Robert Jarvis: Carving Up Time

Glenn Astarita

Senior Contributor since 1997

Longtime contributor to AAJ and Downbeat, Jazz Review, EjazzNews, Radio DirectX.

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Published: April 1, 2001

If ever there was an album title that symbolized the music exhibited from within, trombonist Robert Jarvis gets his point across rather illustriously with Carving Up Time. With this release, featuring a multinational cast of predominately Dutch performers, the leader slices and dices through time and space via a compositional approach brimming with memorable interludes, concisely stated melodies, abrupt tempo changes and dashes of subtle EFX.

On “What Say You Did ?”, the quartet interrogates sublime themes with faint injections of humor, stop and start type interplay and a method of execution that incorporates acceleration and deceleration. Here, the band provides a crafty implementation consisting of modern jazz type inventions intertwined with bluesy swing vamps and bouncy rhythms. The musicians’ expound upon dirge like motifs in concert with ethereal sounds and rumbling rhythmic developments along with ostinato motifs amid Jarvis’ and saxophonist Frank van der Kooij’s brawny lines and limber soloing.

Overall, Jarvis and co. utilize time to their advantage as they demonstrate their wares atop abstract overtones, sounds of nature and pleasing melodies. Essentially, Jarvis’ is up to something here, as the end results prove to be quite gratifying!

Recommended.

Track Listing: What Say You Did?, Tea Of Pot, Rannochnoor, Global Village.

Personnel: Robert Jarvis; trombone: Frank van der Kooij; saxophones: Henk de Laat; double bass (tracks 1-3): Alan Noblock; double bass: Oscar Schulze; percussion (tracks 1-3): Jean-Victor de Boer; percussion: Sound; Kees van Gool & Robert Jarvis.

Record Label: Slam Records