Anna Butterss is an Australian-born bassist who’s been living in the US for a decade and a half, and in that time has become a key supporting player on two seemingly unrelated scenes. As a member of guitarist Jeff Parker’s Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA for short) quartet and the collective SML, a collaborator with Makaya McCraven and a solo artist, they are a vital member of the LA jazz underground; as a member of Jason Isbell’s touring band and a session player for Neko Case, Aimee Mann, boygenius, Kathleen Edwards, Ben Lee, and others, they help shape the sound of contemporary indie singer-songwriterism (I guess; I don’t listen to that stuff).

In the last three years, Butterss has been featured on boygenius’ The Record, Isbell’s Live From The Ryman Vol. 2, Case’s Neon Grey Midnight Green, Edwards’ Billionaire, the Jeff Parker ETA Quartet’s The Way Out Of Easy, and SML’s self-titled debut and How You Been. They also made their second solo LP, Mighty Vertebrate. And now they’re graduating to the big leagues, playing (along with Parker and ETA saxophonist Josh Johnson) on Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea’s upcoming solo debut, Honora, and will be playing that music on tour.

When we spoke by phone recently, I was initially curious about Butterss’ thoughts on the role of the bass. Some jazz bassists are leaders, like Charles Mingus or William Parker, while others are there to provide a steady foundation and keep the music together, like Buster Williams or Ray Brown (someone Butterss has cited as an influence). They said it depends on the context.

"I play in a lot of collaborative projects where I wouldn’t consider myself to be a leader, and then I also have my own project where I guess by default I’m a leader," Butterss said. "I don’t know if I really see it as a kind of binary, one or the other kind of option, I guess — so much of the music that I play with SML or with Jeff’s quartet is collective and improvisational and kind of like, no one’s a leader. So I think there are moments where maybe the bass kind of steps out in front or maybe plays more of a supportive role, but I think it’s all very malleable. But I guess my philosophy is, I’m always thinking of the bass as being supportive, but I think about it very melodically as well. I think that’s a kind of a driving consideration for how I approach it."

The ETA IVtet has gotten a lot of attention after releasing two live albums — At The Enfield Tennis Academy, on Eremite, and The Way Out Of Easy, on International Anthem/Nonesuch. Their music consists of long, minimalist, slowly evolving jams, like if the Necks had a guitarist and saxophonist instead of a piano. Butterss’ contribution to a given track might consist of four notes, played over and over for 20 minutes.

"It’s great. It’s the best feeling," they said. "I think to be able to do that, you have to be egoless in a way; you have to be able to put aside all the things you can do for the sake of the music." Butterss pointed to quartet drummer Jay Bellerose as a major inspiration in that regard. "I’ve never seen anyone do it as effectively as Jay does it; he will play the same beat — he’ll play, like, bass drum, snare drum. Hi-hat, maybe. Like 15 minutes, just the same thing over and over again, and it feels so good — he has this amazing kind of sense of time and mood and feel. And then after 15-20 minutes, he’ll play, like, one crash cymbal and people in the audience freak out."

But music that meditative is in some ways created by the listeners as well, or at least it’s a form of energy transference between band and crowd. "I think the music we play with that quartet, it’s evolved over a long period of time into what that is, but it’s very much also based on the feeling in the room when we were playing [the LA bar Enfield Tennis Academy, where the group had a residency for seven years] and people wanted to get into a trancey state, people wanted to come along. We kind of could sense that that’s what people also were coming for — they wanted to kind of visit a world that we created... and come along for the journey through that world over like 20 minutes, half an hour."

SML is a very different group, one that arose out of the Enfield residency as well but which has a character all its own. Butterss is joined by Johnson, synth player Jeremiah Chiu, guitarist Gregory Uhlmann, and percussionist Booker Stardrum, and their two albums contain discrete, short pieces cut down from live recordings. "We’ve never been in the studio with the band," Butterss explained. "We’ve never rehearsed and we’ve never composed any songs... and we’ve kind of leaned into it being really separate from the live performance." SML also don’t re-create pieces exactly as they exist on the album. "You get it on the record [and] the live show is going to be something completely different. I just think it’s an interesting way to make music. I like a kind of tightly curated record — in that way, I guess my records are kind of the same, you know? You kind of get in, get out — show the idea but kind of leave everyone wanting a little bit more, and then they can come to the live show."

Indeed, Butterss’ two albums as a "leader," 2022’s Activities and 2024’s Mighty Vertebrate, are also focused on composition. Activities, released on Colorfield, was a collaboration with label head Pete Min on which Butterss played almost every instrument, many of them unfamiliar. They described it as "a little more structured, probably because I’ve spent so much time playing improvised music... I kind of wanted to see what it felt like to write things that were more like compositions and... exploring production, exploring different instruments outside of the bass."

