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Allison’s lineup is different in a couple significant ways this time: drummer Rudy Royston is filling in for Michael Sarin and superb violinist Jenny Scheinman is taking over the front-line spot of saxophonist Michael Blake. She’s a great sideman–I don’t know many musicians who could play with country-rock avatar Rodney Crowell on one visit and with a jazz bassist like Allison on the next–but I’m still waiting for the day she actually leads a group of her own in Chicago.
In October she released Crossing the Field, an all-instrumental outing that’s deeply rooted in jazz but frequently transcends it to become a lovely kind of urbane Americana. Scheinman’s excellent band that includes Frisell, pianist Jason Moran, cornetist Ron Miles, and clarinetist Doug Wiesselman, but the real star is producer and arranger Sascha von Oertzen. Most of the tracks feature elaborate string charts, which from one minute to the next can go from sounding like some lost Aaron Copland score to cavorting like a Raymond Scott miniature.
