Discovery: Carmen Staaf
With Allison Miller, who we've talked about...
Since getting hip to drummer, composer and bandleader Allison Miller a couple years ago, she’s been one of my main conduits to other contemporary musicians, because if they work with her, I want to know about them. I wrote about Miller as part of the band Artemis, and she’s partners in the quartet Parlour Game with violinist Jenny Scheinman, who was a guest on The String just a few weeks ago. And here I want to tell you about a 2018 album that Miller made in partnership with the pianist from Parlour Game, Carmen Staaf. Together, Miller and Staaf composed and crafted the nine-track set Science Fair. It’s been in steady rotation over here for a month or more, and I can’t recommend it enough.
Staaf, 40 years old, has distinguished herself in her field. She won the Mary Lou Williams piano competition. She’s taught since 2005 at Berklee and other prestige outlets. Her resume features all the big festivals, and she’s played with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, alone enough to get my attention. She’s a wonderful player who keeps you on your toes. Staaf isn’t exactly of the school of Chick or Herbie, or Bill Evans or Horace Silver, but she ranges freely through places that feel delightful to fans of all of the above. She’s an artist you get to hear think out loud, and Science Fair couldn’t be a better showcase. It’s by no means obscure in jazz world, having made the 2018 year-end lists of both the New York and LA Times. But it’s new to everyone some time right?
If you decided what you thought about Science Fair based on its first half-minute, ruling it out as too noisy, you’d be misled. Quite soon in “What?,” the band is discoursing from a laid back place with the graceful trumpet of Ambrose Akinmusire and the sax of Dayna Stephens conspiring on a limpid melody. That said, there are abstract, challenging passages on this record, and the track ends with one such clatter before moving on to the spectral and lovely “Symmetry.” Akinmusire is a new star in the field and of late a Grammy nominee. He leans into the frayed edges of jazz, but even if some of his breathy, lippy techniques aren’t for everyone, his imagination and mastery are unquestionable. His entrance late in the enchanting ten-minute centerpiece “Weightless” comes as a sweet surprise.
I can only imagine that the aforementioned Mary Lou Williams is the inspiration for one of my favorite tracks. “MLW” features a duo of Staff and Miller, who plays her drum kit entirely with her bare hands, dancing around across the precisely tuned skins while keep the pulse steady with bass drum and high hat. The piano is a big drum set itself of course, and Staff plays a drumming and lower-register sort of rumba. The plunk of piano keys against the pop of the hand drums is a wild and rich experience. But so’s the whole album. Please let’s keep our efforts to foreground outstanding women in male-dominated genres wider than country music. Allison Miller and Carmen Staaf are leading the way in today’s big collective effort to define jazz in yet another decade.
