Tenor Saxophonist Harry Allen Fires on All Cylinders During Busy Pandemic Period

Birdland was unmasked and mostly sold out the other night, leaving one thinking: “What pandemic?”The evening started with the sophisticated and swinging singer-pianist Eric Comstock and his “partners-in-time,” bassist Sean Smith and vocalist Barbara Fasano. A few hours later, the night wound up with Emmet Cohen, for my dough the most exciting young pianist playing today. In between, the outstanding tenor saxophonist Harry Allen held forth downstairs in the Birdland Theater with an equally outstanding quartet.The last two years have been rough on musicians, but piano players like Messrs. Cohen and Comstock and another Birdland mainstay, Billy Stritch, have proven especially resourceful in terms of connecting with their audiences via virtual performances. For some reason, keyboardists come off better than other musicians when Zooming into people’s laptops and cellphones. While they were live streaming during the lockdown, Mr. Allen devoted his time to recording three new albums. There are two sets of duets, “Under a Blanket of Blue” with guitarist Dave Blenkhorn and “Milo’s Illinois” with bassist MIke Karn, and then there’s “The Bloody Happy Song,” an album that defies easy explanation other than to say it is a solo project.The set of tenor-guitar duets was recorded remotely though with the two performing simultaneously — Mr. Allen at his home in New Jersey and Mr. Blenkhorn at his chateau in France. The set with Mr. Karn was done together in the same space. As a rule of thumb, duets between a horn and a primarily chordal instrument, like the guitar or piano, tend to be more lyrical and intimate, while duets between a wind instrument and a rhythm one, like the bass, tend to be more uptempo and outgoing.Of course, guitars also supply rhythm and basses also provide harmony, so the distinction is far from absolute.Still, it’s a good rule of thumb. Both albums are suitable for dancing, though more so with your own partner in your own living space than at a ballroom. The tenor-bass duets are like an extroverted swing dance, and the tenor-guitar set is more often a romantic slow dance. On “Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered,” Mr. Blenkhorn plays the verse unaccompanied before Mr. Allen enters with the central refrain, in a way that suggests they’re playing the Richard Rodgers melody with a single, unified voice.“Street of Dreams” is an intimate slow dance, more about the dreams than the street, while “Imagination” further shows that dreams and imagination were precisely what we needed to get through the pandemic as well as the equally confusing period that has followed.“Milo’s Illinois” — the title track is a Karn original dedicated to a canine companion — opens with “Love is Just Around the Corner,” which Mr. Allen also played with Mr. Karn at Birdland. In introducing this 1934 standard, he pointed out the screwball-comedy quality of lyrics such as those in the bridge here, comparing the object of one’s affection to the Venus de Milo, “but what’s more you’ve got arms.” This album captures that exuberant spirit: Even “Slumber On, My Little Gypsy Sweetheart,” an operetta ballad by Victor Herbert becomes a raucous uptempo, as does Irving Berlin’s beautiful ballad, “The Song Is Ended,” delivered in a swinging four — a heck of a way to play a waltz.At Birdland, Mr. Allen explained that during the lockdown, he repeatedly tried to write a sad song, to express his frustration at not being able to play before live audiences. However the actual melody he wrote came out unexpectedly joyous and optimistic; therefore, he named it “The Bloody Happy Song.” This is the title track of his third pandemic album. Recorded in his home, it consists of 10 tracks in which he is the sole performer, utilizing a combination of acoustic playing, overdubbing, and electronics. “The Bloody Happy Song” (which is also heard in a duet with Mr. Blenkhorn on the “Blanket of Blue” album) itself sounds like an early 1960s showtune in ABAB form, brimming with energy and enthusiasm and complete with a Broadway-style tag. Given a blindfold test, I might have thought it was a previously unknown number by Jule Styne or Cy Coleman; Mr. Allen plays it here using five tenor saxophone parts over a synthesized big band. “The Bloody Happy” album includes several lovely all-sax ensemble numbers, created with multitracking, particularly “Should I” (three overdubbed tenor saxophone parts) and “More” (six tenors), which show that Mr. Allen is an inspired arranger for this unique instrumental ensemble format. There are other cuts where he lays down a rhythm section or keyboard background for his tenor, as in “I Get Along Without You Very Well.” The latter actually starts with just a saxophone and piano track, and then expands into a full, synthesized orchestra with strings.My favorite cuts here are the complete solos, “The Summer Knows” and “The Single Petal of a Rose.” The unaccompanied horn format is mainly the province of postmodern and avant-garde jazzmen, such as Marshall Allen, Anthony Braxton, and the late Steve Lacy — it is rarely if ever used by swing-style players such as Mr. Allen. His solos here are exquisite, though. He maintains a delicate balance, never relying too much on the melody nor merely jettisoning it — it’s like tightrope-walking more than anything. “Single Petal of a Rose” was originally written by Duke Ellington as an unaccompanied piano solo as part of “The Queen’s Suite” in 1959; since then, it has been probably the no. 1 completely solo tune for jazzmen, including Joe Temperley on baritone saxophone, Ken Peplowski on clarinet, and now Mr. Allen on tenor. He plays it not as if there were an imaginary rhythm section behind him, but as a full ensemble unto himself.While I sorely missed not being able to hear Harry Allen live in 2020 and 2021, the upside is that he used the time to do what he otherwise might not have been able to: to show us that there’s an entire universe of sounds within the bell of his horn.

Tenor Saxophonist Harry Allen Fires on All Cylinders During Busy Pandemic Period

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