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Tomas Fujiwara's Triple Double: March
by Mark Corroto
Drummer, composer and vibraphonist Tomas Fujiwara did not set out to rebut the saying “familiarity breeds contempt," but March from his sextet Triple Double does just that. His combination of three pairs of double instruments—guitarists Mary Halvorson and Brandon Seabrook, cornet/trumpets Taylor Ho Bynum and Ralph Alessi, plus double drummers Gerald Cleaver and Tomas Fujiwara himself—creates respect, the opposite of contempt. The harmonious and organic nature of this music, first heard on their self-titled debut album Triple Double (Firehouse 12, ...
Continue ReadingTomas Fujiwara's Triple Double: March
by Troy Dostert
Drummer Tomas Fujiwara's March, another offering from his Triple Double sextet, was recorded in December 2019, prior to the widespread racial unrest that followed the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others in 2020. But it feels completely of a piece with those protests, with an unsettled anger and impatience that animate every moment of this absorbing album. Creating music that seems perfectly suited for a tumultuous age, Fujiwara's compositional instincts are spot-on, and he once again marshals ...
Continue ReadingBen Goldberg: Everything Happens To Be.
by Jerome Wilson
If you do not listen too closely, there are parts of this download-only release that sound soothing and gentle. That is not really the case and that is the fun part of this music. When the reed players play a pretty or swinging melody line, there is always some irritant factor elsewhere in the band to spice things up. All of these musicians are known for their experimental tendencies and have worked together before in various combinations. The ...
Continue ReadingBen Goldberg: Everything Happens To Be.
by John Chacona
The music of Ben Goldberg seems to come from a place outside of time--or maybe it comes from several times simultaneously. Maybe it's the instruments he chooses; while the clarinet family has been on the comeback trail in jazz for a quarter century, it's a sound that invariably invokes the New Orleans of a century ago. That's especially true when Goldberg picks up the mellow, woody, Albert-system E-flat instrument on “Cold Weather." That tune's sweet melancholy wobbles perilously close to ...
Continue ReadingMary Halvorson's Code Girl: Artlessly Falling
by Jerome Wilson
Guitarist Mary Halvorson has displayed her playing and composing talents in a number of settings, but this second release by her song-based band, Code Girl, is one of the most focused and intense things she has ever done. Halvorson and her quintet constructed music around eight of her own poems, each written in a specific poetic form. The results are fluid and improvisational art songs, in the manner of complex but catchy British art rock groups of the ...
Continue ReadingMary Halvorson: Artlessly Falling
by John Sharpe
Not content with having scaled the heights of the guitar pantheon, with the second release from Code Girl, Mary Halvorson also cements her place in a unique genre of her own design. As befits someone who has taken to heart Anthony Braxton's dictum to find her own musical voice, she presents something which is part art song, part indie rock, part mainstream jazz and part free form, but all Halvorson. Mirroring the progression of her trio, first to ...
Continue ReadingMary Halvorson: Artlessly Falling
by Franz A. Matzner
Released by Mary Halvorson's Code Girl, Artlessly Falling presents eight new compositions, each of which is structured around a specific poetic form with accompanying lyrics/poems by Halvorson herself. The forms represent a significant diversity of cultural origins and eras, including Japanese Tanka, 12th century Sestina, French Villanelle, and Malay Pantoum. With each of the above sources arguably requiring deep study to become well-versed in, this central conceit might feel like a daring experiment, hubris, or a bit of ...
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