Marilyn Crispell has been, for me, for a long time, the most mystic of our
beloved piano-playing chaos magicians. Sometimes it’s obvious. For example,
when, in the past, she has played Coltrane’s “Dear Lord,” for example, or
Monk’s “Ruby, My Dear,” beginning at the deconstruction, bringing it slowly
back to coherence, you are almost involuntarily transported into the music.
Even the most raucous playing—the stabbity-stab, stochastic melodies, and
the thoom thoom thooming—invites me to altered consciousness in a way no one
else’s playing does. I’ve had less experience of Harvey Sorgen, who has a
strong list of collaborations, including with Joe Fonda, Karl Berger, and
Michael Bisio, but I had no real doubts about what he brings to the table.
Crispell has a great track record finding duet partners.
The two come together beautifully. “Forest,” sets the tone and demonstrates
the dynamic of conversation, which starts civilly, but becomes deeply
impassioned. “Overtones” is ruminative and leans heavily on the snare, and
refuses to grow in tempo or dynamic, while absolutely growing in intensity
and perseverance. “Dulcimer” left me thinking, “Why dulcimer?” But after a
few moments I did recognize a hammer dulcimer-ish vibe—hammers hitting
strings—and it made sense. Not that making sense is a criteria for
greatness. Maybe I’m reading too much into titles. I don’t know if “Woolf
Moon,” is a Virginia Woolf reference, but I want it to be. Either way, it’s
a great piece of music. For “Seascape,” Sorgen takes a solo turn with bells
and brushes, as beautiful as the landscape it purports to represent. We
close with “Green,” a gentle, three-minute experience, inviting you to stop
thinking, for just a bit.
The free jazz duet is on my short list of favorite things in the world. It
feels like the purest and truest form of musical conversation one can
imagine. Both Crispell and Sorgen have each made the duet a significant part
of their respective oeuvres, with brilliant examples going back decades. The
consistency of excellence in their outputs sometimes make it seem like a new
release is no big deal. Forest is a big deal. A wonderful listen. Five
stars.
It’s amazing to me that this is the first string quartet to record a set of
Hemphill compositions. I may be reading too much into his friendship with
Abdul Wadud, but Hemphill’s writing and affinity for cello make this idea
feel natural. Also, instrument-family quartet’s are exactly in his pocket,
if we’re to judge by his tenure with the World Saxophone Quartet.
The quartet—Curtis Stewart, violin, Sam Bardfeld, violin, Stephanie
Griffin, viola, and Tomeka Reid, cello—all bring strong histories of
innovation, performance, composition and improvisation. The opening track,
“Revue” is also the opening track for the World Sax Quartet’s second album,
Revue(1982). It’s a bluesy, riffy piece which gets very infectious
before going off into out solos. It felt like WSQ’s theme, for a while, or
its anthem. The fact that the Hemphill String Quartet programmed it right
up front feels like a declaration of intent—and I support that intent.
Tracks 2 through 4 are Hemphill’s “Mingus Gold” suite, three Mingus tunes
arranged for string quartet, and played by the Daedalus String Quartet.
Their recording can be found on Hemphill’s massive posthumous box set,The
Boyé Multi-National Crusade For Harmony (reviewed
here). At first I wondered about the decision to put Mingus tunes on
what is ostensibly a set of Hemphill compositions, but hearing Hemphill
writing in conversation with Mingus is just as mystical as hearing Hemphill
composing out of whole cloth. Further, the improvisers play extraordinarily
well—as one would expect—and the fact that this is (I think) Hemphill’s
only piece written for string 4tet makes it essential.
The final two tracks—”My First Winter/Touchic” and “Choo Choo”—are also sax
quartet pieces and give this group ample space to shine, especially on the
longer “My First Winter/Touchic.” Overall, this group could stand
arm-in-arm with Hemphill and the WSQ. I very much want them to record more,
and specifically, more Hemphill—if ever a composer deserved it, ‘tis him.
Five stars.
Alto saxophonist Tom Weeks creates an amazing tour de force of muscular,
musical intensity on his album Paranoid II, an outing he dedicates
to the great Art Ensemble of Chicago founder and AACM member Roscoe
Mitchell (now 84 years young). Weeks, who composed all the numbers, is
joined by James Paul Nadien on drums and Shogo Yamagishi on bass. Together,
the trio rip, roar, and soar – creating soundscapes of heated beauty.
The opening “I Hate You With a Passion (for Andre Nickatina)” begins with a
slow sax lament, but as it progresses, it develops into a sweeping wave of
hard blowing before returning to the lament. On “Dummy Data,” there’s
explosive honky tonk, pushed by Nadien’s race across the trap set – no drum
or cymbal untouched - and Yamagishi’s wonderful speed walk plucks. Weeks
squeals in fury, a dynamism that reminds one of Mitchell at his most
penetrating. And Nadien’s solo, a robust coastal storm replete with fury,
demonstrates his vigor.
Heavy syncopated action is the hallmark of “Kulture Krusaders.” The rhythm
section kicks up a virtuosic outburst – the listener propelled like a jet
across the sky. One hears Mitchell in Weeks’ tone and prowess – his boiling
romp backed by Nadien’s everywhere-at-once drumming. Weeks also shows off
his circular breathing, playing a note without pausing for a breath as the
bass and drums roil about - a washing machine gone haywire. Then everything
comes to a sudden stop, followed by a wild and stuttered pulse in
edge-of-your-seat unison.
“A New American Promise” insists on a clownish Beethoven 5th motif. Is
Weeks’ wisecracking tone mocking the “promise?” Say it’s not so – LOL.
Nadien fascinates with his two-hand unity cycle, and Yamagishi rifles up
and down the bass neck – but always with a sense of control, while Weeks’
sax develops soulful arcs that shoot to the sky. Another wild ride, “Eleven
Rings (for Phil Jackson)” lets Weeks again demonstrate circular breathing
[Editor Note: I first heard this technique at a stunning solo Roscoe
Mitchell concert on February 4, 1979, at Boston’s Lulu White’s Jazz Supper
Club, in a tour celebrating the release of Mitchell’s 1978 highly
recommended release of L-R-G / The Maze / S II Examples(Nessa
Records – N-14/15). It was so innovative I have never forgotten the
experience].
Weeks’ circular series begins with a long trill that evolves into
controlled runs atop Yamagishi’s bowing and Nadien’s emergent drumming
fireworks. Weeks continues his series, becoming more frenetic, and no
matter how fluid the sax and drum, Yamagishi uses the bow to propel the
music forward. As the piece ends, the bottom drops out and Weeks repeats
his trilling opening. Simply beautiful!
On “A Fire Upon The Deep,” Yamagishi performs solo, his bass lines
fluttering about like a fish out of water – his attack precise and willful.
Weeks exhorts with powerful legato passages – and later plays in unison
with Yamagishi. He also exhibits machine gun style tonguing skills and adds
slurring runs to the mix. Nadien jumps in with sonic arcs - his sticks hit
the drums with slick rolls and rollicking splashes. All hell breaks loose –
the music’s raw energy bursts like a sun shooting out flares in multiple
directions. The cut concludes with a slow Sisyphus exertion - pushing a
boulder of hard notes up a steep mountainside.
