Release date: May 2010
Contact: Five on One
Dave Liebman - saxophone
John Abercrombie - guitar
Marc Copland - piano
Drew Gress - bass
Billy Hart - drums
Five on the way to one. Five in one. Five on the same wavelength. The group is simply called Contact. But that's a word with a whole slew of possible meanings. There is certainly contact-but not of the physical sort. With the very first tones the quintet evinces a striking impression of vibrant unity. Or better yet-of synchronized life-blood. And it remains so until the last note. Five big names. An “All-Star" band. But not just. It's not just a gathering of five jazz celebrities who get together to churn out a few pieces, and then scatter to the winds in every aesthetic direction in order to land where they better fit in. As the pieces are played, there is a growing sense that these musicians have produced a long overdue set of recordings that are an organic synthesis of their musical beings. Five who together discover a musical spirit that incorporates every individual. The CD is called Five on One, and on it, the musicians develop an intense interplay that is characterized by an intimate warmth.
Five Americans have gotten together: saxophonist Dave Liebman, guitarist John Abercrombie, pianist Marc Copland, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Billy Hart. Except for bassist Drew Gress, who was born in 1959 and is the youngest in the group, they were all born in the 1940's; for the last four decades they have been incisive figures in the music. Most of them have had long-standing musical relationships. Dave Liebman and John Abercrombie had already recorded together in 1973 with Liebman's Band Lookout Farm. Liebman had already played with Billy Hart in the 1980's, as had Abercrombie with Copland-and the latter is a relationship that has remained up to this day, including recordings with Pirouet. Copland and Liebman likewise have a long musical history together; they recorded the CD Lunar in 2001. And bassist Drew Gress has many CD productions under his belt as Copland's trio partner. Five on One-the collaboration of five friends. Five musicians who can find each other in the dark.
That's why a sense of complete naturalness is such a pre-dominant trait on this recording. The individual voices flow seamlessly into each other as the sounds merge together. As the CD progresses, it becomes crystal-clear that this musical kinship is born out of the players' corresponding musical sensitivity. Saxophonist Dave Liebman is a master of subtle tonal shading, building and expanding the sound and then letting it flow. This aesthetic coincides with John Abercrombie's sensitive, sharply contoured guitar play, which even at its most energetic retains a filigree of tenderness. If you were looking for the ideal piano partner to go with this subtle jazz chamber music spirit, you would have kept coming back to Marc Copland, the maestro of the glass-clear sound with its enigmatic aura. Add a rhythm section grounded in the basics and the understanding that cohesion and strength are one and the same: Drew Gress, the bassist with the exceptionally round, steady sound and Billy Hart, a drummer who pitches in with a power that at times unfurls a shimmering complexity. Refreshing how the five let their common cause simply take its course-you can feel the passion and delight in their mutual discoveries. This is especially discernable with saxophonist Dave Liebman. Over the last years he has concentrated on the soprano saxophone, which he plays with an exceptional sense of ease and clarity. Here he is also heard extensively on his other instrument, the tenor saxophone. He plays it with strength and whirling intensity, adding an occasional sand-paper roughness to his tone then back again to brighter wailing, beautifully shaded, shimmering tone. Liebman demonstrates that the tenor is not just the soprano's big brother; rather, it is a completely different animal.
It is quite an experience to listen to Liebman's tenor and Abercrombie's inventively classy guitar play around each other as their sounds delicately intertwine on Billy Hart's composition Lullaby for Imke. In Abercrombie's voluminous piece Four on One the instruments are given free space to swirl around each other in trembling, nervous tonal sequence. And in Copland's composition Childmoon Smile they explore lofty regions with elegantly refined lines.
As they embrace the musical interplay, the five musicians have a lot of space to breath in, to be oneself in, to find common ground in on the CD's nine pieces. Each one has contributed at least one composition; the pieces are stylistically diverse, but they are alike in their expressive musicality. Contact is a tight band, and at the same time it explores such broad, open horizons. The eight original compositions demonstrate how unusual and exciting it all is, and the one standard on the CD, Arthur Schwarz and Howard Dietz's You and the Night and the Music, with its quiet ecstasy and soft-toned weight, only serves to accentuate this. These are gorgeously harmonious, masterful recordings. The five are not concerned with what happens to be “in" at the moment; rather, they are five-times individual-radical. If you could take a picture of this music, you would see five people standing closely together, and although their style of dress might be different, they would seem to naturally go together. Five radical individuals who play as one. Those who know and treasure only one or two of these musicians can revel in the allure of five-fold excitement. Like It Never Was (composed by Drew Gress) hits the mark: these musicians find an intimacy and intensity that, at least for all-star groups, is completely new. Contact can be that far-reaching.
