Crothers enjoy yields satisfying results on Live at the Freight.
Tom Greenland
The New York City Jazz Record
September 2013
Live at the Freight captures a relaxed duo concert by tenor saxophonist Jessica Jones and pianist Connie Crothers, performed at Berkeley, California’s Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Both originally from the Bay Area - Jones is a product of Berkeley’s fertile multi- kulti jazz scene while Crothers majored in music at the university - the two women were far from a New-York- State-of-mind this evening, opting for a more laid-back take on three standards, three free improvs and a compelling original.
On “All the Things You Are”, “In a Sentimental Mood” and “There Will Never Be Another You” the duo hews close to the underlying song-forms, Jones usually laying out stoic but subtly unorthodox melody statements while Crothers is more extroverted and expansive in her accompanying prods, responses and side-trackings, often branching out into rhapsodic soliloquies. Many of Crothers’ vignettes could stand alone, restless ruminations that maintain their coherence through oblique allusions to the song structure and a firm, if implied, pulse. Jones often seems to be hovering in the shadows, a patient observer, as if she’s playing not the first but the second musical thought that comes to mind. “Another You” contains some sublime moments realized through offhand cadences and elastic interplay.
Interspersed between the standards are completely spontaneous pieces, the first a tentative reconnoitering, the second achieving a mellow tunefulness suspended in time, the third building in tiered climaxes. Jones’ poignant ballad “Family” - one of those tunes you could swear you’ve heard before - closes this fine set of laid- back radicalism, what you might call “Left Coast” jazz.