Weeks concludes with the bopish Gaye Sex. Yamagishi shines, his
bouncy bass complex and explosive. Then he lays down a line as Weeks joins
him – a funky strut, a summer stroll along a pier, the red sun setting in
the distance. This number is pure fun – Yamagishi’s bass generates
head-nodding funk and Nadien plops and strikes the trap set as Weeks
celebrates with a sax jubilee.
Paranoid II is special. Really. Special. It has ENERGY. It
has inflamed power. And it consists of a ferocious yet controlled
performance. A five-star review for a five-star album. Damn the torpedoes –
full steam ahead! And, to borrow from David Lynch, “damn good coffee.”
Yes, it is a 2024 release, and had I given it proper spins at the proper
time, it would have likely ended up on a best-of list of mine. That's my
trope though, isn't it ... where was I when this was happening?
Luckily, in this case, it still is happening and it happens to be great. LA based Vinny
Golia, master of all things woodwind and renowned music educator, has
created a top-notch album rife with compositional elements and
scintillating improvisation.
The group is a choice selection of musicians - many of them also educators
- from the West Coast. Along with Golia is trumpeter Kris Tiner, pianist
Cathlene Pineda, bassist Miller Wrenn, and drummer Clint Dodson. A quick
look through their bios reveals some common constellations and
connections, but it seems like Almasty is a first for the group -
which is certainly not ascertainable from the music - and which was followed
up by a second recording, Can You Outrun Them?, released at the very end of last year.
Almasty begins with 'A Little Game', kicking off with a knotty
harmonic clash between Tiner and Golia, their interaction exuding a hint of Coleman and Cherry, which then quickly
unfolds revealing a cornucopia of textures, tones and melodies. The song is
a game of chase with ideas darting about, drums and bass providing a
strong foundation, and piano smartly filling the space with supportive
rhythmic comping and vibrant chords. The next track
'Requiem; a visit to the fairy room, for WS' demonstrates the diversity of
the music. The ballad-like tune begins with a slightly wavering doubling
of sax and trumpet, under which Pineda sly interjects chords, along with
the rustle of percussion. The tune then opens up with the bass adding additional
motion, and Golia begins playing a yearning melody.
Pineda is in the fore on 'Crocodylomphs & Theropods', at first. Her
syncopated comping and melodic snippets make for an accessibly abstract
approach that seems at once classically jazzy and sneakily subversive.
Tiner follows up with a solo of similar appeal. The last track that I'll
mention is 'That Was For Albert! #43 (it's not who you think...)' Assuming
that everyone thinks just like me, the Albert would be Ayler, but who
really knows. What can be definitively stated is that it is one of the
more exuberantly free flowing tracks of the recording. Wrenn's bowed bass
adds tense reverberations and Dodson's drumming provides a turbulent
underlayer for the musical effervescence on top.
What an album! Rich and colorful, gorgeously played inside and outside. We
haven't touched on the term 'Almasty' yet. Apparently it is a cryptid, a
creature that may or may not exist like a Bigfoot - this one being a wild
man in the mountains of central Asia. I cannot say that it actually means
anything in relation to the music, but it could be a good piece of trivia
for you to use the next time you're searching for small talk before
a show.
George Cartwright and Bruce Golden were easily my fave purveyors of
improvisational what the fuckery of 2024, and this recording is a
strong entry in their 2025 run for the title. Made up of thirteen short
pieces drawing from the worlds of garage sounds, electronics, lo-fi
musique concrète
, and the duo’s downtown jazz CV, South from a Narrow Arc is a set
that is reckless, heavy, and filled with cinema and humor. I could easily
be projecting my own sense of a good time onto these guys—maybe they’re
actually depressed and maudlin when playing, how would I know?—but the
sense of them creating music to suit their own fancies, tapping into joy,
and just occasionally cracking each other up in the studio is very
tangible. I would love to have heard some of the conversations that fell
between these pieces.
Listing the instrumentation hereon is not particularly helpful because
sometimes I don’t even know what is being played. Here it is anyway: Bruce
Golden - percussion and lots lots more, George Cartwright - saxophones and
guitar. “Lots lots more,” Bruce? Don’t confuse us with technical terms.
What I hear is bass, guitar, sax, someone pushing a heavy piece of
furniture on the sidewalk, bells tolling, as though heard by Quasimodo on
heavy downers. I hear … is that a stritch? As played by Dewey Redman? Well,
some sort of primordial buzzing reed. Hand drums. A maddeningly evasive drum
loop. Klangity-klang-klang. Some groove or other. Etc. Etc.
I’ve been aware of Cartwright and Golden for decades (not exaggerating),
but since reviewing the duo’s
Dilate in March 2024 my fire has been well re-lit. Here’s another for 5 stars.
There’s a master’s thesis—or a tawdry Netflix miniseries—to be written
about Tim Berne and his serial relationships with amazing, visionary
guitarists. Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, Marc Ducret, etc. Berne met guitarist
Gregg Belisle-Chi when the latter arranged a Berne composition for solo
acoustic guitar (it was something to do during the pandemic) and
posted it on Instagram. Berne reached out to Belisle-Chi and soon we had
Belisle-Chi’s
Koi: Performing the Music of Tim Berne
, produced by Berne. Then came
their duet record
. Now, Belisle-Chi has become one of Berne’s usual suspects on both
acoustic and electric guitar.
Belisle-chi has an expansive way of playing the electric, filling the room
the way an orchestra does, with a quantity of sound. There’s a touch of
proggy goodness in there—which is a treat for this lifetime prog fan. This
sort of electric bombast makes for a perfect partner for Berne’s
preternaturally strong sax.
The two take Berne’s compositions in a less oblique way than in other
settings. It’s always interesting to hear how different agglomerations of
players render these compositions. On the disc, we’re given 10 studio
tracks and 9 live tracks. Here’s the thing: in a few cases, we hear a tune
played in the studio, and then hear the same tune played live. Call me a
nerd but I find it FASCINATING to compare versions of the tunes to one
another. There’s the obvious differences of improvised chunks, but tempos,
dynamics, voicing … it’s all up for grabs. The composition is composed in
the moment! And look, I know that this is how our kind of music works—but
it’s very cool to see it so explicitly in action. Like seeing the aurora
borealis.
I haven’t mentioned Tom Rainey, yet. Not because I want to look away, but
because I want to set him aside for high honors. Rainey is
characteristically great on Yikes Too, holding the whole garment
together with his infinitely long thread of whackity-whack. I’ve
loved his stuff forever, but this year I’m feeling something special. In the
race for improv MVP of 2025, he’s already at the top of my list. 5 Stars
Strikingly intense, no quarter given – all hands on deck. The music on the
Sentient Beings album, “Truth Is Not the Enemy,” is simply a
roller coaster of highs and lows (or hills and valleys if you will), which,
whether slow-burn or rip-roaring, maintains its intensity from start to
finish.
Recorded live at The Vortex in London on February 8, 2024, “Truth Is
Not the Enemy” features the quartet of John O’Gallagher (alto sax),
Faith Brackenbury (violin / viola), John Pope (bass) and Tony Bianco
(drums). The recording was made on the last night of a
7-day tour. As such, the musicians had time to hone their improvisations
and experiment with their soundscapes before settling on the course they
would navigate on the final night.
