Editions Redux - Better a Rook than a Pawn (Audrographic, 2023)

By Paul Acquaro

If the ringing sound of the Fender Rhodes-like keyboard doesn't tickle your jazz bones, then you should really question the integrity of your whole skeleton. From the opening moments of Ken Vandermark's Edition Redux's Better a Rook than a Pawn, just about all of you should be tingling. 

 

The nearly 10 minute opening-track 'Time is the Tune / Wols / Uncommon Object' begins with the unique vibrating chunky keyboard tones from Erez Dessel. Along with drummer Lily Finnegan, the ground work is being laid for the kinetic entry of Vandermarks' saxophone and the light underscoring of Beth McDonald's tuba. The energy is palpable and the melodic theme digs in deep, turning the light knismesistic feel into full on garalesistic. Soon, the mood changes, the synthesizer is replaced by piano and Vandermark has switched to clarinet. The group has entered a searching phase, sound textures overtaking melodic impulses. The quartet of musical adventurers reemerge though into a new musical soundscape, renewed.

 

The group, like Marker from several years ago, is composed of younger musicians from Chicago. Dessel studied piano at the New England Conservatory and moved to Chicago in 2022, falling in quickly with Vandermark. McDonald is self described as a 'classically trained tubist gone awry,' while Finnegan is a Chicago native, a Berkley College of Music graduate and seems to have already built-up quite a CV of collaborators. As Edition Redux, the group is fresh, exciting and providing the restless Vandermark another great vehicle for his musical ideas. 

 

While the music seems to unfold in new ways for a Vandermark project, is also comfortingly familiar. In the liner notes, the composer writes: 

"This music utilizes a 'cinematic' approach to organizing the pieces, a system which allows me to reconfigure the material for every performance, leading to new paths for the music during the compositions and in open sections as well as self-determined free improvisation between them."  

Well, if that does not describe the music of the first track, then nothing will. On the next track, 'Summer Sweater/Matching Shocks/Coherence/Swan Zig,' that same slinky, bone tickling synthesizer tones sets the groove and Vandermark comes in on clarinet with a slinky melody. With the tuba and drums helping with the feel, the group gets into something nearly fusion-like (in the best way possible), however after four glorious moments, it breaks down into an effusive and abstract section. The transition was sudden, but then again so is the next one where the disconnected lines suddenly come together and eventually settle into another heart-pumping groove. 

 

There is plenty more experience on the album, like the fantastic oozing cool introduction of 'No Back to Your Jacket/Reel to Reel/Flatlands' and the great tuba solo over free comping that soon follows. All of the pieces intersect at some point, but providing that I understand the musical process correctly, are also modular components that can be rearranged on the go. Regardless of where you enter the recording, Editions Redux sound great on record, and it seems safe to assume that live, they would as well!