Laura Jurd & Paul Dunmall - Fanfares and Freedom (Discus, 2024)

By Gary Chapin

Fanfares and Freedom makes sense when you think of it—as the notes suggest—as a jazz quartet paired with a brass band, the two in dialogue. The brass band tradition has a strong but oddly retro-subversive role in jazz history, and not just the early years. Many AACM masters, for example, honed their chops playing in military bands. Witness Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, and Butch Morris’ conductions for explicit connections.

The titles of the pieces on Fanfares and Freedompoint to the brass/New Orleans connections. We’ve got two fanfares, a stomp, and a “toodle-oo.” Laura Jurd’s compositions center the brass element as a frame. The first track, “Fanfare 1,” begins with a repetitive, rolling, sequence from which Dunmall’s sopranino emerges like a brilliant spasm, cascading like a flooded pachinko machine. It’s glorious. The second track begins in a “March of the Wooden Soldiers” place, a twisted, humorous, light travelog. The quartet comes in, led by Dunmall’s tenor, moving us from black and white to color. “Chorale” starts with beautiful brass chord/melodies, then has us walking scattered in the ruins, and brings us to rest somewhere safe.

So far I’ve been distinguishing between the elements, but, inevitably, they merge and a unified set of compositions and improvisations are the result. Dunmall is kind of a monster, playing Paul Gonsalves to Jurd’s Ellington. The brass group sometimes takes on a chamber vibe, but can (and does) let rip. The trombone solos (I can’t tell which of the two trombonists, Alex Paxton or Raphael Clarkson is playing) are wonderful, raunchy—for example in the opening of the third track, “Onward Stomp,” a 13 minute masterpiece, where the ‘bone and the piano engage in mutual malfeasance. Later the brass all engage in a jump scare blatty-blat-blat right at a Dunmall exaltation.

I’m always interested, as a listener and writer, in the relationship between improvisation and composition. This is one of the few cases where the composer, Jurd, is also explicitly interested in that tension! All of that, though, is secondary to the fact that the record sounds fantastic, fun, and intense.