The album consists of two tracks. The first track, “Hills and valleys,”
begins with a rumble – like a thunderstorm on the horizon. As the piece
develops, heat and raw, muddy power surge forward. O’Gallagher’s muscular
lines over Pope’s plucking and Bianco’s splashes on the cymbals suggest a
sense of menace in the offing. Then Brackenbury takes over and the music
turns into a strong rhythmic gallop of striking yet beautiful intensity.
There are hairpin turns and roller coaster levitations before the dust
finally settles in a Brackenbury viola/Bianco drum duet. The quartet
continues to expound – pulling from its toolkit long legato expressions,
impassioned abstractions, and jagged dissonance. Then with Bianco’s all
over drumming propelling the group forward, a wall of sound tapestry
emerges – almost disorienting, like rotating in a circle to the point of
dizziness. The locutions here are simply not for the weak of heart, but
they are also not angry. Ferocious would be a better word, like snow
flurries, scattered by a strong north wind. The piece winds down like a
good mystery novel –the reader uncertain about the outcome yet fully
satisfied with the experience.
The second track, inversely named “Valleys and hills,” begins with
O’Gallagher offering up a lonely soliloquy above the color and texture of
the rhythm section’s explorations and Brackenbury’s wanderings. There is
space here, and the atmospherics are more gentle - like wandering in a dark
forest as light streaks downward through the canopy. As the piece develops,
the music intersects and breaks apart. Pope challenges from the bottom and
O’Gallagher’s sax opens and closes in hip-hoppity fashion. Bianco drives
along – his explosive effort on the trap set a master class of enjoyment
for the listener. Brackenbury joins the fray. She bounces her bow on her
strings before rolling off a series of impressive running intervals, and as
the piece moves forward, she uses electrical effects to broaden her impact.
Bianco keeps up with complex rhythms and what seems like superhuman
all-over efforts. There is so much going on, it feels like a maelstrom or
whirlwind of notes – fast and heavy but not uncontrolled. There is simply
no pussyfooting around for this quartet!
Every note on both tracks has a tenacious nail-biting anxiety to it, like
wing-suiting acceleration through a mountain pass to land on a high-speed
rail. Even the sedate expressions, where the musicians create space for
intimacy and embrace an open architecture, are highlighted by sound drips
and dollops that have a “wide-awake at 3 a.m.” feeling to them. For Bianco,
the music herein has a philosophical foundation. He says, “The purpose was
the Truth of playing, bringing us out of the confusion of this world…. We
all go through the ups and downs of life. Hills and Valleys, but Truth is
not the enemy.”
That said, the musicianship on “Truth Is Not the Enemy,” is exemplary,
evidenced by O’Gallagher’s slice and dice phrasing and hell-raising sax
lines, Brackenbury’s heartfelt and precision flying attacks, Pope’s
wonderful chordal strums and racing bass note plucks, and Bianco’s extreme
up and down roundabout exertions. This is a recording that stands tall,
peering over the abyss with defiance, raising a middle finger to the
darkness. Highly recommended!
Evan Parker and Matt Wright have been working together since 2008. Wright
initially contacted Parker to explore his extensive collection of
ethnographic field recordings and it eventually evolved into a duo in which
Parker improvised on saxophone and Wright improvised with turntables and
samples. The two have since added other musicians to the project (their
presence signalled by a “+”), resulting in groups from trios to a sextet,
occasionally including musicians’ materials that were recorded apart from
the core ensemble’s recording.
The process has extended Parker’s long-term exploration of his
Electro-Acoustic Ensemble in which acoustic improvising instrumentalists
were paired with electronic musicians, further developing the acoustic
input. The original sextet paired the Parker - Guy - Lytton trio with three
electronic musicians, with Guy’s own doubling with electronic processing
paired with Phil Wachsmann’s viola and processing. That ensemble has been
active as recently as 2019 ( Warszawa, 2019 [Fondacia Sluchaj]),
while it reached its most expansive form in an 18-member version at
Lisbon’s Jazz em Agosto in 2010 (an extended reflection is available here).
Transatlantic Trance Map might be the most remarkable performance of
improvised music in recent years, if only for the compound “location” of
its performance, 13 musicians on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The
significance of the work is tremendous, both in its realization and its
potential, in a world where travel is increasingly challenged by
environmental and disease concerns. The technical distribution here is
apparent in an early “draft” of the process. Parker and Wright initially
tried a “dry run” in November 2021, with a quintet version still called the
Electro-Acoustic Ensemble interacting with the SPIIC ensemble in Hamburg
directed by Vlatko Kučan. This is available on YouTube.
On December 17, 2022, Parker, playing soprano saxophone, and Wright (laptop
sampling and live processing) gathered a septet at the Hot Tin in
Faversham, England with Peter Evans (trumpets), Pat Thomas (live
electronics), Hannah Marshall (cello), Robert Jarvis (trombone) and Alex
Ward (clarinet, guitar). Meanwhile, a similar sextet of regular Parker
collaborators gathered in New York at Roulette: Ned Rothenberg: (reeds,
shakuhachi); Sam Pluta: (laptop, live electronics); Craig Taborn (piano,
keyboard, live electronics); Ikue Mori (laptop live electronics); Sylvie
Courvoisier (piano, keyboard) and Mat Manieri (viola), most of whom had
played in the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble or its Septet variation, while
between them, the two ensembles reunited the compact supergroup Rocket
Science, consisting of Parker, Evans, Pluta and Taborn.
The most remarkable technological feature consists in the brevity of the
time gap between the two groups: in his notes Wright mentions the work of
the technical directors at Hot Tin and Roulette and that “After a number of
tests we were able to work at high resolution, almost treating each
location as a separate room within a studio, albeit with the slight, but
workable delay of around 65 to 120 milliseconds,” a gap that Wright was
later able to reduce further in mixing while creating a stereo spread that
integrated the two bands.
The most remarkable feature, however, beyond the technology is the musical
achievement. Parker has been expanding both instrumental technique and
applied technology since the late-1960s as well as the breadth of his
musical associations. While the Atlantic may separate these bands, the
connections are dense. One of the features of the extended piece is a
pattern of duets and trios sometimes featuring alike instruments that also
draw in other members to create larger ensemble improvisations. The depth of
musical relationships? Parker and Rothenberg, paired together here, first
recorded as a duo in 1997, while others would be playing together for the
first time.
Rather than attempting a description of a work this dense and rich, I’ll
leave that to individual listeners. This is an amazing achievement,
creative music managing the kind of global event usually reserved for pop
superstars. Like several recent events of significance in the field, the
project acknowledges the assistance of the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation.
Trance Map - Horizons Held Close (Relative Pitch, 2024) *****
What could be more different and yet somehow the same? In the same period
as Trance Map’s greatest expansions, Parker and Wright here return to their
original duo form, with Parker playing soprano saxophone and Wright
simultaneously employing turntables, software, sampling and processing,
transforming Parker’s lines and field recordings into an orchestra of the
imagination and strongly referencing his own journey to Mongolia in 2009.
Just as it’s rooted in Wright’s turntables, it seems to mimic the LP,
though available only as download and CD, with the near identical playing
times of two pieces: “Ulaanbadrakh” runs 24:16; “Bayankhongor”, 24:10.
