The Solo Recordings of Ari Hoenig

David A. Orthmann

Columnist since 2000

David hears the melody of "Salt Peanuts" in the squawk of wild turkeys walking through his back yard.

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Published: November 11, 2004

As evidenced by his two solo recordings, Time Travels (1K Recordings) and The Life Of A Day (Ah Ha Records), Ari Hoenig is an unusually resourceful artist who transcends the limitations of working with a conventional four-piece drum kit and a few cymbals. Introducing a system of replicating the exact pitches of melodies, Hoenig plays a cornucopia of songs, ranging from jazz standards ("Caravan," "Oleo," "Night In Tunisia") to less-than-fashionable ditties ("Pop Goes The Weasel," "Reveille," "I've Been Workin' On The Railroad"), and integrates improvisations that often quote from the themes. The discs' 36 tracks include a number of Hoenig's original compositions and extemporaneous solos as well. The drumming is vivid and imaginative, yet invariably logical and precisely executed. Even when juggling a number of ideas, there's always a sense of order and structural integrity in everything he plays.

Hoenig takes the melody to Thelonious Monk's "I Mean You" ( Time Travels ) at a sprightly pace, employing single strokes to the snare drum (snares off) and both tom-toms. Some strokes are allowed to ring; others are cut short. The second time through the 8 bar "A" section the light clap of the hi-hat cymbals on beats 2 and 4 undergird the drums and locks in a steady pulse. During the bridge Hoenig's sticking turns skittish as he uses buzz strokes to make an irregular, crunching sound, as well as a closed roll which produces a somewhat smoother rumble; he then returns to singles for a last go at the "A" section. Hoenig drags out the tune's 4 bar conclusion just a bit, temporarily suspending the swinging feeling by dropping the steady hi-hat and emitting a kind of flailing chatter.

A couple of rim shots announce the beginning of Hoenig's acrobatic improvisation. His solo constantly evolves as he rapidly works through a string of brief ideas, always maintaining narrative continuity. (If your attention briefly wanders, when you return he's miles away.) Hoenig thinks very quickly and his execution is always clean. Nothing comes off as flatfooted, labored, or overextended. He never resorts to executing a cliché in order to buy time and figure out what to do next. Sometimes he'll interrupt the aggressively swinging presentation with something that sounds like someone rapidly running up and down a flight of stairs, without losing the solo's overall momentum. On a couple of occasions Hoenig repeats a phrase often enough until it becomes familiar then briskly dashes off to something else.

Throughout the solo Hoenig eschews rolls of long duration in favor of short, choppy sticking and footwork. Early on there's some inspired give and take between the snare and bass drums. Cymbals are struck in ways that are in concert with whatever he's playing on the drums instead of mindlessly crashed. In particular, he gets a lot of mileage from striking the partially opened hi-hat, making a deliciously light hiss that stands in contrast to the terse snap of his stick shots.

Hoenig begins "March For Rudy" ( Time Travels ) with several conventional march cadences, crisply executed on the snare and bass drums, each separated by a couple of beats of silence. The martial rigidity begins to loosen when he makes a couple of hits each to the snare, bass, and tom-tom, letting the last two strokes ring; the simple, sing-song effect lets us know that the complexion of the piece has changed for good. A similar phrase immediately follows and he continues by putting together ideas in four bar segments. Though a swinging improvisational sensibility rapidly emerges Hoenig never abandons the march-oriented and rudimentary rhythms. He recasts and stretches them in different—and sometimes almost unrecognizable—ways; freely mixing in jazz oriented beats, rapidly traveling in short bursts to different parts of the drum set, leaving out the otherwise essential bass drum for significant stretches, and changing the density of the presentation by sustaining cymbal sounds then eliminating them altogether.

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