Surprises from Norah Jones and Bruce Hornsby

William Dart finds some surprises when singer Norah Jones pairs up with the electronic Svengali, Doveman, and Bruce Hornsby veers from the middle of the road to play Bach and delivers it dark with his own songs.

Imagine my Surprise was the second and final album from a band with the name of Dreams.

The year was 1971 and this sophomore release came out less than twelve months after the group’s debut.

Dreams was, alas, short-lived, but maybe there was just no competing with groups such as Blood, Sweat & Tears or Chicago in the hotly contested arena of early 70s jazz-rock.

But the Dreams team included drummer Billy Cobham, who’d go on to play with Miles Davis and John McLaughlin, and the late reed man Michael Brecker (who would inspire Kiwi composer John Psathas to write his first saxophone concerto).

Today, this blast from almost a half-century ago is not an introduction to jazzy rockers and rocking jazzsters, but a whimsical excuse to consider just how important and rare surprises are.

And, I’m happy to say, just lately, I’ve been having some nice surprises.

First up is a new album, propitiously titled Begin Again, from Norah Jones.

I was a doubting Thomas back in 2002 when the American singer’s very first release, Come away with me won hearts and topped charts — not only in this country but also in the UK, US and Australia.

I found it all just a little too much of a self-conscious play for a homogenized middle market, although my heart did soften when guitarist Bill Frisell edged his way onto a few tracks.

Somehow, Bill Frisell’s shuddering guitar, adding the perfect shade of David Lynch dark blue to proceedings, brought in just the astringency that Norah Jones’ apricot and cream vocals needed.

It's a voice and a repertoire that would have her appearing in compilation albums such as The Best of Lounge Music and Love’s Greatest Hits.

This was the woman who, after all, did manage to get Dave Grohl and his Foo Fighters to put their heavy musical artillery aside and take time out for a slice of bossa nova shuffle.

Over the years, I’ve followed Norah Jones mainly in the company of others, most recently singing "Court and Spark" at Joni Mitchell’s 75^th birthday concert.

There have been some particularly memorable comings-together with other women ... and popular ones too. There’s no mistaking when Jones takes the mic in this duet with Bonnie Raitt. Just listen to the audience roar in expectation.

But things did change as Norah Jones branched out into the new. We heard her alongside rapper Talib Kweli in 2007 and on Beck’s 2014 Song Reader album. She was also just as happy to go country, singing a Mary Karr and Rodney Crowell song on the 2012 album Kin.

And she didn’t always sing.

Jones sits at the grand piano accompanying the great Irma Thomas in Thomas’s aptly named Simply Grand CD.

Check out the other artists on this project and you realise that Jones is in daunting company with guests including Dr John, Randy Newman and Ellis Marsalis.

And Thomas’s gospel credentials add some welcome grist to one of Jones’ own songs "Thinking about you".

Last year I had the pleasure of presenting an album with the arcane title of Peter Pears: Balinese Ceremonial Music. It was a collaboration between two men: Nico Muhly and Thomas Bartlett.

Muhly’s a classical composer, responsible for the opera Marnie that’s just been doing the circuit on New Zealand cinema screens. Bartlett is a prolific singer, musician and producer who works under the name of Doveman.

2008 saw Norah Jones guesting on a Doveman album titled The Conformist in the breathy ballad "Aftermath". Despite being free of the electronic trickeries that mark other tracks on the album, it still manages its own spooky atmospherics with the sinuous mix ‘n’ mingle of the two singer’s voices.

Seeds must have been planted back then, as, 11 years on, Doveman turns up as an appreciated collaborator on Jones’ new album, Begin Again.

Just a few weeks back, while touring Australia, the singer made an appearance on a TV talk show, although the new CD was rather casually treated.

Predictably daft questions from a panel of four TV personalities had Jones explaining her success by saying that it came more from what she hadn’t done than what she had. She admitted that the new album was shortish with only 7 songs and more of a collection of singles than a unified whole.

While the more approachable numbers, written with Jeff Tweedy, have the potential to bring in a wider audience catchment, the two Doveman songs are more adventurous. One, "My Heart is Full", opens the album in chant style, with a choir of Norah Joneses echoing around Doveman’s mysterious sonorities.

There’s a nice sense of capriciousness running through the second outing by Norah Jones and Doveman.

