We live in an age of high efficiency learning. We can instantly access endless documentaries and video lectures and online coursework in everything you can imagine. In that spirit, the debut album from the band ARTEMIS offers a concise and delectable introduction to some of the exceptional women working in jazz today. I had a pre-existing fan-based relationship with two of these artists and have used the hours listening to this September release to learn about the rest, filing their other albums for future enjoyment. They use the term ‘supergroup’ in their press matter, though I’m hesitant to endorse the term. Sure, it’s a gathering of elite and established players, but jazz has always churned its talent pool, assembling ever-changing ensembles for sessions that reflect the parts and the sum. Granted, most of those rounds robin don’t get band names. So I’ll grant that ARTEMIS is a group. And their first record, for Blue Note, is super, superb and superlative.
My touchstone, and perhaps the reason the algorithms jumped on this album on my behalf as soon as its first track was released, is drummer Allison Miller. I’ve been hailing this mesmerizing musician for years, and I get a bit annoyed that amid all the clamor, proper as it is, over the marginalization of women in country music in my roots community, I wonder how many of those champions are aware of Miller, a self-described radical lesbian feminist who composes and leads her own band, developing the careers of others and setting a standard for modern music in the 2020s that couldn’t be higher. She’s a genuine American visionary working in the hardest and most marginalized of genres. Yet she also has credits in the realms of music my jazz averse friends love a lot, having worked on records and on stage with Ani DeFranco, Brandi Carlile and Natalie Merchant. She is that essential reminder to never, ever underestimate the drummer. Leading her bands with the churning, emphatic command of my hero Art Blakey and the spontaneous, gestural flair of Tony Williams, Miller creates music that’s daring, funky and sophisticated. We hear exactly that on the opening track of the ARTEMIS project, which Miller composed for the project, called “Goddess Of The Hunt.” Because that’s who Artemis was, and when the horns surge together on the complex melody, we know everybody’s coming back with big game.
I certainly should have known about the band leader and instigator of ARTEMIS, 58-year-old Canadian pianist and composer Renee Rosness (pronounced, it seems, REE-nee ROZ-ness). Over a 30 year career, she’s played in bands with some of my favorites, including Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Joe Henderson, James Moody and J.J. Johnson. She’s won five Juno Awards. This project made me aware of Written In The Rocks (Smoke Sessions), her 2016 album, which landed on a ton of year’s-best lists. It’s glorious. I’m looking forward to spending time with her duo piano album made with her husband Bill Charlap. Rosness’s attack has that crisp playfulness I love in Chick Corea, and she’s as lyrical as the day is long. Her composition on the ARTEMIS album is the wheeling and fun “Big Top,” which has circus allusions without getting campy. It’s also a stellar showcase for an Allison Miller drum solo.
The other artist I’ve been a fanboy for among these huntresses is clarinetist Anat Cohen. Her musician-rich family comes from Tel Aviv, Israel; her siblings include trumpeter Avishai and sax man Yuval. I think the clarinet is among the most under-rated instruments, and for years, Anat has been a wellspring of its woody goodness, so articulate and romantic, but also melancholy as when she leans into klezmer and Jewish repertoire. Here, Cohen brings the composition “Nocturno,” which glides like a hovercraft on slow night patrol. The three wind instruments lament together and pass around themes of incredible delicacy. It might be my favorite track, a lush and atmospheric headphone listen that lets Cohen’s tone and command shine.
The other horn players further affirm how rich we are to have international artists working out of an American base in an American art form. Vancouver native Ingrid Jensen is a veteran trumpet player who schooled up at Berklee College of Music. Her credits include the remarkable Maria Schneider’s big bands, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Dr. Lonnie Smith and the late great educator Billy Taylor. She blows alongside the 31-year-old Chilean born saxophonist Melissa Aldana. She announced herself by becoming the first woman to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, at age 24. On the album, she contributes the classic feeling “Frida,” which really sparkles in the light of Miller’s hip-hop derived drumming. Rounding out the rhythm section is bass player Noriko Ueda. She was born in Japan and also kick-started her US career by graduating from Berklee. Her composition “Step Forward” taps a big band swing classicism that leaves mad space for soloists Cohen, Jensen, herself and Rosness in turn. Rounding out the abundance of the album are two vocal turns by Cécile McLorin Salvant, an eclectic singer and visual artist from Miami who’s won three Grammy Awards and a MacArthur fellowship. She interprets Stevie Wonder’s “If It’s Magic” and “Cry, Buttercup, Cry,” a tune popularized by Maxine Sullivan in the 1940s. For me, this ratio of instrumental to vocal jazz is just right, and these are vocal sides you can get lost in.
I’m not saying ARTEMIS has been entirely overlooked in the mainstream by any means. They’ve been on NPR’s Jazz Night In America and written up in Vanity Fair. (That’s where the supergroup angle can help.) But the women composing, arranging, leading and playing top shelf jazz deserve recognition as much as the genre itself, for they are an integral part of the genre, now making some of its most searching music. When I was growing up and learning about jazz, the picture shown me was one of men playing instruments and women - Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan - singing. With time I discovered the great pianists Mary Lou Williams and Marian McPartland, but women on bass, horn, guitar, etc were as rare as a woman bluegrass flatpicker. Of course that latter has finally changed and similarly, the passage of time has let new generations of women be taken seriously as girls falling in love with jazz, as young women learning the music and as refined artists making today’s world so much richer. There are legions out there, including current fascinations of mine bassist Linda May Han Oh, pianist Ariel Pocock and guitarist Mary Halvorson. Happy hunting.