Crossing Division

by Thom JurekSchool Days is yet another Ken Vandermark/Jeb Bishop project that pairs the duo with Netherlands rhythm team Ingebright Håker-Flaten on bass and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. This first of two School Days sessions was recorded in Chicago in 2000; the second, In Our Times, with vibist Kjell Nordeson, was recorded in Amsterdam a year later. The set is made up of four Vandermark tunes written specifically for this quartet, two Bishop tunes, and two Roswell Rudd numbers. What is most notable about this recording is the fluid ease with which this rhythm section rolls with the sometimes-erratic shifts in meter, interval, and pitch that Vandermark tosses out. With Bishop as a staunch ally, this music turns in mood from the Herbie Nichols-inspired "Bookworm," with its post-boppish front line, to Vandermark's bluesy yet angular "Broad Daylight" or the completely out "Counteraction," based upon a series of oppositional fragments elongated into extended contrapuntal improvisation. There is also the beautifully minimal timbral study "Passenger" for Mal Waldron and Rudd's amazing "Rosmosis," performed here with such glee and creativity that it deserves to stand among the finest versions of the tune. Humor is indeed part of the formula for what makes this session so evocative of many other times and places in the history of jazz, but nonetheless it remains thoroughly in the idiom of "the now."