Jazz is having a ‘Halvorson moment’
Guitarist and her Thumbscrew bandmates come to SFJazz Center
Well, this is awkward. A collective trio featuring Pacifica-raised bassist Michael Formanek, drummer Tomas Fujiwara and guitarist Mary Halvorson, Thumbscrew is one of the most prodigiously creative ensembles on the contemporary jazz scene, and the band’s upcoming Bay Area gigs offer any number of storylines.
It runs counter to the spirit of the leaderless band to single out one player, but it’s hard to ignore Halvorson’s 21st century ascendance. A remarkably resourceful improviser, she’s released about two dozen albums under her own name since 2005, while contributing to another four dozen releases by both adventurous contemporaries and seminal composers like Anthony Braxton and John Zorn.
Her recent album “Code Girl” (Firehouse 12 Records), a quintet session with her Thumbscrew bandmates, as well as Oakland trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and vocalist Amirtha Kidambi singing Halvorson’s original songs, landed the guitarist on the cover of this month’s DownBeat. (In the photo she appears decidedly unimpressed by the attention.)
A few weeks before the magazine hit the newsstands, the Jazz Journalists Association announced she’d been voted guitarist of the year. Jazz is having a Halvorson moment, and her
fellow bandmates aren’t at all surprised.
“Mary’s thing is she’s so multifaceted,” says Formanek, 60. “All these different things she’s doing, she’s not trying to prove anything. She’s just challenging herself. She doesn’t make a big deal about whatever accolades she gets. She’s one of the hardest working and most focused musicians I know, and she’s going to keep evolving and getting better.”
A generation older than the 37-year-old Halvorson, Formanek provides a model for the kind of expansively networked creativity that distinguishes his Thumbscrew mates. A story on the band could just as easily focus on his SFJazz Center debut tonight on a double
bill pairing Thumbscrew with guitarist Julian Lage’s trio, a gratifying homecoming for Formanek four decades after leaving the Bay Area for New York City. Thumbscrew also performs Monday at Santa Cruz’s Kuumbwa and returns to California on Sept. 21 for a series of intimate sets at the Monterey Jazz Festival.
A piece on Thumbscrew also could focus on the trio’s protean nature, and the way it’s become a foundational force for more than half a dozen ensembles. In addition to Halvorson’s “Code Girl,” the trio play together in Fujiwara’s quintet the Hook Up, Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus and a new quintet led by Berkeley clarinetist and composer Ben
Goldberg.
Fujiwara and Halvorson both hail from the Boston area, but they first worked together after moving to Brooklyn in cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum’s Sextet. When Formanek happened to sub in the group for a concert, the trio quickly discovered a deep affinity for improvising together.
With all three players contributing original pieces, Thumbscrew released an impressive eponymous album in 2014 on Cuneiform, but the group faced the challenge of all all-star ensembles in carving out time to develop music together in the face of relentless touring schedules.
Connecting through Halvorson, the group found the holy grail of unstructured
free time via an unprecedented relationship with the Pittsburgh organization City of Asylum. A residency program originally launched as a refuge for writers in exile, the organization was starting to work with musicians.
For Thumbscrew the opportunity for intensive, undistracted collaboration yielded “Convallaria” (Cuneiform), one of 2016’s best albums. Another two-week City of Asylum residency led to the trio’s matching new Cuneiform releases that both feature gorgeous, vividly hued artwork by Asylum co-founder Diane Samuels.
“Ours” is an album of Thumbscrew originals and “Theirs” is a strikingly eclectic but cohesive session exploring music by the likes of Brazilian choro master Jacob do Bandolim (“Benzinho”), cult jazz composer Herbie Nichols (“House Party Starting”) and Argentine tango master Julio de Caro (“Buen Amigo”).
Most surprising is a sololess version of Evelyn Danzig’s sentimental 1950s pop tune “Scarlet Ribbons (For Her Hair),” a tune rarely played in jazz contexts. Halvorson’s arrangement is based on her transcription from the 1958 album “Easy Listening” by the great, but undersung guitarist Johnny Smith (best known for his popular early ’50s collaboration with Stan Getz, “Moonlight in Vermont”).
For a guitarist inextricably tied to jazz’s pioneering edge and who is a master of outside, free exploration, Halvorson’s love of Smith’s cool-toned, exquisitely calibrated playing reveals yet another facet of a manysided artist.
“I discovered him late and I’ve been in a real Johnny Smith phase,” Halvorson says. “He’ll play absolutely perfect eight-bar solos that are so out, at the same time they’re so in. His version of ‘Scarlet Ribbons’ was so beautiful. It’s such a strong, simple melody and I thought it would be a fun thing to attempt with this band.”