Parker’s intense chirping soprano multiphonics are set amidst an
ever-shifting, recycling soundscape in which Parker own’s complex parts are
multiplied, repeated, transformed, Parker himself interacting with the
variations and the insistent and multiple percussion of Wright’s ever
transforming synthetic orchestra, a reflection and extension of Parker’s
long-expanding universe of mirrored and transforming musical impulses, as
much a communal, collectivist, organic meditation as the globalizing social
vision of Transatlantic Trance Map. It is at once constant, hypnotic yet
ever changing, an ideal that Parker has been pursuing for decades, and
perhaps first fully realized in the solo music of Conic Sections,
recorded in 1989.
Free music. Unconstrained, unlimited, uncompromised, and uncommercial. That
is what listeners value about the jazz music of the avant garde. Music as
something more than a crass buck. And on Parlour Games, recorded
live at The Parlour, June 16, 1991, Tim Berne and Michael Formanek gave
attendees a true vision of freedom – music that sounds as fresh today as it
must have 33 (quickly passing) years ago.
Right from the get-go, Berne (on alto and baritone sax) and Formanek (bass)
command attention. The first number, “Beam Me Up.” begins with both players
racing along in sweet unison. Then Berne’s baritone skips about as Formanek
hurtles along with double-triple time bass walks that explode like
fireworks. Both musicians generate heat without squeezing notes – Berne
does not pinch the reed and Formanek - for all the speed and spiky leaps he
makes on bass - exhibits an exceptionally light and fluid touch.
But the music here is more than a wild romp. There are bluesy elements –
case in point – the oddly titled but aptly conceived “O My Bitter Hen.”
The music has the hallmarks of a David Lynch soundtrack from some dark gray
detective film noir. Berne brings it on baritone – creating gentle rolling
sequences – only to have the pair suddenly emerge with sax and galloping
bass line that would leave a Montana stallion in the dust – before
reverting to a walking conclusion.
On the lighter side, there is the clownish “Quicksand,” where Berne gently
whines and twines above Formanek’s funky bass sequences. The piece is
delightful and full of fluttering nuance and lyrical abstractions. And on
the jaunty masterpiece “Not what you think,” Berne and Formanek create magic
from the opening. The joyful conversations are wide open. Berne flies about
on alto – speeding up and down the register - while Formanek keeps the
bottom active with jagged syncopation and well-placed plucks. Simply said -
this is compositional improvisation at its best!!!
But it is the final number, “Bass Voodoo,” that makes the album
unforgettable. It opens like a slithering snake, as Formanek plucks and bows
beneath Berne’s slowly waking alto. Then Formanek’s bowing combines with
Berne’s zipping lines to increase the intensity. Formanek follows with a
bass solo that rips it – rips it good (apologies to Devo). The solo
migrates through various speeds, fast-slow-medium – as Formanek displays
his mastery along the neck. Berne joins in with tongue-attack stuttering
syncopated lines and slurs that feel like a dolphin skirting the seas. Two
words – damn amazing! The musical bonfire progresses – heat comes and goes,
the wind blows through the flames, the cinders blow about in the wind.
There is a stuttering climax and then a joint effort as the music
concludes.
Supreme musicianship, brisk and challenging interaction, compositions that
strike just the right degree of formalism and spontaneity, it is all
present in Parlour Games. Two masters, Berne and Formanek, early
in their careers - captured in prime-time form in concert. Highly, highly
recommended.
This one was a long time coming. It’s been almost a quarter century since
the AALY Trio released an album, their last being I Wonder If I Was
Screaming at the turn of the century - and that’s not counting the
excellent AALY Trio/DKV Trio release Double or Nothing that came a couple
of years later. Surprisingly it’s also their first release as a proper
trio, with all of their previous albums including Ken Vandermark on reeds.
This absence is rectified by the maestro’s comprehensive liner notes in
which he charts the history of the trio and provides some valuable insights
into the forces and circumstances that shaped their path. The group is
famously named after the Art Ensemble of Chicago piece
“Lebert
Aaly…dedicated to Albert Ayler” from their album “Phase One”, which was
released at the end of their European/Paris period just before they
returned to their eponymous home city. The album was the first of theirs
heard by a young Mats Gustafson, and it made a hell of an impression, as
did said city and its music scene when he was invited there in 95’ by John
Corbett. Vandermark then notes that this trip led to the
Pipeline
project, and that subsequent tours and collaborations also birthed the
groups The Thing and School Days, among others I’m sure. On “Sustain” we
have the quintessential trio as of 95’, Gustafson on saxophones, flute, and
harmonica with bassist Peter Janson and drummer Kjell Nordeson. It’s
apparent from the music that the affinity and bonds the trio forged still
remain firmly intact.
The set begins (and ends) with a rendition of the Art Ensemble of Chicago
piece “Rock Out”
from 1969’s “A Letter to Our Folks”. The AALY version is lowercase but the
foot tapping rhythm of the original remains. Janson and Nordeson initiate
the rhythm of “W2” before Gustafson lays out the melancholic theme in
broad, hoarse lines. The bass and drums push to the surface from beneath
the snaking melody which closes the piece out in a wide, soulful vibrato.
On the Rev. Frank Wright song
“Your Prayer”
Gustafson switches through baritone sax, flute, and tenor sax as the bass
and drums writhe against each other. Audible yelps of intensity pockmark
the blistering performance as the trio lose themselves in a tempest of
their own making. On the next piece the group revisit the Ken Vandermark
composition “Why I Don’t Go Back” from their first release “Hidden in the
Stomach”. The track is an absolute dirge that strikes sparks from within
its darkness. The rhythm plods along, hefty and uneasy against great peels
of bellowing glossolalia, gradually winding down into a trickling blues.
“Cover Yourself” is a brief, exploratory improvisation that pits the
dialogue of Janson and Nordeson against Gustafson’s flute attack. The
ceremony is punctuated with harmonica blasts as visceral as altar bells.
The next piece is a performance of Norman Howard’s “Soul Brother Genius”
from the rare-as-rocking-horse-shit 93’ cassette version of his album
“Burn, Baby, Burn” on Roy Morris’ Homeboy Records (maybe Mats will dub us a
copy one day). Gustafson previously covered this song with The Thing on the
2002 album “The
Music of Norman Howard”. Here the rendition is resolute, the theme
carefully and dutifully traced in great, groaning strokes. The clairvoyant
dialogue that follows is such that I almost have no words, it’s just
incredible. On “Deepfreeze Pretend” the band pits tense vocalizations and
reed pops against sparse, pattering kit noise and pointillist clusters of
gut. The next piece “Egypt Rock” is an interpretation of the New Life Trio
song from their album
“Visions
of the Third Eye” which was the subject of a comprehensive Bandcamp
Daily review a few years back. The trio run the groove, sax and bass double
up on the melody briskly astride the surging percussion. Initially the
intensity of dialogue on the next piece “Dustdiver Kneeling” is forceful
and brusque, the players take turns throttling the improvisation. This
gradually breaks down and the trio settles into careful contemplation.
“Albumblatt. Sustained” builds up momentum from the outset, reed hiss and
simple pluck phrases, the drums roll in abruptly and it doesn’t take long
before the group is off on flights of heavy-handed playing. The album ends
with a second rendition of “Rock Out” - expanding on their initial reading
of the piece - with the funk rolled back slightly - the trio closes out the
recording in circular fashion.
