Chicago groove by way of Switzerland

It's a long way from Shytown and the jazz and blues-drenched shores of Lake Michigan to live in Biel, Switzerland.
But it's a journey that one of the great jazz saxophonists, Chico Freeman, has made.
It's a blessing for European audiences certainly, and hearing Chico during the 2016 London Jazz Festival, it's clear that he has lost none of his Chicago fire and free spirit.
Born in the Windy City in 1949, his father, Von, was himself a powerful tenorist with very much his own sound and two of his uncles were guitarists George and drummer Bruz, a family of masters.
Chico joined the Association for the Advancement of Jazz Musicians as a young man, and the pianist Muhal Richard Abrams became his tutor, sharing his love for free improvisation with the young prodigy.
In 1977 he moved to New York, playing with stellar musicans like Sun Ra, pianist Don Pullen, reedman Sam Rivers and his drumming compadre Jack DeJohnette.
He also cut a series of innovative albums for the India Navigation and Contemporary labels, including one for Elektra whose title epitomised his approach: Tradition in Transition.
His 2016 album, The Arrival, recorded in Winterthur, Switzerland, finds him in a duo context with the New York-born Swiss bassist Heiri Kaenzig, himself a veteran who has played with some of the prime Europe- based jazz musicians from Art Farmer and Kenny Wheeler to Charlie Mariano and Art Lande.
Kaenzig proclaims his love of melody in the album's sleeve notes: "If you groove like **** and there's no melody, it makes no sense."
The opener is Kaenzig's tune, remembering another Chicago saxo- phonist, Eddie Harris, who pioneered the electrified horn, One for Eddie Who 2.
The bass leaps and bounds while Freeman's horn blows out patterns of notes in rapid clusters to create a keen-edged colloquy.
Kaenzig is also the writer of Early Snow. His love of melody is lucid in his solo preface, enhanced by Freeman in a contradictorily warm chorus.
Here are different snows: American and Swiss, beheld and described in sound together, two continents of cold.
Freeman is the composer of the next three tracks. The Essence of Silence is anything but that.
Freeman's simple theme is grounded by Kaenzig's repetitive rhythmic phrases as he blows with a tender strength.
Ancient Dancer mixes balm with movement as Chico's horn leans on Kaenzig's pulsating beat, and Will I See You in the Morning? is a slow
ballad with more than a whisper of love. It cries out for words but it is the listener who must make the lyrics.
The sudden burst of familiarity comes with Bobby Timmons's rousing tune which provoked storms at many a Jazz Messengers concert.
But now Timmons's gospel- drenched piano and Art Blakey's drums are far gone, and this version of Dat Dere is a different kind of palaver, between two masters almost reflective, and when Freeman takes fire, Kaenzig's hard-plucked notes answer him with now-times. Not the past.
After the snow, Song for the Sun is a serenely contrived improvisation with Kaenzig's pinging bass strings urging Freeman's own melodic invention as he reaches for the light.
It segues perfectly into Just Play, which is exactly what the twosome do for nearly four minutes racked with invention and shared creative grace. Kaenzig's Eye of the Fly is slow and ruminative, as if bass and saxophone were sonic microscopes.
His solo delves deep but then it is Coltrane's eternal tune, After the Rain.
Kaenzig takes his bow and saws a dramatic introduction before Chico blows the theme with gentle beauty. The melody's subliminal sense of lamentation continues directly into Chico's own To Hear a Teardrop in the Rain, a song of grieving for a lost love, played by the duo with a moving eloquence.
The album's finale is Kaenzig's tribute to the great bop bassman, Paul Chambers. Chambers' Room has Chico's jaunty tone jumping above Kaenzig's sure-footed bassline as if all is very groovy for him in Europe, even though Chicago still breathes out through his every note

