Recording of the Week, Nicole Glover, 'Strange Lands'

Photo credit: Cypress Jones

After years working by the side of other musicians, American saxophonist Nicole Glover makes her bold major-label debut, Strange Lands, on Savant Records. After being introduced to improvised music at a young age by her father, like many budding young reedists she took up the clarinet before eventually switching to the saxophone. Glover’s high school days were spent playing with the Next Generation Jazz Orchestra, touring internationally alongside names like fellow saxophonist Bobby Watson and guitarist Julian Lage; the tour even concluded with a show at the Monterey Jazz Festival with Wynton Marsalis. Glover continued working as a side woman for both big bands and other artists - you can hear her amongst the rest of the American Music Program Big Band on Esperanza Spalding’s 2012 album Radio Music Society. However, it wasn’t until a meeting with Wayne Shorter in 2013 that she was encouraged by the seasoned saxophonist to lead her own projects, leading ultimately to her self-released debut, a quartet album called First Record. Her second recording is not just a first for Glover releasing on a major label, but also marks the debut of her new trio with bassist Daniel Duke and drummer Nic Cacioppo. The core trio have spent plenty of time playing by this point, and although this marks their recording debut together they’ve already managed to attract the attention of pianist George Cables, who earns himself a featured guest spot on the record too.

Though it’s not exactly unheard of for jazz bands to go without a guitar or keyboard player of some kind, these kinds of ‘chordless’ trios aren’t the most commonly heard formation nowadays. Despite this, it’s got quite a history with some of the more high-profile jazzmen from over the years - Albert Ayler’s 1964 free jazz classic Spiritual Unity, namely, features only saxophone, bass and drums to incredible effect. It’s not just reserved for the avant-garde, though; both Sonny Rollins’ 1957 album Way Out West and 1966’s Blessing In Disguise also make do without a chordal accompaniment. It’s on this legacy that Glover builds the soundscape for many of the tracks on her latest recording, and she’s played in even sparser arrangements before - only last year herself and Cacioppo tried out a sax and drums duo album, Literature, an even rarer dynamic that brings to mind John Coltrane and Rashied Ali’s Interstellar Space. Rather than steering into experimental sounds, Glover and co. manage to pull plentiful melody out of the tunes, and in many cases the stripped-back lineup works to their benefit; the modal-feeling ‘Twilight Zone’ is only accentuated by this, with Glover leading the band throughout its dark melody. Then there’s the case of Jobim’s ‘Dindi’ and the Cacioppo original ‘Parks’, the absence of chordal harmonies grants the trio a newfound freedom, Duke’s basslines subtle enough to avoid any huge melodic commitments.

For four out of the nine tracks on the album, though, the trio are joined by pianist George Cables, who accompanies the trio on the originals ‘Hive Queen’ and ‘Notturno’, as well as the two standards that cap off the record, Billy Strayhorn’s ‘A Flower is a Lovesome Thing’ and Cole Porter’s ‘I Concentrate on You’. As much as the stripped-back trio makes for a breath of fresh air, it’s hard to imagine some of the more harmonious tracks on the record without him there. Still, at the end of the day it’s Glover’s quartet, and the young saxophonist shines brilliantly amongst her peers - be it soulful slow passages or raw, off-the-wall shredding, Glover has it in the bag. The many years spent honing her chops has certainly paid off, and her obvious appreciation for Rollins and Shorter is palpable.

Photo credit: Mirna Plakalovic

Glover cites her and her band’s shared love of science fiction for the central theme of the record’s originals, as a means of exploring not only the strange state of the world but also hope for the future. It’s unsurprising, even when perusing the track titles and seeing ‘Hive Queen’ and ‘Twilight Zone’ - even the album’s title of ‘Strange Lands’ takes its name from the Robert A. Heinlein classic ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’. Those familiar with the novel will know that the ‘strange land’ in question was in fact Earth (not a spoiler, promise!) - a feeling that Glover shares given how alien life on Earth has felt this past year. As for the standards on the record, the American Songbook isn’t exactly full of science fiction-inspired tunes; instead, the Strayhorn and particularly Porter are used as tuneful reminders to be optimistic for the future - to ‘Concentrate’ on it. While ‘A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing’ gets treated to a sweet piano and sax duet from Glover and Cables, the whole band goes in on the swinging ‘I Concentrate on You’, each member strutting their stuff across the eight-minute runtime of the closing track. Only on her second studio recording and mere first major-label release, Nicole Glover has already cemented herself as a young player to watch - even certified by jazz veterans, too - it’s a good job Wayne Shorter encouraged her to step out of the crowd and start leading bands, after all.