As there should be for a song with the title “Uh Oh”. Banks of stealthily climbing harmonies, note by note, may not be everybody’s cappuccino but there are enough surprises around them to tweak curiosity, not to mention a delicious sound palette referencing tremolo strings, tinkling glockenspiel and a jagged piano riff.

Bruce Hornsby is an artist who hasn’t really impacted on my consciousness for some time.

Back in the 80s, with his band The Range, he often seemed like a man with his musical wheels firmly on either side of the road’s perilous dotted line.

Yet Hornsby had the keyboard chops that had him talking trade with jazz pianist Marian McPartland on her celebrated radio show.

And who could not but be impressed with the deftly voiced piano stylings that launch his first solo album in 1993 ... a treasured oasis before the ballad machine cranks up.

Bruce Hornsby’s career doesn’t fall into easy categorization. To start with there’s all his work with the Grateful Dead as well as a quirky bluegrassing partnership with Ricky Skaggs.

His quest for new musical adventures with the turn of the millenium found him working with a new band, The Noisemakers.

And if you want to hear Hornsby and these musicians in full flight, there’s some free downloadable tracks to be picked up on line, recorded in Philadelphia three years ago. One 15 minute saga has a particularly wild piano solo flanked by two songs with the band, and I think you’ll be as surprised as I was to hear a free-ranging toccata transmogrify into one of Bach’s Goldberg variations. It may not be delivered with the flawless fingerwork that purists are accustomed to, but Hornsby, as you’ll hear from his own interjections, makes it into a devil-may-care romp.

I suspect that I’m not the only one to be surprised by Bruce Hornsby’s latest CD, Absolute Zero, so perfectly summed up by the heading over a New York Times review which reads: "Bruce Hornsby’s album is complex and untrendy. That’s why it’s so good".

Propelled on mind-tangling asymmetrical rhythms under vocals lines as perilous as a Matterhorn climbing expedition, it’s an absolute revelation. Some of which comes from a guest-list of musicians ranging from Justin Vernon of the band Bon Iver to veteran jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette.

And the chamber music ensemble that makes spiky contributions to Hornsby’s musical jousting is the same group that added Carnegie Hall class to Paul Simon’s most recent album.

I opened with a 1970s jazz-rock band named Dreams and I’ll return to Dreamtime in this closing number. It’s one of Hornsby’s latest lyrical dazzlers. And I use that term very deliberately. The message of the song, titled "The Blinding Light of Dreams", concerns unresolved racial issues in America today, when the murder of a young boy brings back visions of "Jim Crow and early Harper Lee".

It’s a dark, dark night that we enter, over Hornsby’s gnarly piano, making it clear that this dream is really more of a nightmare

Music Details

'Song title' (Composer) – Performers
Album title
(Label)

'Imagine My Surprise' (R Brecker) – Dreams
Imagine My Surprise
(Columbia)

'The Long Day is over' (Harris, Jones) – Norah Jones
Come Away with Me
(Blue Note)

'Virginia Moon' (Grohl et al) – Foo Fighters
In Your Honor
(RCA)

'Strange Transmissions' (Malick) – The Peter Malick Group, feat. Norah Jones
New York City, The Deluxe Collection
(Koch)

'I Don’t Want Anything to Change' (Rose, Sharp) – Bonnie Raitt and Norah Jones
Decades Rock Live: Bonnie Raitt and Friends
(Capitol)

'Thinking About You' (Ersahin, Jones) – Irma Thomas and Norah Jones
Simply Grand
(Rounder)

'Aftermath' (Bartlett) – Doveman, feat. Norah Jones
The Conformist
(Anti)

'My heart is Full' (Bartlett) – Norah Jones
Begin Again
(Blue Note)

'Uh Oh' (Bartlett) – Norah Jones
Begin Again
(Blue Note)

'The Valley Road' (Hornsby) – Bruce Hornsby & The Range
single
(RCA)

'Harbor Lights' (Hornsby) – Bruce Hornsby
Harbor Lights
(RCA)

'King of the Hill, Goldberg Variations' (Hornsby) – Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers
free download ex www.brucehornsbylive.com
(Bruce Hornsby)

'The Blinding Light of Dreams' (Hornsby) – Bruce Hornsby
Absolute Zero
(Zappo Productions)