Chico Freeman/Heiri Känzig
The Arrival
Intakt Records CD 251

George Freeman/Chico Freeman
All in the Family
Southport S-SSD 014

Sessions involving fathers and children or siblings are common enough in improvised music. But All in the Family is one of the few whose chief protagonists are a nephew and his uncle. Then again like the Midwestern individuality that produced figures like Saul Alinsky and Ernest Hemingway – not to mention a Blues variant and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (ACCM) – this isn't unexpected.
Centre of the date, plus the duo disc with Swiss bassist Heiri Känzig, is Chicago-born soprano and tenor saxophonist Chico Freeman, now a Biel residence. Son of saxophone legend Von Freeman (1923-2012), the 22 [!] track Freeman and Freeman date also shows off the undiminished guitar skills of his uncle, George, now 88, known for his work with organist Groove Holms among others. An AACM member, who also played in the bands of drummer Elvin Jones and pianist McCoy Tyner, Chico Freeman was more a sound setter than a sound explorer unlike some other AACM associates. Recently he's also turned to restrained standards interpretations. "Angel Eyes" is on the first CD, while The Arrival includes John Coltrane's "After the Rain" and Bobby Timmons' "Dat Dere". Känzig is a wide-ranging stylist who has played in group with flugelhornist Kenny Wheeler and alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano among other modern mainstreamers.
Among the backing players on the Freeman and Freeman CD are questing improvisers like percussionist Hamid Drake and bassist Harrison Bankhead. But with his unique clipped, metallic tone the guitarist is never out of place. Like a Fernand Léger painting in a room filled with Impressionists, the elder Freeman's playing always stands out. And it maintains its individuality when his associates here could be Pop artists or Abstract expressionists. Freeman senior demonstrates that easily on "Interlude V-10", an unaccompanied track, where he sounds like a mixture of Charlie Christian and Jimi Hendrix. Tellingly on "Vonski" his own salute to his brother, and Chico's "Essence of Silence", both duos with his nephew, his brittle chording modernizes King Cole trio swing on the first; while his quickened clinks and sharp string slides appear even more contemporary than the saxophonist's Trane-oriented double tonguing and slurs on the latter.
Otherwise, like the canny retire detective brought in to add his expertise to a difficult crime case, George fits in seamlessly among the players who are two or three decades his junior. Introduced by a walking bass line and buoyed by pianist Kirk Brown's echoing bebop riffs, "Chico" harmonizes clangorous guitar licks and the younger Freeman's soprano saxophone vibrations, which are extended with quotes and theme variations. Using congas as well as drums, Drake shows off his versatility on the swinging "Latin Bonita", with the guitarist stretching his solo from mariachi suggestions to a figurative walk in outer space.
Not to be outdone, guitarist Mike Allemana, who replaces George Freeman on some tracks, moves the tunes with the same solid abandon, especially on "What In Between". An out-and-out foot tapper it's also notable for Chico's solid blowing and Bankhead doing one of his humming-in-tandem-with-string-bowing Slam Stewart-like solos. The younger Freeman, who often references earlier Chicago tenors throughout, demonstrates his ability to go up against the heavyweights when he takes on "Angel Eyes", one of Gene Ammons' signature tunes. Individualized by Brown's keyboard slurs, if it isn't a knock out, it's certainly a good try for a contender.
An invaluable record of top-drawer Chicago jazz, the only quibble would be with the nine brief interludes which separate the longer tunes. While they do demonstrate individual versatility, that doesn't have to be confirmed, and the CD would have been more cohesive without them.
Chico Freeman's command of older and original material is made even clearer on The Arrival. Like sole survivors of a decimated unit who still defeat the bad guys, with the interface pared down to just himself and the bassist, the two manage to produce as memorable music s the larger ensemble. What they have to guard against is torpidity since some of Freeman's compositions have a tendency to drift past relaxation to a form of New Age-like leadenness. With Känzig's mellow bass line providing the backup, tunes such as "The Essence of Silence" and "Will I See You in the Morning", with their pop-music styled titles are so well modulated that they appear headed for folksy romance until reed toughness and calm string strokes provide more backbone.
Like his take on "Angel Eyes" on the other disc, "After the Rain" and "Dat Dere" get respectful and inspired readings from Freeman. The former, featuring sympathetic strumming from the bassist reaches a climax of blown air following some upturned Trane-isms from the saxophonist, while ...