April 19–26, 2001

cd reviews|jazz

Don Byron

A Fine Line: Arias and Lieder

(Blue Note)

Perhaps no single jazz musician has championed eclecticism in the past decade more convincingly than Don Byron. Every time you catch up to him, the clarinetist is pulling a cat out of a different bag: free jazz, chamber music, klezmer, salsa, hip-hop, bebop, swing. So this latest effort, a celebration of songcraft both classical and contemporary, should come as no surprise. But coming as it does on the heels of a straight-ahead effort (1999’s Romance with the Unseen on Blue Note), A Fine Line does carry the aura of novelty. It opens with Ornette Coleman’s "Check Up" rendered as a lilting samba, the melody shared by Byron’s clarinet and Mark Ledford’s wordless vocals (à la the Pat Metheny Group, his longstanding gig). Next up: Robert Schumann’s "Zwielicht," performed with elegiac restraint by Byron and pianist Uri Caine. Then a sudden shift to the stage, as the ensemble (Caine, bassist Jerome Harris and percussionist Paulo Braga) backs vocalist Patricia O’Callaghan on Leonard Bernstein’s "Glitter And Be Gay" — basically an exercise in high camp. The rest of the album unfolds in similar fashion; highlights include a rendition of Roy Orbison’s "It’s Over" (with a commanding vocal performance by Ledford) and a crack at Stephen Sondheim’s "The Ladies Who Lunch" (featuring Cassandra Wilson at her most delightfully sardonic). It’s the series of four Byron-Caine tête-à-têtes, though, that provides the album’s strongest moments; the musicians’ musical affinity has never been more clearly pronounced. Hopefully there’ll be more of this (a full duet album, perhaps?) in the future.

—Nate Chinen