Mighty Vertebrate was recorded with a quartet — Johnson on sax, Uhlmann on guitar, and Ben Lumsdaine on drums and various other instruments, plus one guest guitar solo from Parker — and carefully assembled over 18 months. Butterss described it as "its own world that, you know, this is how I was feeling over the year and a half that I made it and it’s kind of like tied a bow on it and that’s done... the next one could be something completely different. I’m not committed to a certain style or anything like that with my own music."

Josh Johnson is one of Butterss’ key collaborators. They met in music school in Indiana and have been working together ever since. His contribution to the ETA quartet is fascinating, because it’s so far from the typical saxophonist’s role. He never seems to take a "solo" in the traditional sense; instead, his horn sits within the groove, harmonizing with the guitar and bass, and when he makes a statement it seems to be an interjection that somehow continues for longer than you expect. This egolessness has been key to the musical relationship between himself and Butterss. "He’s very comfortable leaving space, observing what’s going on and then deciding what he’s gonna do and I think that made it really easy for us to develop a language together, a kind of musical communication that’s only deepened over so many years of playing together in Jeff’s band and SML and then my band and his band."

Three-quarters of the ETA quartet worked with Flea on his upcoming solo album Honora. I was somewhat stunned when I found that out, and I had to know from Butterss how it had all come about. Had he been coming to their gigs? Was Flea a habitué of the underground LA jazz scene?

It turned out the answer was yes. "We’ve all kind of known Flea for for a while now," Butterss said, "I think through a friend of the quartet, [Bright Eyes’] Nate Walcott, who was touring with the Chili Peppers back in 2017-ish. But yeah, Flea’s a huge, huge jazz fan, you know, from when he was a kid; that’s kind of his first love, so he had come to see us a number of times with the quartet, and I had got to know him a little bit during the pandemic."

Johnson had produced Meshell Ndegeocello’s 2023 album The Omnichord Real Book, which led Flea to ask him to produce Honora. He, Parker, and Butterss became the core band, with Flea on trumpet, vocals and occasional bass and Deantoni Parks on drums.

"I’m so impressed by him in so many ways, but I think just how much he cares about the music and how much he put into that record, and I just like the fact that after having this extremely successful career with the Chili Peppers that he would do this really vulnerable thing and make a record on an instrument that he hasn’t really played in public, playing a completely different style of music, and that he came at it from such a humble place of just wanting to learn and just wanting to do the best that he could. His passion and humility about it... really just affected me deeply, and it was extremely cool to get to work with him. He plays trumpet on a lot of the record, but we also play bass together on a number of the tracks and that was just a really positive experience for me, just really cool." They added, "I liked that he decided to make a jazz record and then made a weird one. Like, he made the one he wanted to make."

TAKE 10

10

The Dam Jawn - "Sooryaast" (Feat. Jeremy Pelt)

The Dam Jawn are a group of young Dutch musicians who spent some time studying together at Temple University. ("Dam" = Amsterdam; "Jawn" = a thing people say in Philly.) Their last album, 2024’s Forward!, was a collaboration with alto saxophonist Dick Oatts; this time out, they’re working with trumpeter Jeremy Pelt. The core group consists of alto saxophonist Martin Diaz, tenor saxophonist Frank Groenendijk, electric guitarist Joan Fort, bassist Philip Lewin, and drummer Nitin Parree, and their music is a blend of jazz and rock that doesn’t really privilege either side; they’re as comfortable with a tender ballad as a scorching blowout. The opening track, "Sooryaast" (the Hindi word for "sunset") lays down a deep, rattling but slightly off-kilter funk groove over which the horns ascend and fly, as the guitar emits floating waves of noise. Pelt’s solo feels like a powerhouse tribute to early ’70s Donald Byrd. (From Triphasic, out now via Dox.)

9

Out Of/Into - "Juno"

Out Of/Into started out as the Blue Note Quintet, an all-star group created to celebrate their label’s 85th anniversary. But they quickly took on an identity built around celebrating tradition while moving it forward, and they’ve made two albums to date, both of which are excellent. The lineup on Motion II is unchanged from their debut: Immanuel Wilkins on alto sax, pianist Gerald Clayton, vibraphonist Joel Ross, bassist Matt Brewer, and drummer Kendrick Scott. "Juno" is the last track on the album’s first side, a romantic ballad that kicks off with a powerful bass solo from Brewer. Clayton’s keyboards and Ross’ vibes blend together beautifully, creating a kind of perfumed haze of chords and harmonies through which Wilkins’ sax meanders as Scott’s drums roll and tumble, splashy cymbals adding punctuation to everyone’s interjections before the tender melody comes slinking back in like a cat that decided it missed you. (From Motion II, out now via Blue Note.)

