The British poet John Wilkinson once described his work as his attempt to combat the chronic “well-spokenness” of his comfortable upbringing and university education. Listening to British saxophonist/clarinettist Dustan Coulber’s I’ll Be Around, I begin to see what Wilkinson was talking about. Why does Coulber have to be so annoyingly, blandly fluent? If you don’t pay close attention to it, this is a pleasant enough album of uncontroversial mainstream swing, but if you’re actually listening, it’s an enormously frustrating experience – like listening to a string of perfectly formed, perfectly enunciated sentences which never actually articulate a story or an opinion, just follow one after the other. To be sure, the album starts intriguingly – a brief tenor/hand-drums reading of “How Strange” – but that track turns out to be completely unrepresentative of an album otherwise devoid of surprises, drama and other such unsightly blemishes. Pianist John Pearce manages to inject some substance into proceedings, but this is otherwise an album devoted to the celebration of the painfully obvious: Coulber’s solo on the last track, “That Old Feeling,” is a tiny marvel of predictability.

Dale Fielder plays the full range of the saxophone family, but for Baritone Sunride it’s the big horn all the way, on a program of originals plus a few tunes associated with baritone greats Charles Davis, Nick Brignola and Pepper Adams. As you’d expect from that list of influences, Fielder is a hard bopper at heart, with a hard, unsentimental sound and a taste for brisk, don’t-look-back swingers. He doesn’t have anything especially original to say, and on a fast tune like “Lover” it’s all preprogrammed licks – his fills on the head are virtually identical at the start and end of that track, for instance. Still, it’s nice to hear someone playing take-no-prisoners baritone, and the disc also offers a rare glimpse of the elusive pianist Jane Getz. Studio sound is second-rate, Getz getting the worst of it, but it’s listenable enough.

Philadelphia-based saxophonist Ron Kerber has a huge c.v. as a sideman, mostly in rock/pop bands; he’s taken some time to get around to making his first disc as a leader. ’Round in Circles sometimes broaches cloying, radio-friendly territory , but for the most part it’s a strongly turned set of mainstream jazz. Kerber’s got the requisite rock-solid chops but also real feeling and imagination, and he writes a good tune: I particularly like the shrewd tribute to Kurt Elling, the two very different blues lines “Berliner Blau” and “Freddie ’n Me,” and the tailchasing 6/4 groove of “’Round in Circles.” A few tracks aren’t so hot: “Jofa (for Joe Farrell)” is a mite bland, “Ariel” too uplifting by half, and “While We Slept” (a 9/11 memorial) rather overwrought. But by and large this is a satisfying album, benefitting from the warm studio sound and the sharp-as-a-tack rhythm section helmed by pianist Jim Ridl (vibraphonist Tony Miceli takes over on a few cuts). DreamBox Media, responsible last year for excellent albums by Joe Hunt and Tom Lawton, continues to do a fine job documenting Philadelphia ’s jazz scene.

Vibraphonist Florian Poser’s New Adventures, recorded on his first visit from his native Germany to New York , is Latinate fluff studiously drained of actual excitement. It’s pleasant enough, but it’s hopelessly phony, and I can’t see why you’d want it when you could get something like Dafnis Prieto’s About the Monks instead. Prieto’s an expatriate Cuban drummer/percussionist who’s been popping up in countless places lately, working with everyone from Michel Camilo to Henry Threadgill; About the Monks is his first album as a leader. As you’d expect it’s a wonderland of hot, jawdroppingly complex polyrhythms (yep, it’s a drummer’s album all right), but it’s also fiercely creative and purposeful. These are tunes full of questions and answers (and more questions) – intricate multisection pieces that tell a story rather than just channelhop. There’s sterling work from trumpeter Brian Lynch, saxophonist Yosvany Terry, pianist Luis Perdomo and bass guitarist Hans Glawischnig; violinist Ilmar Gavilan turns up for a startling cameo on “Mechanical Movement” (a Threadgillish stop-start piece). The recording is bright and attractive (though there’s a little distortion on the piano at times); and the music itself is terrific.

Listening to Ben Wolfe’s My Kinda Beautiful, an ambitious jazz-octet-plus-strings disc, is like stumbling across a previously unknown 1950s Third Stream recording; Ned Goold’s sometimes uncannily Hal McKusick-like saxophone and the presence of ex-Kentonite trombonist Jeff Uusitalo cement the resemblance. There’s also a lot of Monk here, especially on the quartet tracks – I’m reminded especially of Monk’s only quartet session with an alto saxophonist rather than tenor, the Savoy date with Gigi Gryce. Like Monk, Wolfe often writes tunes that point back at themselves – the kind of tune where the only way to resolve a chorus is, well, to play another chorus – though the smooth, relentless forward motion of Wolfe’s music can also suggest early George Russell. It’s a fascinating, unusual album, even though not everything works: slow pieces such as “Death” and “The Many and the One” have a watching-paint-dry feel to them, and it’s a pity that drummer Ron Steen is so placid. The recording was done with just two mikes and no mixing, and it will not be to all listeners’ tastes: certainly this listener was irritated by moments like the badly off-mike piano solo on “The Doctor in December.” But despite the album’s imperfections, it’s still well worth hearing for its sheer idiosyncracy and for Goold’s excellent contributions as a soloist.

Nate Dorward

Cadence, August 2005