Like the studious young things presently taking to the dormitories of our fair city, this fall’s most ostensibly academic title conceals a host of untutored enthusiasms. Artist in Residence, Jason Moran’s seventh Blue Note cut in as many years, repays the pianist’s commissions from the Dia Art Foundation, the Walker Art Center and elsewhere with subtlety, invention and total command. But a visceral evocation of childhood infects the disc, abiding and abetting Artist’s more highbrow aspirations.
The counterbalance is vital, since Artist’s weightier themes range from slave rituals to the barriers between creative types and what conceptual artist Adrian Piper calls “the general public.” Throughout the album, a charge of richly sampled voices and object noise helps leaven, link and illuminate this sprawling curriculum. Such determined studio mastering might feel more Beck than Satchmo, but jazz sampling hearkens back all the way to musique concrète via Charlie Haden. It’s legit, and it works.
Rather than the distraction one might expect, Moran’s playful sampling of Piper’s words on “Breakdown,” a poppy loss-leader that opens the album, has the unobtrusive, grounding feel of a footnote. The curious pencil-scratching layered atop “Cradle Song” reads like the marginalia in a book borrowed from a friend. By the time performance artist Joan Jonas starts in with the claves, toy cars and kabangers on “Refraction 1,” more visually oriented listeners might feel the tug of their inner screenwriter begging to shoot the playground scene, or maybe Christmas.
“RAIN,” a 12-minute journey from Africa to the Americas composed for Jazz at Lincoln Center, is the emotional and musical core of Artist. It’s also the track that risks the most on a handful of extracurricular shuffles and fusillades to shape the experience of a highly attenuated central trumpet line.
During the debut of “RAIN” at Lincoln Center, the endless repetition of that long, half-muted theme felt overstudied. But the recording’s meticulous assembly of aural fragments crowd in and push the living theme around, helping listeners share in its vulnerability. The initial dusky scrapes are immediately haunting, but give way to a storm, a tussle and a porny strut before reprising a familiar musical lesson: None of us are ever quite free from our ghosts.
Incredibly, Moran’s careful technical orchestrations hit their emotional marks without edging out the human elements they are intended to support. A gregarious musician, here Moran makes ample room for wife Alicia Hall Moran (soprano) and Bandwagon mainstays Tarus Mateen (bass) and Nasheet Waits (drums). The Chopinesque nocturne Moran plays in valediction without them, sweetly signals a sober onset of responsibility; the wheelies they pull together showcase the wistful little kid I wish were mandatory for art grant applications everywhere.
In residence through September 17. Blue Note, W. 3rd St. (at 6th Ave.)
212-475-8592; 8 & 10:30, $20-$30.