8

Kalia Vandever - "Staring At The Cracked Window"

Trombonist Kalia Vandever makes the most of her instrument’s sorrowful vocal qualities on her fourth album. Partly inspired by Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In The Dream House, the album has an introspective, monologuing quality that nevertheless keeps the entire band — guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Kanoa Mendenhall, and drummer Kayvon Gordon — at the center of the music at all times. They’re not just Vandever’s support system, though she takes long solos that feel like soliloquies. Indeed, "Staring At The Cracked Window" begins as a trio piece, with Halvorson performing an improvised prelude to the album as a whole. She also takes a powerful, zipping solo after Vandever. Mendenhall and Gordon are a powerful rhythm section, with the drums thwacking and snapping as the bass becomes another percussive voice. But ultimately, it’s Vandever’s compositions and her murmuring, almost weepy style on the trombone that give this album its almost hypnotizing power. (From Another View, out now via Northern Spy.)

7

Lisa Hilton - "Seabirds"

It’s funny to me that the mainstream jazz press doesn’t really acknowledge Lisa Hilton. Yes, she’s from the Hilton hotel family, and self-funds/self-releases her albums, one a year for well over two decades. But she’s very serious about what she does, and her bands are stacked with talented players who are clearly doing more than just collecting a paycheck. Her latest album, Extended Daydream, features Igmar Thomas on trumpet, JD Allen on tenor sax, Luques Curtis on bass, and Rudy Royston on drums. I’d listen to that band no matter who was on piano. Wouldn’t you? She composes most of her own music, and it all fits into a romantic, melodic hard bop space — she once cited Horace Silver to me as a major influence, and I can hear that, but there’s a gentle, almost New Age side to much of her work, too, like this track, "Seabirds." (From Extended Daydream, out now via Ruby Slippers.)

6

Muriel Grossmann - "The Other One"

Spiritual jazz saxophonist Muriel Grossmann released three albums last year: two studio and one live. This one landed on Dec. 29, and it’s an intriguing idea for a record. As a Grateful Dead non-fan, I was surprised to learn from my friend Syd Schwartz’s liner notes that their rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, who died earlier this month, was strongly influenced by McCoy Tyner’s playing with the John Coltrane quartet. That gives all four tunes on the record — Tyner’s "Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit" and "Contemplation," the Dead’s "The Music Never Stopped" and "The Other One" — a through-line. Grossmann and her long-running quartet take it the rest of the way, their almost dubby, organ- and guitar-driven modal grooves making it sound like all one thing. "The Other One," which closes out the album, drifts into an amorphous psychedelic space during its middle stretch, but unlike the Dead, the drummer keeps proper time throughout. (From Plays The Music Of McCoy Tyner And The Grateful Dead, out now via RR Gems.)

5

Cortex & Hedvig Mollestad - "Twoface"

Cortex are a long-running Norwegian quartet: trumpeter Thomas Johansson, saxophonist Kristoffer Alberts, bassist Ola Høyer, and drummer Dag Andersen. Recently, they’ve been playing live with guitarist Hedvig Mollestad, and now they’ve made a studio album together, too, on the new Sauajazz label (because their former home, the Portuguese label Clean Feed, has mostly shut down). If you’re familiar with Mollestad’s work with her own trio and other groups, you might expect this to be a rip-roaring jazz-rock disc, but in fact her contributions are mostly pretty subdued; she doesn’t take any of the monster jam solos she’s best known for. "Twoface" starts off quiet and atmospheric, everyone slowly assembling over a gentle beat until a groove and a melody emerge. Johansson and Alberts take patient solos as Mollestad hums, almost Bill Frisell-like, in the background, only coming forward for a brief, bluesy eruption at the very end. (From Did We Really?, out now via Sauajazz.)

4

Craig Taborn - "When Kabuya Dances"

Pianist Craig Taborn’s last release was the debut album by Trio Of Bloom, a group with guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Marcus Gilmore that was as loud and skronky as you’d expect with that personnel. This album is pretty much the opposite of that. It too is a trio date, but the other two players are cellist Tomeka Reid and percussionist Ches Smith, here playing vibes as well as drums, and the music often has the spacious gentleness of classical. Four of the six tracks were written by Taborn, but two others are interpretations of work by musicians he admires, drummer Paul Motian ("Mumbo Jumbo") and pianist Geri Allen ("When Kabuya Dances"). The latter begins with two minutes of incredibly tender solo piano, delivering a repetitive, cellular melodic figure before the trio launch into a loping, bouncing groove and the energy level leaps upward and things get wild. (From Dream Archives, out now via ECM.)

