Sunny Day by Michael Wolff

24 bit / 48k

One unmistakable sign of a true creative is an uncanny ability to find new ways to express themselves. Sometimes this manifests in new methods for exploring and developing their art. Pianist/composer Michael Wolff looked to beat-making and looping software to help him write new music, which he then arranged for his talented and dedicated Trio, featuring bassist Ben Allison and drummer Allan Mednard. The results are heard on Wolff’s new recording, Sunny Day, a fantastic example of jazz swinging in and out of the tradition.

Wolff has covered a lot of ground musically in his career. His Trio with Allison and Mednard coalesced while Wolff was miraculously recovering from a near terminal bout with cancer. Allison was one of the first to visit and jam with Wolff as he built his chops back up. Mednard came on board with Allison’s suggestion for a fundraising concert for WBGO. As the Trio was present for Wolff’s reenergizing, they have remained the pianist’s go to ensemble for his diverse projects, never missing a beat.

During the pandemic, Wolff began a collaboration with his Berkeley High School friend, producer Nicolaas tenBroek. The two began to experiment with Maschine beat-making software, a regular tool for hip-hop artists. Maschine gave the musicians electronic percussion and synth sounds that they would mold into loops. From there, Wolff would improvise on the loops and record the results. Wolff and tenBroek would then cut and splice together compositions in a sort of musique concrète fashion.

Wolff then would orchestrate the pieces in arrangements for the Trio. Allison and Mednard were added to the preassembled loops at The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn on May 18 and 19, 2024. Without any instruction, the Trio was able to provide loose and adventurous takes of the material over the source loops. Once the versions with instrumentalists were finished, Wolff and tenBroek went back to the recordings, taking out pieces and amplifying others to create a unique and exciting mix of live acoustic and looped digital sources.

The program begins with the jaunty title track, which was inspired in part by Wolff’s regular composing spot in his sunny New York apartment and partly from his work with the great Sonny Rollins. The bright tune dances buoyantly on the driving rhythm of Mednard and the loops. Wolff wrote “Quarantine Blues” during the pandemic’s quarantine in New York. He then took the somber melody and arranged it with the Maschine based percussion and synth patches.

“Movie Night” celebrates Wolff’s love of film and its association with family time with his wife and children. The warm piece unfolds quite naturally, as it did in its inception, Wolff having improvised the piece’s lilting melody over a beat generated with tenBroek. The murky swing of “Swamp” recalls the southern climes of Wolff’s Louisiana youth. The piece utilizes a major to minor harmonic pattern to churn the muddy waters.

The clattering rhythm of “Streetcar” brought to mind Wolff’s childhood joy of riding the St. Charles Avenue streetcar in New Orleans. The tune was built by cutting and reassembling melodic and harmonic ideas over a stark beat. The head-bobbing “Flutter” is a completely composed piece that, once written, Wolff and tenBroek constructed a beat for.

Wolff revisits “The Mews,” a piece he had recorded with Christian McBride and the late great Tony Williams. Named for the Washington Mews stables turned apartments in New York’s Greenwich Village, the piece has a classic feel reminiscent of Miles Davis’s “Nefertiti.” The program concludes with the Beatles’s classic, “In My Life,” a piece that has long been under Wolff’s fingers enabling the pianist to make this gorgeous solo rendition truly shine.

There is a joyous nature in the music of Michael Wolff. He has been able to amplify this through his work with his Trio of Ben Allison and Allan Mednard over the past decade. On Sunny Day, the group finds a new way to burnish their trademark sound with a new contemporary approach with loops crafted to lift the music even higher.