‘Artemis’ Review: An All-Female Septet With Steady Aim by Larry Blumenfeld

 Larry Blumenfeld is an keen observer of the elements influencing today’s Jazz scene and it’s a privilege to have his writing grace these pages. We’ve also scheduled his review on “Monk Goes to School,” the Verve/Impulse recently released Thelonious CD, to post to the blog on Monday, October 5, 2020.

‘Artemis’ Review: An All-Female Septet With Steady Aim

The group’s self-titled debut album moves gracefully through various jazz styles.

By Larry Blumenfeld

Appeared in the September 21, 2020, print edition as 'Steady Aim From an All-Female Septet.'

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 

“Back in December at Carnegie Hall, as members of the ensemble Artemis traded solos with bluesy conviction while performing Billie Holiday’s “Fine and Mellow” as an encore, many audience members rose to their feet in raucous response. Each of these seven musicians—pianist Renee Rosnes, clarinetist Anat Cohen, tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, bassist Noriko Ueda, drummer Allison Miller and vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant—has earned individual acclaim as a bandleader, composer or sought-after partner. Together, under Ms. Rosnes’s musical direction, they revealed a shared intensity and suggested something alluring and new.

The group’s debut release, “Artemis” (Blue Note), delivers on that promise. It begins with “Goddess of the Hunt,” a piece built on an insistent pulse and featuring several unexpected harmonic detours. Ms. Miller composed it to evoke the Greek mythological figure Artemis—the paragon of female power and compassion, keen focus and steady aim for which this group is named. The following track, “Frida,” is a tense but lovely piece composed by Ms. Aldana and named for the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, whose struggles to assert herself in an arena dominated by men inspired Ms. Aldana’s 2019 album “Visions.”

Such allusions to gender dynamics are both unavoidable and meaningful. The rich history of all-female jazz groups includes, in the 1940s, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and, more recently, a remarkable trio of pianist Geri Allen, bassist Esperanza Spalding and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, as well as the big band Diva, in which some Artemis members have played. There is also a new context for such legacies, given recently increased opportunities for female leaders on jazz stages, more widespread recognition of their accomplishments in general, and a growing awareness of bias and inequity along gender lines. In truth, perhaps the least remarkable aspect of this group is that all of its members are female. One could argue that the demographic shift best represented by its personnel relates to jazz’s global reach: Ms. Rosnes and Ms. Jensen were born in Canada; Ms. Cohen, in Israel; Ms. Aldana, Chile; Ms. Ueda, Japan; and Ms. Salvant and Ms. Miller hail from the U.S.

The real headline here is this ensemble’s cohesion, its ability to move gracefully through various styles and moods and to sound, by turns, authoritative and playful, locked-in or loose-limbed. In the tradition of drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Artemis crafts an identifiable band sound rooted in sturdy yet flexible rhythms (which here owe greatly to Ms. Miller’s blend of propulsion and understated details) and presents an open invitation for members to compose (five of these musicians are represented by original pieces here). “Nocturno,” composed by Ms. Cohen, floats gently over a simple bass figure, its melody expressed through unison lines from clarinet, saxophone and trumpet that sometimes break apart or interlace. Ms. Ueda’s “Step Forward” is a sprightly jazz waltz in which the rhythm section calibrates its accompaniment to reed and horn solos with noteworthy sensitivity. The album’s most striking piece, Ms. Rosnes’s “Big Top,” is both challenging and funny in the manner that Charles Mingus once combined such characteristics. Ms. Jensen’s arrangement of the Lennon-McCartney classic “The Fool on the Hill” loosens the joints that bind that song’s familiar melody enough to create a more open-ended structure and darkens its mood through harmonies that occasionally dissolve into tendrils of collective improvisation.

The particular spell cast by these distinctive instrumental arrangements gets broken somewhat when Ms. Salvant sings a majestic yet relatively straightforward version of the Stevie Wonder ballad “If It’s Magic.” Nevertheless, Ms. Salvant is such a commanding and musical a presence, and Mr. Wonder’s tune so lovely in the first place, that such disruption ends up as rewarding. Better still is her knowing and bittersweet delivery on “Cry, Buttercup, Cry,” which was popularized by Maxine Sullivan in the 1940s, here complemented by glowing muted trumpet tones, moaning clarinet and throaty tenor-sax figures.

A closing version of Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” doesn’t dig in hard to the song’s funky rhythm. Rather, it slithers. Meanwhile, the familiar theme is cloaked in layers of shifting close-knit harmony. Artemis means to upend expectations, gently and yet with force. Its music comes off like a nuanced argument for a fresh point of view.”

—Mr. Blumenfeld writes about jazz for the Journal.

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 

Appeared in the September 21, 2020, print edition as 'Steady Aim From an All-Female Septet.'