Recorded in Stockholm during March of this year and released on the
legendary Silkheart Records (who also released the first AALY Trio album)
this one is a tour de force. The titles of the improvisations were inspired
by the writer and composer Sture Dahlström and the album artwork is by the
great Håkan Rehnberg, both fellow Swedes. It’s remarkable to hear what has
changed after all this time and what remains the same. The intensity is
absolutely still there, but the musicians have grown in ways that are
apparent to the listener. Perhaps their most crucial release to date,
“Sustain” does just that by putting the next foot forward. Let’s hope we
don’t have to wait as long for the next one to drop. Highly recommended.
From bubbly happiness to penetrating anguish, the complex
kaleidoscope of feeling generated by Matthias Spillman’s Walcheturm,
Inviting Bill McHenry demands a hearing. In addition to originals
and improvisations, the album covers three standards that harken
back to modern jazz’s formative years – the 1954 Troup/Worth
composition, “The Meaning of the Blues,” the 1961 Mingus ode to
Charlie Parker, “Reincarnation Of a Lovebird,” and the wonderfully
playful 1954 Monk tune, “Locomotive.”
Spillmann (trumpet, flugelhorn) is joined by trio members Moritz
Baumgartner (drums) and Andreas Lang (bass), and they “invite” guest
artist Bill McHenry (tenor sax) to play along. There are two
masterpieces on this album. The Spillmann original “Moon,” a somber
and introspective number that, in its bluesy arc, gives Spillmann
the room to show just how ear-opening a sparse trumpet line can be.
McHenry and Lang contribute to the effect, creating a slow-burn
wallop, not unlike Ornette Coleman’s classic “Lonely Woman.” Listen
to how the opening and closing trumpet/sax duet set and exit the
stage perfectly.
The second masterpiece is the cover of “The Meaning of the Blues.”
Here the band again plays sparingly. Baumgartner adds choice
brushwork as Lang plays harmonic bass lines that blend underneath
McHenry’s whimsical phrases. McHenry has a terrific way of bending a
long note to convey emotion (think Dexter Gordon) and he always
finds the perfect note, even though he never blows hard. Spillman
solos on flugelhorn – providing a beautiful rejoinder that stirs the
soul. To complete the showcase, Lang enters with a deeply resonant
solo, highlighting the woodiness of the bass. It closes with
Spillman playing below McHenry’s moving arc in a trumpet/sax duet.
“Walcheturm I” and “Walcheturm II” feel like spontaneous
improvisations. “I” is hazy and introspective -almost lonely. Listen
to Spillmann play off Baumgartner’s brush work and Lang’s bass
wanderings to give just the right hint of melancholy. On “II,”
Spillmann bites off high notes and follows with a soulful abstract
exposition. As the piece develops, Baumgartner generates heat with
all over drumming and bell work underneath Spillmann’s stimulating
atmospherics.
Then there are the livelier tracks. The cover of “Reincarnation Of A
Lovebird” is like a swirling dance – bright and bubbly with plenty
of balloon-expanding, head-nodding gusto. On the spirited McHenry
tune “Apretada,” the saxophonist offers modern full-throated
syncopated voicings. Think Coltrane with twists. Monk’s “Locomotive”
gives Lang a chance to show his bass skills beneath Spillmann’s and
McHenry’s happy-go-lucky phrases, and he generates lovely overtones
with his solid plucks of the strings. And “Linsabum” is another
cheerful, jaunty composition, rumored to have been composed by
Spillmann’s 7-year-old daughter Charlotte. Here too the rhythm
section really shines, as Lang’s pure wood tone combines with
Baumgartner’s choice brushwork to give the number a solidly cool
vibe.
After repeated listenings to this album, one is struck by the
variety of feeling evoked by the strong musical techniques and
versatility of the players involved. Yet even so, the album numbers
do not seem ill-placed or contradictory. That is what makes it
magical - the album flows exquisitely even though the moods
generated are diverse. Highly recommended.
Since 2021, we’ve seen three albums of previously unheard and little- or
un-known music recorded by pianist Hasaan Ibn Ali. Mostly known (if at all)
for a single piano trio album recorded under Max Roach’s name, Ibn Ali’s
music fills a crucial gap in our understanding of the complex growth and
development of the piano trio. In preparing to review these albums, I spent
months revisiting dozens of trio recordings from Ibn Ali, Elmo Hope, Herbie
Nichols, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Marilyn
Crispell, Aki Takase, Craig Taborn, Matthew Shipp, and a few key
contemporary players like Jason Moran and David Virelles. It would be
challenging enough to develop a new grand theory of the piano trio—and
anyway, most of my time spent was luxuriating in the music, dazzled by
technique and inventiveness. All this listening was, however, in service of
finding an entry point into writing about pianist Matt Mitchell and the
music of Mitchell, bassist Kim Cass, and drummer Dan Weiss, particularly
following
Matthew Shipp Trio's exceptional New Concepts In Piano Trio Jazz
, whose title begs questions Mitchell, Kim Cass, and Dan Weiss seem,
unknowingly, to have many responses to.
In a year when he released a landmark solo album, the relative success of
Illimitable could have carried Mitchell well into next year, and yet here he is with
the recorded debut of his longtime trio with bassist Chris Tordini and
Weiss on drums. Much of what’s been written about Zealous Angles
has, admirably (at least, it’s well beyond my technical knowledge), focused
on the technical complexity of the compositions—polyrhythm, polymeter, and
asynchronicity abound
within the written material
—and yet, maybe because I’m a contrarian by nature, I wanted to spend time
specifically listening to this music in the context of its mode. Piano
trios are fascinating in some ways because they’re like prisms: three sides
with a fixed shape and seemingly infinite ways of refracting and projecting
the approach. Mitchell has constructed ways to do this within the music
itself and put it on display for listeners by providing alternate takes
under new names, wholly fresh performances of the same music with different
intentions and results—a decent amount of music gets replayed and
reinterpreted by the trio, and the recurrence of thematic material late in
the album gives the impression of a framing device or linked motif in a
song cycle.
On Cass’s phenomenal Levs, with Mitchell and drummer Tyshawn
Sorey, the trio brings more to the proceedings than merely bass, piano, and
drums. In addition to some augmentation by Laura Cocks on flute and Adam
Dotson on euphonium—with parts added separately—Cass also plays sampler and
Mitchell plays Prophet-6 (one of many follow-ups to the classic Prophet-5
keyboard). Cass’s music is crunchy, which is to say it crackles with energy
and showcases these dance-like rhythms that stutter-step across the drums
and keyboards. And Cass’s bass sounds deep and rich in the mix, even has
he’s taking sharp, surprising pivots along the strings. Just the briefest
sidebar about Sorey here, there just are very, very few artists like him,
and the textured approach he brings to the kit is as varied on
Levs
as it is on his own piano trio album from this year,
The Susceptible Now,
an album that, on the surface, sounds very far from Cass’s, adding to the
ongoing discussion of just how many ways can that format be presented. But
Sorey, much like Mitchell, has always been a player that I suspect more
people think they have figured out than actually have a grasp on
what’s happening in the music—both can swing just as madly as they groove,
and Cass gives them plenty of room for both and then some.
