Original image by There Stands the Glass.
I’ve long been troubled by the name of the Missouri based jazz presenter We Always Swing. I’m more of a swing-optional guy. The weight of the region’s formidable jazz tradition can be oppressive. A lot of European improvisers don’t feel any compunction to follow conventional American mandates. The motto of the young Finnish quartet Ainon could be We’ll Swing If and When We Feel Like It.
Ainon’s debut album Drought occasionally sounds like Charles Mingus’ ensemble using the string quartets of Arnold Schoenberg as an improvisational springboard. Yet rather than resembling a bitter dose of academia-approved medicine, Drought is a wild and wooly joyride.
Consisting of Aino Juutilainen (founder and cellist), Satu-Maija Aalto (violin, viola and vocals), Suvi Linnovaara (saxophone, clarinet and flute) and Joonas Leppänen (drums), Ainon plays by its own rules. Veering between ECM-like ambiance, the percussive spiritualism associated with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and conventional string quartet shadings, the serpentine title track of Drought is a distillation of Ainon’s charms.
Ainon’s nebulous relationship with swing won’t fly in Kansas City. The band will almost certainly never play in the old stomping grounds of Bill Basie and Jay McShann. I’ll have to content myself with Drought until either Ainon makes its way to New York, Chicago or St. Louis or I take my first trip to Scandinavia.
---
Opera update: I’m on a Benjamin Britten jag, a recent obsession that’s made my viewing of 174 operas in the past 173 days feel as if I’m just getting started.
---
Tom Ray may have heaped more abuse on me than any man alive. And I still love him, partly because his passion for blues, soul and reggae is genuine. Here’s a de facto 47-minute infomercial about Ray and his St. Louis record store Vintage Vinyl.