3

Julian Lage - "Opal"

Guitarist Julian Lage’s new album marks the debut of a new band with John Medeski on Hammond organ, Jorge Roeder on bass, and Kenny Wollesen on drums. It was produced by singer-songwriter Joe Henry, and according to Lage, who wrote all the tunes, the point was to create a band, write music for that band, and document the group sound. And the sound they’ve come up with is rooted in multiple intertwined/interrelated traditions, but winds up as something unique and entirely itself. Have you heard former Blasters guitarist Dave Alvin’s psychedelic jazz-folk-rock band, the Third Mind? They rule, and this album reminds me of their work. There are elements of soulful organ jazz here, as well as some folk and hillbilly guitar, and a swinging beat that occasionally slips close to rock, and the improvisations are never mere showboating or displays of florid technique; they always serve the song. (From Scenes From Above, out now via Blue Note.)

2

Al Foster - "Pent-Up House"

Drummer Al Foster, who died last year, was best known in some quarters as the drummer in Miles Davis’ jazz-funk-metal band from 1973 to 1975, but he was an incredibly swinging player who worked almost entirely in acoustic settings otherwise. I saw him backing saxophonist Joe Henderson once, and his groove was so light and deft it was hypnotic. In his final years, he was something of an artist in residence at the NYC club Smoke, and this double CD, recorded in January 2025, features a really strong band: saxophonist Chris Potter, pianist Brad Mehldau, and bassist Joe Martin. The set list includes Foster originals and a bunch of jazz standards; "Pent-Up House" is a Sonny Rollins tune that Foster recorded on his final studio album, 2022’s Reflections. This version is fast without being aggressive, and Foster takes a really nice (if too brief), Max Roach-esque solo at the end. (From Live At Smoke, out now via Smoke Sessions.)

1

Charles Tyler Ensemble - "Voyage From Jericho"

Saxophonist Charles Tyler was never a big name, but he was an important contributor to the avant-garde jazz scene of the late ‘60s and 1970s. He was a member of Albert Ayler’s band in 1965, and can be heard on Bells and Spirits Rejoice; he also recorded two albums of his own, Charles Tyler Ensemble and Eastern Man Alone, for the ESP-Disk’ label. He then founded his own AK-BA label, which he used to put out two of his own albums, two by poet Barry Wallenstein, and one genuinely legendary out-jazz release: saxophonist Arthur Doyle’s Alabama Feeling.

Voyage From Jericho was recorded in 1974. Tyler had spent some time at the turn of the decade in California, working with pianist/composer Horace Tapscott in Los Angeles and teaching in Oakland. He worked with a variety of musicians out there, including David Murray, Arthur Blythe, John Carter, Bobby Bradford, and others. When he returned to New York, he was invited to be part of a large ensemble Cecil Taylor put together for a concert at Carnegie Hall, and began leading his own bands in loft spaces and small clubs like the Tin Palace.

The band on Voyage From Jericho includes trumpet player Earl Cross, bassist Ronnie Boykins, and drummer Steve Reid. Tyler plays alto and baritone sax, and Arthur Blythe guests on alto on two tracks, including the opening title track. The three horns kick off the album with a fanfare-like melody that recalls the psychedelic parade music of Ayler, but the piece proper is a string of free solos over a hard-charging groove, very much reminiscent of the Ornette Coleman quartets of 1959-61. Blythe is first, squalling and shaking loose of conventional harmony like a wet dog sending drops of water all over a room. Then all three horns come back to restate the melody, albeit more loosely, the same way John Coltrane’s Ascension used its fanfare as punctuation in between solos. Cross’s trumpet is an upper-register squiggle, perfectly contrasted with Tyler’s growling baritone; he takes the third solo, shrugging off interjections from the other two. (And there are some brief overdubbed bits from Cross, too, giving us two trumpets at once moving across the stereo field; those moments are fascinating.)

This reissue, made from the original tapes, is valuable not only for the music, but also for the liner notes, which include a lengthy biographical essay by Cisco Tyler (no relation) and a slew of old photos, gig flyers, and much more. This is about the best tribute Charles Tyler could receive, and the music is well worth your time. (From Voyage From Jericho, out now via Frederiksberg.)

OUTWARD BOUND