Weiss, who already fronts a piano trio with Jacob Sacks and Thomas Morgan,
mixes things up for Even Odds, bringing in alto saxophonist Miguel
Zenón alongside Mitchell on piano. Even Odds is ridiculously
addictive from the jump, one of the finest examples of just how far a
“piano trio” can stretch to encompass a group’s ideas. One of Weiss’s gifts
as a composer is how brilliantly he builds up a song to both amplify and
challenge his musicians’ gifts. There are fleet, brisk tracks drawn from and
inspired by several of jazz’s hall of fame drummers—as much as he sounds
incredible as always, what these tracks really highlight, though, is his
deep love for the music’s history. Zenón absolutely shines on this album.
With a restrained, sorrowful approach on “The Children of Uvalde,” he plays
exactly what’s needed to bring home this American tragedy without tipping
into bathos. It’s a delicate enough challenge for any ballad, but on
something so charged and emotionally raw, Zenón brings clarity and honesty,
mourning without being overly mournful. Again, it’s a tribute as well to
Weiss’s compositional gifts, where song structures bend and merge with
deftness. Mitchell sounds relaxed throughout, settling deep into the spaces
between the drums and alto. It’s a delightful deception, any close
listening reveals how knotty and varied the keyboard runs can be, followed
by clustered chords and fragile jabs.
If Shipp gave us a new concept in piano jazz, which is to say his trio
playing an entirely new and varied set of music, then Mitchell, Cass, and
Weiss are surely following with their own equally new and varied sets of
music—as different from one another as could be. And we can just celebrate,
no matter what else is happening, that art will continue, will challenge,
will progress.
I'm not sure whether many duets between saxophone and organ have been performed before, but this album is an absolute must-hear, a ferocious dialogue between one of the leading saxophonists of today, Rodrigo Amado, and his fellow Portuguese David Maranha on electric organ. Amado no longer needs introduction, and we have written on Maranha twice during our long existence: he's apparently very active in elecroacoustic work and experimental music, with over twenty albums as a leader.
The match on this album is perfect. Maranha creates an incredibly terrifying foundation for Amado's magisterial sax, for an unrelenting expressive noise and drone trip that lasts more than forty-four minutes without interruption, steady, massive, disconcering, gloomy. The organ's massive sound is scorching, grinding, searing, blazing like fire, burning like a blast furnace. It's industrial, violent without any melodies or harmonies, a never-ending stream of multiphonic noise and sonic terror.
Above this, Amado's sax leads us to a multitude of human emotions, from tenderness, sadness and melancholy to absolute agony, misery and torment. He soothes, he sings, he laments, he howls, he screams. In contrast to the often horrifying organ, the sax contains at times some moments of hope, some aspirational sounds for something better than could grow out of the cesspit we find our world in. You can call this 'doom jazz' or 'dark jazz' or whatever description pleases you, the overall sound is still pretty unique.
The albums is called "Wrecks" in reference to the text that accompanies the album about the sorry states of our world: the wars, the environment, extremist politics and inequality.
"The wrecks of a decaying age were there to be seen either by the new gentrified glittering façades under the sunny daylight or, less cynically, under the over-glaring LEDs street lights by night".
If there's anything - even any art form - that can convey the state of our world, then it is music. It is this music: creative, impressive, relentless, deep, beautiful, impactful. It's a remarkable and unique feat by two musicians who found a very special common voice and project.
On February 12th, 2023, I was fortunate enough to attend a
concert featuring Wadada Leo Smith and Joe Morris at Morris’s concert
series Improvisation Now, which is held at Hartford Connecticut’s Real Art
Ways. The concert left a huge impact on me, and I spent a solid year
contemplating what I heard on that day. What I did not realize was that
fortunately enough the concert was recorded and has since been released as
an album titled Earth’s Frequencies.
This album is an important document of two seasoned musicians performing
together at the highest level. There was something electric in the air that
day—I remember the audience being crammed in and watching additional chairs
being set up to accommodate a larger audience than was originally
anticipated. I remember looking around and recognizing faces of many
musicians in the audience, all of whom were anticipating what was about to
happen.
What happened that day was magic. It was one of those musical experiences
that is hard to describe but you know when you are listening to it that you
will never forget it. The recording captures the magic beautifully. The
album itself is impeccably recorded, mixed, and mastered. The album artwork
is striking, and the packaging of the CD comes together perfectly.
Describing the music in the album is not an easy task. Smith and Morris
engaged in a highly precise performance where they played in an intense
duet which, owing to Smith’s conception of Rhythm-Units and Morris’s
careful study of Smith’s music, resulted in a complex tapestry of sound and
silence. Sounds emerged from both players respective instruments sometimes
with piercing accents that die away and other times emerging and growing
out of silence. Morris’s guitar is breath-like in this performance, and it
often sounds like an organ somehow swelling into Smith’s beautiful trumpet
playing. Smith changes timbre frequently with the careful use of a mute or
un-muted trumpet or simply with changes in embouchure. The result is a
fantastic set of sounds and some of the most sophisticated level of music
making that I have ever heard. This album is a must have and this concert
series is one to pay attention to.
A note on the concert series: Improvisation Now is a concert series curated
by Joe Morris at Real Art Ways a gallery located in Hartford Connecticut.
Morris invites a variety of improvisers to play, and he often plays both
guitar and bass. This year will see Morris also on percussion and
electronics and banjouke as well. A link to the series can be found below:
“Music for me is part of spirituality. Music for me is part of science.
Music for me is part of trying to understand myself.”
Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton continues to amaze. After 55 years of music-making,
composing, and teaching, one might think he would call it a lifetime and
enjoy his emeritus status as the dean of avant-garde free music. But NO.
Braxton, now 79, continues to pursue excellence, and this 4-CD masterpiece
should be considered a capstone of sorts, built on several fundamental
schools (he calls them “structures”) of musical thought, each structure a
foundation for his next advancement. One might expect this from an alum of
the 1960’s ground-breaking Association for the Advancement of Creative
Musicians (AACM). Creativity flows through his being like water cascading
down a waterfall.
On Sax Qt (Lorraine) 2022, Braxton uses
electronics as a mood-setting backdrop in four live saxophone quartet
concerts. The performances, held in the cities of Vilnius, Antwerp, Rome,
and Bologna, feature Braxton (alto, soprano, and sopranino saxophones,
electronics), James Fei (sopranino and alto saxophones), and Chris Jonas
(alto and tenor saxophones). The fourth sax alternates. Ingrid Laubrock
(soprano and tenor saxophones) plays the Antwerp, Rome, and Bologna dates
while André Vida (baritone, tenor, soprano saxophones) performs on the
Vilnius date .
Sax Qt (Lorraine) 2022 might be considered a sequel to Braxton’s
10-disc box set 10 Comp (Lorriane) 2022 (Tri-Centric/New Braxton
House, 2024), which was recorded in various live settings in 2021. Those
10 discs are possibly the first recordings of Braxton’s new “Lorraine”
syntax.
Braxton has dabbled with electronics in the past – most notably with the
late avant-garde composer and electronic music pioneer Richard Teitelbaum.
The duo recorded Trio and Duet (Sackville, 1974) and collaborated on one
number (“Side 2, Composition 1”) from the classic album “New York, Fall
1974” (Arista 1975). They also recorded a complete 1994 concert “Duet:
Live at Merkin Hall” (Music And Arts Programs Of America, Inc. 1996).
