Travis Laplante - The Golden Lock (New Focus Recordings, 2024)

By Lee Rice Epstein

I've had relatively few performances as transformative as seeing Battle Trance, the saxophone quartet led by Travis Laplante, perform live in Los Angeles a couple years ago. Laplante's music has such profound sincerity and openness, I find it impossible to listen and remain unmoved. His latest, The Golden Lock—for a quintet featuring Erika Dohi on piano, Charles Overton on harp, Lizzie Burns on double bass, and Eduardo Leandro on percussion—takes a subtle but meaningful turn in the musical language used, and the result is as impactful and affecting as ever.

Set in seven movements over three tracks, "The Golden Lock" feels substantially different from anything Laplante’s done before, while bearing all the signs and signifiers of his compositional and improvisational practices. There are rhythmic and tonal echoes of previous works, enough to remind you “The Golden Lock” exists within a universe of compositions. And yet, the distance between them extends further as the album progresses. For one thing, almost shockingly, it’s three whole minutes before Laplante’s tenor is heard; instead, it’s Dohi’s ringing piano that enters first, laying down a melodic framework upon which he and Overton will later build.

None of this is to say the music is entirely calm or restful, there is a lengthy run towards the end of “The Golden Lock II” that’s a breathtaking, five-part acrobatic performance. Coming out of it, Burns opens Part III revisiting the melody first laid out in Dohi’s piano intro. While each movement feels—forgive belaboring a metaphor—like things clicking into place and/or opening up and out. Not only does each player take a solo turn throughout the duration of the piece, but the duos and trios within the broader work serve to bring the performers closer to one another. Dohi and Leandro’s duet flips into a brief but magical Overton and Dohi duet. There feels like a tremendous amount of personal and emotional risk in the music, and these clusters amount to a kind of trust-building exercise that accrues over the course of the album. Everyone gets a chance to be exposed to the audience, and they get equal chance to support and be supported by their collaborators. Some of this is due to Laplante’s urgent, sensitive composing, and it’s equally due to the makeup of the quintet; surely, another quintet of players can perform the music—personally, I’d be really interested to hear how an accordion might fit in here—but only this quintet could present “The Golden Lock” to us with this level of dedication. It’s a testament to Dohi, Overton, Burns, and Leandro and their commitment to seeing through Laplante’s superb and at times breathtaking vision.