Pianist Carmen Staaf came galloping onto the jazz scene through her work with drummer Allison Miller in their Science Fair (2018) and in a set of duets, Nearness (2022). If you are playing a percussion instrument (which the piano is, after all) and keeping up with Allison Miller, you are exceptional. Staaf‘s new album is both an interesting thinkpiece and a lovely jazz recording. It is subtitled “Conversations on the Music of Mary Lou Williams and Thelonious Monk” and was inspired by the friendship of these two composers and pianists.
Due to the longstanding sexism in jazz, we tend to think of Monk as more important and influential than Williams, but this is untrue. She was a well-formed jazz musician before Monk came up in the 1940s, and she was a mentor to him and to other young beboppers. It is well documented that the main melodic element of Monk’s “Hackensack” actually came from Williams, that he shared his early music with her at salons she hosted for him and other up-and-coming players like Bud Powell, and that she acted as an advocate for Monk’s art. Monk casts a long shadow in the art form, but a good part of that shadow belongs to Mary Lou Williams.
Particularly, Williams was one of the links connecting Monk back to the early stride and swing pianists. His innovations may have been a factor in her continued growth as a writer and player well into her 60s. It was a complex friendship.
Carmen Staaf’s Sounding Line makes some interesting sonic arguments about this relationship. She presents three Mary Lou Williams tunes and two Monk tunes in alternation, followed by two originals. Five performances are duets, and two feature a quartet consisting of a trumpet/clarinet front line backed by her piano and drummer Hamir Atwal. All the recordings, made without a bass player, are more transparent or even “naked” than typical mainstream jazz. The compositions are laid bare to a significant extent.
I love how Staaf has juxtaposed Williams’ “Libra” with Monk’s “Monk’s Mood”. “Libra” is a duet with clarinetist Ben Goldberg, a searching, slow-midtempo melody that is both melancholy and stately. The pair plays it with languor, showing off the unusual harmonic structure and letting the clarinet take only a brief solo before the theme returns, lazily, subtly. The Monk tune that follows—a duet with vibraphonist Dillon Vado—also sneaks up on us.
For a couple of minutes, the musicians play a moody introduction: Vado uses his instrument’s rarely explored ability to play for a long time. These sustained notes make it sound like a synthesizer, while Staaf abstracts Monk’s harmonies into blue patterns and arpeggios. When the familiar melody finally arrives, we realize they have been teasing it all along, but in shades and slivers. Together, the performances suggest that both composers were drawn to mysterious harmonic patterns that strayed from the Tin Pan Alley norm and unique melodies.
The Williams tune “Scorpio” runs into Monk’s “Bye-Ya” in a similar way. The former finds Staaf playing a craggy, interval-leaping left-hand bass figure as trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire brings in melody. The two musicians percolate against each other, improvising, before a more particular melody joins them in careful counterpoint. In a third “movement” of the performance, Staaf’s left hand suggests an old cowboy song, a sad shade to underlie the trumpeter’s expressive playing. The Monk tune is a duet with percussionist John Santos on bongos, with another leaping bass part essential as the drums tap dance and play counterpoint to a melody that is a symphony for wild intervals.
It is no surprise, then, when Staaf’s first original, “Boiling Point”, uses a left-hand piano bass line that jumps around with lively energy. It seems to flow nicely from the prior track, Williams’ “KoolBonga”, a blues arranged with the bass line itself (played by bass clarinet and muted trumpet) being the melody. Goldberg’s clarinet and trumpeter Darren Johnston outline the “Boiling Point” melody, harmonizing it with sassy originality, and the improvisations spit, spin, and curl above the pattern without sounding like any other tune.
Staaf saves the best for last. “The Water Wheel”, the second duet with Akinmusire’s trumpet, closes the album with a summation of the other six tracks. The opening flows in a manner that suggests the title: a genuine conversation between the musicians—the conversation that took place in the 1940s-1960s between Monk and Williams, if you like. Staaf and Akinmusire improvise together, truly, interpolating her melody, mixing and matching the form, until, voila!, she begins a rolling bass line beneath the trumpet’s last set of variations. It isn’t exactly the line from the album’s first (Williams) composition, but the callback reminds us that Staaf’s artistry also flows from Williams as mentor and teacher.
Throughout Sounding Line, there is relatively little show-offery from Carmen Staaf. As a pianist, she exemplifies taste and balance—the kind of playing that makes her a superb bandmate and duet partner throughout. Her own improvisations are logical and artful, flowing out of and amplifying the beauty or daring of the composed pieces. In a sense, it is easy to “merely” enjoy an album like this because it doesn’t surge dramatically or overheat, but neither did Thelonious Monk nor Mary Lou Williams. For this recording, that is part of the point. They came together and raised jazz to a new level, and the music follows suit.