Teitelbaum was an early practitioner of electronic music, and these
intriguing collaborations not only reveal Braxton’s interest in electronic
music, but his willingness to embrace new ideas and technologies on his
climb towards, for lack of a better expression, his destiny.
The music of Sax Qt (Lorraine) 2022 is not for the faint of heart
or mind. But it is not menacing or aggressive. Instead, it voyages forth
like the astronaut hurled into space to greet the unknown in Stanley
Kubrick’s Star Gate Sequence from his sci-fi movie “2001, A Space
Odyssey.” In fact, these quartets could easily be the soundtrack for
that part of the movie – with the listener as the astronaut propelled into
the beyond.
What is fascinating across the four compositions is the degree of formalism
applied. All the numbers have structure and yet the musicians are given
freedom at times to pursue alternative paths to the same destination.
Listening to them come together in single note phrases and split apart into
runs that hop from one player to the next with amazing dexterity and timing
is, in a word, spellbinding. Then you have Braxton’s compositions inverting
the structure of improvisation, with a saxophonist playing a hot and heavy
array of notes behind saxophones playing a single sustained note
(whereas traditionally, one would expect the hot saxophone to be in front
of the other instruments). This is the breakthrough of Braxton’s Lorraine
structure –to quote Jim Morrison, a “break on through to the other side.”
This new musical vocabulary – a language of the future - is buttressed by
the amazing talents of the saxophonists Braxton performs with – each of the
musicians play multiple saxophones (requiring adjusting to different and
multiple embouchures on the fly), and this variety of saxophones create a
riveting mix of texture and color. Behind their efforts, Braxton offers
transfixing electronic sounds – sounds that achieve an almost superposition
within the music. Like physics, where the superposition in quantum
mechanics, to quote physicist Paul Dirac, “is of an essentially different
nature from any occurring in the classical theory,” so likewise is
Braxton’s Lorraine – an essentially different nature of music and sound.
Momentum, sound wave properties, the sound wavefunction, the sound matrix
mechanics – all contribute to Braxton’s breakthrough structure. It is as if
Jackson Pollock was dripping sound on canvas - so radical a separation it
is from “classical (music) theory.”
Braxton has been building up to this is whole life. From the interview (see
the Lino Greco video link beneath this review), he describes his model of
“Tri-centric” music as a ground level structure that consists of geometric
shapes - a circle, a rectangle, and a triangle. These three shapes are
based on what he says is the ancient music model: “Every region of the
planet (European, Arabic, Chinese, Egyptian, Persian, etc.) has contributed
to bringing us to where we are in the modern era…. All of it comes together
and we learn from everything we experience.”
He expands on this: “I see my work as an attempt to build a model that is
similar to what we have in actual reality,” and says that before Lorraine,
his Tri-centric music was concerned with erecting ground floor-based
musical structures. However, the Lorraine music takes flight above the
Tri-centric structures “in the same way as clouds are separate from the
earth… (Lorraine) was conceived as breath, breath and wind… the act of
breathing….” As such, Braxton says the Lorraine music portrays an ethereal
world.
That word, ethereal, is a great description of the music found on
Sax Qt (Lorraine) 2022
. Unique might be another word. There is an unsettling, subtle nervousness
to the music – a quality that is as much cerebral as it is provocative and
challenging. Take the opening of Composition 436, with its eerie
electronics and saxophone lines that leapfrog about and roll around in
robust and driving multi-note expressions. The musical texture shifts in
odd ways – from single notes to multi notes, one solo shifting to all four
musicians playing simultaneous controlled improvisations. Or later,
in the fourth movement, where the saxophones sound like birds flocking
together – the patterns repetitive and yet unique. Then suddenly, there is
silence - arcs of sound abruptly interrupted.
And to demonstrate the flexibility of his Lorraine system, you can hear
bluesy slides in the second movement of Composition 437 and even a hint of
kazoo! Listen to how the abstractions flow as it concludes. The third
movement is even more wild. Braxton uses the electronics to erect strange
and evocative soundscapes that resemble surfaces that expand limitlessly
outward. On Composition 438’s second movement, listen at the end to the way
the musicians engage in conversation using their instruments. Disparate
parts that somehow make a whole. And in the third movement, he follows the
syncopated sax lines with Stravinsky-like flutters.
Then there is the opening of the fourth movement of Composition 439, where
all hell breaks loose – free(dom) form at its finest. The music flows into
piercing abstract note configurations, and then – suddenly - one lonely
saxophone blowing a long note that stretches like a rubber band. And on the
fifth and final movement, Braxton demonstrates what he calls genetic
identity, where a composer can take two or three measures from one piece
and put it in another piece. In the movement, he inserts lines that recall
music from his late 70s period with his excellent Performance quartet [which
featured Ray Anderson on trombone, John Lindberg on bass, and Thurman Barker
on percussion – Performance 9/1/79 - hat Hut NINETEEN (2R19)] and
his excellent Basel quintet [(which featured George Lewis on trombone,
Muhal Richard Abrams on piano, Mark Helias on double bass, and Charles
"Bobo" Shaw on drums - Quintet (Basel) 1977, hatOLOGY – hatOLOGY
676)].
After listening to these ethereal masterpieces, one wonders where Braxton
will go next. In the Greco video, he says he wants to develop music beneath
the Tri-centric model (e.g., sound tunnels or sound caves). And he wants to
continue his work on operas and sonic genomes. “I’m trying with my system
to make a replica of everything that exists,” he says. But, too, he
realizes time is limited. “Time is running out. Just because I am poor, it
does not mean that I don’t have great dreams! …I’m grateful to be alive. I
have work to do for the rest of my life! I want to do the best that I can
do…. I want to evolve myself. I want to evolve my work.”
Would that Braxton could have all the time in the world to realize his
visions, and that we had all the time in the world to follow them into the
deep canyons, towering mountains, and vast space of sound. Even so, we can
make the music of his imagination our imagination. Highly recommended.
Combining improvisation and formalism, the music on the Kris Davis Trio’s Run the Gauntlet sizzles and pops with creative flair. Davis (piano),
Robert Hurst (bass) and Johnathan Blake (drums) bring their A game to the
studio, and over the course of the album’s ten compositions, nine by Davis
and one by Blake, the trio work their magic in dynamic artistic fashion.
Davis, who composed nine of the ten tracks that grace the album (the one
exception is the beautiful Blake ballad “Beauty Beneath the Rubble”), uses
a combination of blues infused modal architecture to catapult her
explorations – journeys that contain elements of boisterous and energetic
free playing side by side with soft poetic flourishes. Listen to the
rotational structure evidenced in “Little Footsteps,” where her music
sounds almost circular – as though one is tripping down a set of stairs in
slow motion. And her technique – centered on a precise touch of the keys –
adds to the emotional element, whether she is playing full chords, free
running motifs, or single notes. Then there is her head-nodding “Heavy
footed,” where at one point she creates a series that is almost harp-like.
Or the aggressive and pushy “Knotweed,” which highlights her ability to
propel abstractions along as though they were wild horses galloping across
open land. And one should not miss the title cut, where she mixes modal and
free playing to create a stunning, jumpy, driving dance.
Hurst adds his plucks and bowing to create interest within the structures
of the compositions. On the title cut and on “Little Footsteps,” listen to
his agile bass solo, which creates a strong element of surprise while
remaining firmly planted within the compositional flow. Or his dreamy
opening on “Softly, As You Wake” and “Beauty Beneath the Rubble,” an intro
that sets just the right atmosphere for the trio’s bluesy poetic ambiance.
