Currently based in Chicago (and formerly Charlottesville, VA), bassist, composer, improvisor, and bandleader Christopher Dammann has been on the contemporary jazz scene for roughly 15 years. The players he’s chosen to fill out The Christopher Dammann Sextet have comparable levels of experience, and on February 7, the group debuts on record with a self-titled full-length effort that’s available on limited edition vinyl (500 copies, black) and compact disc (150 copies). Released by Out of Your Head Records, the album’s blend of Dammann’s compositional sharpness and the ensemble’s advanced improvisational fireworks delivers a consistent reward.
The bulk of Christopher Dammann’s recorded output comes through his contributions to the 3.5.7. Ensemble, a size shifting outfit of which he was a constant member. They debuted as a quintet with Run… in 2010. Expanding to a septet (an octet for one track), they followed it up with Amongst the Smokestacks and Steeples, an at-times excellent 2LP set from 2014.
No matter the size, the 3.5.7. Ensemble can be thought of as a collective, even with Dammann’s constant presence, but he’s been designated as the leader of Restroy, a group that combines jazz with contempo classical and electronics. The big difference between 3.5.7./Restroy and the Dammann Sextet is the latter outfit’s focus on the bassist’s compositions, with Dammann credited with writing the entire album, although there is a simultaneous and unflagging emphasis on improvisational brilliance.
Along with Dammann’s bass, the group features Mabel Kwan on piano (he previously played in Restroy and contributed prepared piano to Amongst the Smokestacks and Steeples), James Davis on trumpet, Jon Irabagon on alto saxophone, Edward Wilkerson, Jr. on tenor saxophone and Eb alto clarinet, and Scott Clark on drums.
The record’s opening track, “If I Could Time Travel I Would Mend Your Broken Heart AKA Why Did the Protests Stop” begins with Dammann’s bass alone in a manner reminiscent of Jimmy Garrison’s opening solos with Coltrane or the performance footage that begins Thomas Reichman’s 1968 documentary Mingus.
Fitting for a bassist initiated group, Dammann is right out front across numerous stretches of this record without ever registering as a deliberate hog of the spotlight. Likewise, the playing of everyone in the group is impeccably rendered from beginning to end, with the inclusion of a lesser-heard Eb alto clarinet (the first horn to enter the record scheme) adding distinctiveness to the whole.
“Song for Mabel” thrives on some exquisite tandem horn crescendos, while in the three-part suite “No Hope at All Other Than I Don’t Want to Die Today” there is ample space given over for soloing, with the blowing of Davis especially rich and warm in part one. There is also a particularly gripping meditative stretch in part two that succeeds through the subtle propulsion of Clark and the restraint of Kwan.
Contrasting, the concise third part of the suite is higher energy as Clark brings the thunder, this intensity carrying over into the precision heave-scorch and rumbling fleetness of the set’s finale “When I Was Young and My Heart Had Windows.” But even here, Dammann’s composing lays a sturdy but malleable foundation so that this group debut lacks even a hint of the tentative.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
