Dave Liebman / Billy Hart / Adam Rudolph: Beingness

There is something very other-worldly about Beingness. It runs on some taut meta-rhythms, courtesy of NEA Jazz Master, drummer Billy Hart, who hangs loose and fearless with award-winning, world music percussionist/composer Adam Rudolph. It sounds like free-falling. But not in a monochromatic death plunge. No, this is more a sure glide, like a leaf flirting across Bleecker in a new October, westbound breeze.

A master class in hypnotic and collaborative invention, Beingness—Hart, Rudolph, and Hart's fellow NEA Jazz Master and longtime running mate, soprano saxophonist Dave Liebman (the duo first played with Miles Davis on the historic On the Corner (Columbia, 1972))—weave, braid, trace, and unlace without the music written before them. So "Unfolding" unfolds from an off-kilter percussion landslide that quickly becomes a churning rhythmic flurry over which Liebman snake dances. 

Recorded live in 2023 at The Stone in New York City, Beingness is the fourth trio recording released by Liebman and Rudolph. With a revolving drum chair—Tyshawn Sorey (New Now (Meta, 2023); Hamid Drake (Chi (RareNoiseRecords, 2019); Tatsuya Nakatani on (The Unknowable (RareNoiseRecords, 2018)—the exploratory duo welcome Hart to the fold and the veteran improviser is is amped up to say the least. Led by a chirping Liebman, "Unfolding" morphs organically into the arousing "Transmutation." Randolph's ethereal yet visceral electronics provide a deceptive soothing, broken by the kinetic reverie of "Intent" and the animated rise of "Pathways." 

Liebman's instinctual, whispery use of wood flutes, Rudolph's world influences, and Hart's innate rhythms provide Beingness with an overall sense of timelessness, the past as present, the distant as near. "Beingness," "Refractions," "Transparent to Transcendence," "Remembering the Future," "Mystique," are all spontaneous salutations from the elders to the generations they have bequeathed. Trippy and beautiful. 

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