Today, my job is to get you into Sudoku jazz. What is Sudoku jazz, you ask? Sudoku jazz is something I just made up.
It isn’t a style of playing, it’s a style of listening — and it entered my life in mid-November after I bought a copy of “Lebroba,” a new album by the great jazz drummer Andrew Cyrille. Made with some help from the guitarist Bill Frisell and the trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, it’s a recording of largely improvised, occasionally unmetered tunes, played elegantly and unpredictably. I’ve listened to it nearly every day for the past two months.
That means it must be amazing, huh? Yes and no. Yes, “Lebroba” is amazing in that it refuses to let me grow tired of it, but no, it isn’t amazing in the sweeping, startling, bravura-stroked ways that usually shout “amazing!” Instead, this music feels minimal and manageable, but still a little mysterious — not unlike the Sudoku puzzle that gets printed in your newspaper each day.
Here’s what I mean: I know what to expect from “Lebroba” (drums, guitar, trumpet), just as I know what to expect from a Sudoku (digits on a grid), but I have no idea how my experience with either will unfold. Not exactly. That’s Sudoku jazz. It’s a ritual listening experience that feels unsurprising and unpredictable.
And for anyone who still finds jazz to be impenetrable, forbidding or worse, maybe this is a good way in. In his 2016 book, “A Listener’s Guide to Free Improvisation,” the music writer John Corbett helpfully reminds us that improvised music “is not a mystery cult, esoteric language, or secret handshake. It needs no decoder ring.” Nor does improvised jazz need to blow our squishy little minds every time we encounter it. Epiphanies can be tiny, tidy things. Sometimes, the big ones gather slowly, in flecks.
Helping prep for future
For whatever reason, I’ve had my most enriching Sudoku jazz experiences with contemporary musicians who improvise in relatively clean, relatively legible language. To me, these players sound as if they can hear a secret order in the chaos of the world.
I love following the tenor saxophonist Mark Turner as he steps from note to note on his recent duet albums with the pianist Ethan Iverson (“Temporary Kings”) and the guitarist Mikkel Ploug (“Faroe”). I love just about everything that happens beneath the fingertips of pianists Kris Davis and Craig Taborn — and I especially loved hearing them side-by-side on their 2018 collaboration, “Octopus.” I love Cyrille’s “Lebroba,” too.
Is it an insult to compare the work of these shining minds to a disposable morning math puzzle? I hope not. When Leonard Cohen said that he wrote songs for his fans to listen to while they washed their dishes, he wasn’t being self-deprecating. Cohen knew that doing the dishes is heavy stuff. It’s a routine reconciliation between the past and the future, an elemental act of closure and renewal that involves water, air and time.
Just as splashing around in the dishwater can feel both shallow and deep, I think Sudoku jazz can feel both small and vast. It’s a way of getting into improvised music, but more so, it’s a way of staying in — a little ritual that might better prepare us for the big unknown, or at least help us get from today to tomorrow.