And on “Knotweed,” where his racing lines feel so fluid, they sound like
the musical equivalent of water rollicking down a mountain channel.
Blake’s drumming is simultaneously warm and forceful. His cymbal work
contributes on almost all of the tracks in unexpected and startling ways.
For example, the way he uses cymbals to create the equivalent of gentle
ocean spray on “Beauty Beneath the Rubble Meditation.” And on the title
cut, “Little Footsteps,” “Heavy footed,” and “Knotweed,” how he plays off
Davis’s rolls and strolls with lively and impressive - but never
heavy-handed - all-over drum work. His off-beat pulses are particularly
notable on the title cut (where his solos are not to be missed) and “Coda
Queen.” And even on short passages, like the opening of “Knotweed,” you
can hear the meticulous way he shapes his forceful expositions.
Beyond the outstanding music, what makes Run the Gauntlet significant is
its varied use of tempo and how it is used to create pieces that soar with
spirit while remaining coupled to structure. Think of a kite that sways
along in the wind while tethered to a string. On Run the Gauntlet, Davis
and her bandmates invite us to glide, float, and spin along her
compositional universe. And what a special head-nodding universe it is!
Highly recommended.
Tim Berne and Bill Frisell - Live in Someplace Nice (Screwgun, 2024) *****
I don’t often mess with “favorite album ever” talk, but when I do it
almost always includes Tim Berne and Bill Frisell’s 1984 piece of magic,
Theoretically. I don’t know if you would call it a masterpiece,
since both were in early career mode, but there is something about that
record that is so perfect, and so right—the sound, the balance, the
intrigue, the suspense, the laughs—that I have never stopped loving it.
AND, since it came out, I have never stopped wishing for more water from
that same well. (Typical fanboi presumption!)
Live in Someplace Nice was recorded around the time they were
recording Theoretically. It’s been gone over by David Torn, and
has more kick-ass going for it than Theoretically did, which could
be for any of three reasons. 1) Conscious choice of Tim and Bill. 2) Torn’s
production. 3) Live recording, as opposed to studio. Frisell’s penchant for
swells and sustain bring in a hint of ambience. Spaces to be written on and
repetitive figures make the structure through which the brilliant
improvisation navigates.
I’m trying to remember what it was like in 1984. A lot of us had fallen
for this duo, but did anyone understand what a stunning abundance of talent
existed here? Five stars in 2024.
David Torn - Sway the Palms (sr, 2024) *****
Torn, like Frisell, has an amazing ability to shape the envelope of the
sound—through performance and production—it leaves one gasping for air.
Torn offers these five tracks as part of a series, the rest of which I
haven’t encountered (yet). The method in the madness, here, is that, in
studio, Torn improvises the composition on guitar and real-time. In all
cases, these compositions are meant to stand alone. In two cases, Torn
invites a guest to “play with” the completed conversation not
sweetening
it, he says, but deepeningit.
Torn’s compositions feel like film soundtracks to me—the first thing of
his I ever heard was the soundtrack for Lars and the Real Girl. He
draws from the whole guitar template, steel acoustic to fully processed
Frippery, but these are surface trappings (though interesting ones), set
dressing for the scenes that unfold in my head as he evokes these stories.
Tim Berne guests on the first track, and Gerald Cleaver on the third. On
the title track, a 17 minute masterpiece, Torn improvises (as an overdub) a
poem. The five tracks, though, come together with the coherence of a
movement and hearing it all in one sitting leaves me basking, processing,
and afterglowing. Also five stars.
Balance Point Acoustics serves up another great release with this
remarkable album that brings together some verifiable living legends of the
music in addition to having strong ties to St. Louis’ Black Artist Group
(BAG) collective. This Sextett is composed of poet K. Curtis Lyle,
trumpeter George R. Sams, percussionists Ra Kalam Bob Moses and Henry
Claude, and double bassists Damon Smith and Adi Bu Dharma Joshua Weinstein.
Smith unpacked this for me a little bit, saying that Sams, Weinstein, and
Claude had been doing some private playing when the prospect of recording
with Ra Kalam Bob Moses materialized. K. Curtis Lyle, now based out of St.
Louis, was close friends and recorded with BAG alumni Julius Hemphill. I
remembered Lyle from disc five of the 2022 archival release
The Boyé Multi-National Crusade For Harmony, and Smith reminded me that there is also his debut
“The Collected
Poem for Blind Lemon Jefferson”, which Hemphill also plays on. Lyle
also performed on the
Julius Hemphill Big Band
which features his epic poem “Drunk on God”. As it turns out Hemphill was
in a free funk band with Moses, so by extension they asked Curtis to join
the recording. George Sams is also BAG alumni, having grown up with the
collective in St. Louis, but he’s probably best known for his Bay Area
quartet United Front, who recorded their
final LP
for FMP sub-label SÅJ, and for
“Nomadic Wins”
his excellent 1981 album on Hat. So this release is an important one that
ties together deep seams of the multigenerational American free jazz scene
and elevates some crucial voices back to the foreground.
The first track “Crown/Birds You Never Heard” starts with heavy bass grima
and subtle, scattered percussion, setting a solemn atmosphere which Sams
pierces with echoing peels of trumpet. Curtis recites his poetry in the
confident, assertive tenor of a man who has spent a lifetime working his
craft. On “The Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt” the percussion is even
more varied and creative and the bassists color the background as Sams
drives the cutting edge of the music. Curtis’ poetry is full of imagery and
is never too direct. Rather, abstract passages and non-sequiturs dovetail
into unforeseen statements of profound insight. “Damballah and Aida Weidho
The Old Gods” dances on the back of handpans and mbira navigating groaning
bass pulls along pizzicato pathways. On “Five Peacocks Ingest The Mandrake”
the brambles of rhythm tighten in their thick coils, complemented by bass
fiddles in stereo. Sam’s playing is excellent on this track, subtle and
bright - every expression timed perfectly to complement the roiling
colossus beneath. The last couple of minutes find the group going all-in on
a sawing, droning texture before an abrupt about face. “The Gold Standard
Andrew Hill Deconstructs James Booker” crackles with turbulent percussion
and fingered bass lines that gradually secede into sections of regressive
deconstruction which Lyle orates within. On the final piece titled
“Harmonize My Black Mule Blues” Lyle recites in sung passages while Sams
claps and whoops and the rhythm section gets granular in their sounds with
the physical presence of a heavyweight fighter.
A fantastic album that’s sure to be on my year end list, as it hits all
the right marks. For comparisons sake, Bill Dixon’s “Vade Mecum” albums as
well as “Berlin Abbozzi” obviously come to mind, given the similar
instrumentation. But here the percussion is on steroids and the addition of
Lyle’s poetry really elevates this one and makes for a complex and surreal
listening experience. This is also a great example of how some of the best
music comes together in unforeseen ways, and I always wonder how much is
intent and how much is happy accident? The packaging includes artwork from
both Sams and Lyle as well as a chapbook of the latter’s poetry, so a
physical copy of this one is definitely worth it. And finally, there is
also (coincidentally) a highly anticipated archival release from
BAG out now if you’re interested in some complimentary listening material.
Don’t miss this one though, highly recommended!
