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Live Reviews
Ottawa International Jazz Festival – Day Nine, July 1, 2005
John Kelman
With the realization that there will always be more music coming at him than he can keep up with, John wonders why anyone would think that jazz is dead or dying.Still, there were some points where the distinction was clear. Performing a number of new compositions based on the Queen Mab Scherzo by composer Hector Berlioz, the trio also dispensed with any kind of strict instrumental roles. Henneman was just as likely to be creating a gently propulsive rhythm as she was soaring above Lerner's spare but often harmonically dense clusters. Freedman might be found playing a unison line on bass clarinet with Henneman while Lerner contributed more abstruse melodies, but was just as likely to be delivering fiery improvised phrases over Lerner and Henneman's open-ended backdrop.
Freedman was the most passionate player of the trio, with Henneman and Lerner sounding more considered. Lerner often seemed in deep concentration, hands often raised just above the keyboard as she listened to Freedman and Henneman to find just the right chord or phrase.
All three demonstrated remarkable technique, even as the music they created was by no means overtly virtuosic. All three used extended techniques to broaden the sonic potential of their instruments—Lerner using mallets to both scrape and hit the strings inside the piano; Henneman scraping her bow vertically across the strings and using the body of her violin for percussive sounds; and Freedman popping her bass clarinet a la David Murray.
At times intensely cerebral, elsewhere more purely visceral, Queen Mab was an interesting counterpoint to Evan Parker's waves of sound and Roscoe Mitchell's more Afro-centric quintet performance. And while Queen Mab was often as scripted as Norman Guilbeault's "Visions of Kerouac performance, the level of performance was considerably higher, with all three members clearly more at home in their chosen context. A fitting conclusion to a short but intriguing series that has hopefully been successful enough to encourage festival organizers to continue bringing this kind of left-of-centre music to the festival in future years.
Tomorrow: Adrian Cho Impressions in Jazz Nonet; Galaxie Jazz Youth All-Stars; and Pucho and the Latin Soul Brothers.
Visit Tim Posgate and the Ottawa International Jazz Festival on the web.
Photo Credit
Brett Delmage
