Myron Walden's 'Momentum'

Saxophonist Myron Walden, who is known mainly for his alto playing, switches to tenor on Momentum, the first of three records Walden is releasing over the course of the next few months. The music on Momentum is inspired by 1960s Miles Davis, but bound with more rhythmic cohesion, and with a heartier helping of soul.

Unlike Davis’ explorations with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, and Ron Carter, Walden’s band never quite finds itself steeped in such unresolved tension. This is in part thanks to Davis, whose music traversed mysterious bridges, making them less daunting for today’s jazz musicians to cross. Walden enters similar territory with a clearer sense of direction, sacrificing trailblazing tumult for the ability to bring about more finely tuned moods.

Walden and trumpeter Darren Barrett play keening melodic arcs in “Longing,” in a cyclical way reminiscent of much of the material on Nefertiti. But there’s a boiled-down simplicity that makes it less disorienting.

The introduction of soulful hard-bop elements also gives Momentum something to grasp while first becoming acquainted with the album’s melancholy musings. “Vision of a Visionary” involves a dry, propulsive pulse over which a languid and bluesy melody is draped, arriving at an odd-meter apex consisting of exclamatory jabs among the horns. “The Road Ahead” is similar in feel and in its undertones of Lee Morgan and Horace Silver.

Momentum is an album that invites the listener back, precisely because of this counterbalance of the settled and the agitated, the risky and the sureness of traditional references. Walden’s stirring improvisations mirror the compositional parity. To loquacious lines that reflect the current trend of saxophonists bubbling over with harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic ideas, Walden brings a wise, patient, and homespun approach.

Release Date:
November 17th, 2009 on Demi Sound Records

Personnel:
Myron Walden – Tenor Saxophone
Darren Barrett – Trumpet
David Bryant- Keyboards
Yasushi Nakamura – Bass
Kendrick Scott – Drums

Track List:
Of Three Worlds
The Road Ahead
Pulse
Vision of a Visionary
Miles
When Time Stood Still
What Goes Up Must Come Down
Longing
Like a Flower Seeking the Sun
Memories
Carnage
When Time Stood Still (alt)

Myron Walden's "Countrified" playing Say it Again

Myron Walden's "Countrified" at the Jazz Gallery.
Myron Walden - Tenor Saxophone,
Jared Gold - Organ,
Kenneth Salters - Drums.
May 16th, 2009

A Jazz Saxophonist Who Embraces Earnestness

The saxophonist Myron Walden was cultivated at Smalls, New York’s magic garden for jazz musicians in the 1990s. There, in groups and on his own, he began to find his sound and style and temperament as an improviser, most often on alto saxophone. He’s been methodical and emotional, energetic and honest, following chord changes with a focused tone until his long notes start to ripen and burst in the upper register.
He’s done this in various settings. One has been driving, hectic, no-piano, small-group jazz: a post-Wayne Shorter saxophonist’s boxing ring. Another has been the glowing, pastoral gospel jazz of Brian Blade’s group, the Fellowship Band. Both kinds of music, in different ways, reflect a deep trust of the audience. They’re unafraid of the earnest gesture. This month he’s performing every week at the Jazz Gallery, giving public previews of new groups he’s been developing recently. (Within the next six months he’ll release three new records on his own label, Demi.) On Wednesday he performed with a quintet, In This World, doing a kind of serious and benevolent ballad music.

In his first set, during slow and gracious monologues between songs, Mr. Walden stressed that the pieces came from moments of broad and solitary emotion, and struggled to convey their meaning. But the music said most of it: restful, sentimental, balanced. The titles, like “Inner Peace,” “A Love Eternal” and “When All Is Said and Done,” said the rest. The band includes the pianist Jon Cowherd, also from Mr. Blade’s band, a guarantor of contemplation. Curiously, almost stubbornly, he plays jazz as if it were one long hymn, with quiet tolling chords and pedal tones. The band also includes the guitarist Mike Moreno, who made his single notes liquefy and evaporate, removing the edges with applications of his volume pedal.

Mr. Walden’s writing for the group stays tight, full of harmony and development and concision; he played soprano, alto and tenor saxophone, sometimes soloing very little. Serenity only exists in relation to unrest, and luckily a little of that came to the surface. The drummer, Obed Calvaire, energized several pieces while other players were soloing, locking into and anticipating their phrasing, chattering out patterns on snare and cymbals amid Yasushi Nakamura’s bass grooves. And even Mr. Cowherd broke out a couple of times, working up to some splintered, rolling phrases — elliptical, determinedly peaceful, but with teeth. Myron Walden performs next at the Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson Street, at Spring Street, South Village, on Wednesday and on Sept. 23 and 30, each time with a different band and repertory; (212) 242-1063, jazzgallery.org.
By BEN RATLIFF
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/arts/music/12walden.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss