Recording of the Week, Joe Chambers, 'Dance Kobina'

Photo by Randy Cole

The release of Dance Kobina, the new album by venerated jazz drummer, vibraphonist and composer Joe Chambers, is touted as his “return”, though it doesn’t seem like he ever went anywhere. Active since the early 1960s and cutting his teeth in the bands of Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus and Chick Corea, Chambers’ back catalogue boasts an impressive number of releases right up to recent years. More recently, he’s been exploring the common grounds of jazz and the music of Brazil, Argentina and Africa, with albums like 2021’s Samba de Maracatu and indeed this year’s Dance Kobina. This marks Chambers’ sixteenth bandleading album, but it might seem surprising that Dance Kobina is only Chambers’ third Blue Note recording as a bandleader; much of his history with the label comes in the form of sideman gigs, with his other credits on the label including drumming for Donald Byrd, Sam Rivers, Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter, Andrew Hill, and a significant number of Bobby Hutcherson albums.

Chambers contributes a number of excellent originals to the tracklist, from the moody tones of ‘Ruth’ to the comparatively energetic ‘Caravanserai’, while ‘Gazelle Suite’ sees him spotlighting vibraphonist Michael Davidson, who really shines amongst the rest of the band on this tune. Elsewhere, however, Chambers utilises in-studio multitracking to enable him to also play the vibes himself over many of these tunes – he’s just as adept with mallets as he is with drumsticks after all – as well as providing the odd bit of supplemental percussion. Dance Kobina was recorded over two sessions, one in Montreal and the other in New York, with the ensembles differing entirely between the two (Davidson, for instance, only appears on the Canadian recordings).

Photo credit Blue Note Records

It makes for an interesting record considering that while the opening track ‘This Is New’ (a tune by Kurt Weill) is presented as a piano trio version – and both pianist Rick Germanson and bassist Mark Lewandowski are given their respective solo spots as one would expect from a more traditional format – the closing ‘Moon Dancer’ features that same trio with the addition of an overdubbed Chambers on vibraphone and percussion as well as behind the kit, while others like the more free-flowing ‘Intermezzo’ feature Chambers purely playing mallets throughout.

Other key compositions come from one of Chambers’ pianists of choice for the record Andrés Vial (who also produced his previous album Samba de Maracatu), namely the samba-influenced title track which feels all the more complete with Chambers utilising some subtle hand percussion. Another original of Vial’s, ‘City of Saints’, anchors itself to bassist Ira Coleman’s propulsive line which continues steadily throughout the tune, while the band give a composition by Chambers’ old friend Joe Henderson, ‘Power to the People’, a similarly Latin jazz-flavoured interpretation in the latter half of the album, with its more traditional beboppy tempo substituted with a driving rhythm. Dance Kobina is an excellently-polished record which incorporates its jazz-adjacent influences with tasteful care, and it certainly helps having a veteran like Joe Chambers masterminding the project.