Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Gordon Grdina: Cooper's Park

3

Gordon Grdina: Cooper's Park

By

View read count
Gordon Grdina: Cooper's Park
Cooper's Park's eighteen minute centerpiece crashes into energetic existence sounding like someone just remembered to push record while the ensemble was in high flight mid jam. Flailing majestically away, guitarist Gordon Grdina, alto saxophonist/bass clarinetist Oscar Noriega and pianist Russ Lossing are heard early working overtime on every level from solo to tag-team tandem, giving, taking, trading instigating and echoing the rush of melodies that inhabit the track's sprawling, malleable margins. Ignoring musical boundaries comes second nature to these guys but it's still surprising to hear them restate the central theme with a Black Sabbath punch and Sun Ra bleats at about twelve minutes in before going down into quick handed prog-rock/fusion.

Group interaction is the law of the land, and this quartet, rounded out by the subtle muscle and rippling snare of drummer Satoshi Takeishi, is well-versed in that proviso, having first applied the frenetic aesthetic in 2017 on Grdina's attention-grabbing Inroads (Songlines). It's there the course was set for the five Grdina thought extensions that become Cooper's Park. "Benbow" moves through deep space improv before sledding into an intensified full bore climax. Noriega breathes life slow and intently into "Seeds II" before Takeishi, ala Rashied Ali, concusses low as Lossing's ringing Fender Rhodes and biting clavinet join Grdina's phase-shifting Frank Zappa-like solo into a somewhat unsettling, yet impossible to turn away from, performance. And that's only half way through the track.

Whereas Grdina's oud held centerstage in 2018's Ejdeha (Songlines), the guitarist features the instrument just once on "Wayward." It is a classically rambling series of duets where, in particular, Lossing and the leader lock into one mind before Takeishi and Noriega edge in, take over, drive and make the track their own. In tonality and construction, the finale "Night Sweats" is all Jeff Beck via Blow By Blow (Epic, 1975) and Wired (Epic, 1976), bringing Cooper's Park to a most rousing conclusion.

Track Listing

Cooper’s Park; Benbow; Seeds II; Wayward; Night Sweats.

Personnel

Gordon Grdina: guitar, oud; Russ Lossing: piano, Rhodes, clavinet; Oscar Noriega: alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Satoshi Takeishi: drums.

Album information

Title: Cooper's Park | Year Released: 2019 | Record Label: Songlines Recordings

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.