ARTEMIS, Artemis

The band’s debut album is a superb nine-song set that features material composed and/or arranged by each of the band’s six instrumentalists. ARTEMIS unfurls with a dynamic flow, stunningly eclectic yet entirely cohesive. “The group identity emerged organically,” Rosnes offers, and ARTEMIS discovered a thrilling collective vision early in its lifespan. “We are seven leaders, each with our own vision and personal point of view, but we play with a unified conception.”

The propulsive surge of Miller’s “Goddess Of The Hunt” kicks off the album with a steely urgency. Paying homage to the band’s namesake deity, Miller says that the piece “is a sonic exploration of the powerful traits that define women. We are resilient, tenacious, determined, life-giving, versatile, nurturing, elegant, mysterious, cunning, persistent, and patient. Each section of the piece rolls into the next, giving the listener a sense of continuum and the cycle of life.”

Rosnes’ contribution to the repertoire, “Big Top,” is a tour de force that makes a wry allusion to the perception of women in jazz as novelties. The composition’s carnival-inspired angularity, Rosnes says, uses a circus metaphor to “take the stereotype and rob it of its power. It’s only a matter of time before witnessing a group of women playing together – in terms of gender – will rightfully be unremarkable.”

The musical director created artful arrangements for Salvant’s two vocal pieces, a spellbinding rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “If It’s Magic” and the melancholy “Cry, Buttercup, Cry,” a lesser known song recorded by the vocalist Maxine Sullivan in the late 1940s. Rosnes also crafted a sly reimagining of Lee Morgan’s classic Blue Note hit “The Sidewinder,” forsaking the original’s forceful funk punch for a more stealthy, insinuating slinkiness that vibrantly features the agile three-horn frontline.

Aldana’s simmering “Frida” pays tribute to another ferociously inventive artist, the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Previously the subject of her celebrated 2019 album Visions, Kahlo inspired the saxophonist through “her own process of finding self-identity through art,” according to Aldana.

Cohen’s mesmerizing “Nocturno” seems to waft into the ear from a dreamscape. The composer says she was “inspired by Chopin and by solitude. I wanted to have a melody that floats over a moving rhythm in a ballad, like a lonely voice in the movement of life. I was imagining Melissa, Ingrid, and me playing that melody expressively in unison – something I love to do when I play with my two brothers [trumpeter Avishai and saxophonist Yuval] and now I also get to create that way with my new sisters.”

Ueda’s “Step Forward” begins with a tense, spiraling intro before bursting into an expansive waltz. The bassist was reminded of first hearing the whole tone sound in the piano pieces by the Japanese composer Yoshinao Nakata that she practiced as a child. While the song’s title alludes to the first step of a dance, Ueda adds, “I would like to think that it refers to a meaningful ‘step forward’ for woman in jazz as well.”

Ueda says, “Everyone in the band is a spectacular player with a voice of her own. You can hear colorful and diverse sounds and a range of expression in each of the compositions and arrangements.”

Jensen contributes a shadow-shrouded arrangement of The Beatles’ “The Fool on the Hill” – not just one of Lennon and McCartney’s many classic melodies, but a pointed political statement. Musing on the piece at a moment of pandemic and protest, the trumpeter asserts, “The title is self-explanatory. My idea was to capture an essence of the constant chatter we seem to be living with: the sorrow, the madness, the community support to be tapped into via conversation, and the change ahead. ARTEMIS is a group of extraordinary women whose combined energies and skills cannot be stifled into the label of an all-star band, as every time we meet to play our conversations both on and off-stage, lead to fluidly inspired magical musical events.”

The track listing for ARTEMIS is as follows:

1. Goddess Of The Hunt (Allison Miller)
2. Frida (Melissa Aldana)
3. The Fool On The Hill (John Lennon/Paul McCartney, arr. by Ingrid Jensen)
4. Big Top (Renee Rosnes)
5. If It’s Magic feat. Cécile McLorin Salvant (Stevie Wonder, arr. by Renee Rosnes)
6. Nocturno (Anat Cohen)
7. Step Forward (Noriko Ueda)
8. Cry Buttercup Cry feat. Cécile McLorin Salvant (Rocco Accetta)
9. The Sidewinder (Lee Morgan, arr. by Renee Rosnes)

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