Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Gordon Grdina Septet: Resist
Gordon Grdina Septet: Resist
ByNever content to follow one musical shape, as if following the hard winds of wanted or unwanted change, Grdina's unerring investigative prolificacy hits on a new geometry each time out. Creating the septet stage by uniting his long-standing rhythm machine of bassist Tommy Babin and drummer Kenton Loewen, his equally stalwart East Van Strings-cellist Peggy Lee, violinist Jesse Zubot and violist Eyvind Kang, with the subversive sax of Jon Irabagon,Grdina and company set out on a lush, urgent and agitated accounting of our world at large.
But unlike cable news and its blathering heads, the five brooding and brimming Grdina compositions that coalesce to create Resist's keep the conversation tight yet open to interpretation. Open to new ideas wherever and whenever they may and must arise. Especially written for a performance at the 2016 TD Vancouver International jazz Festival, the centerpiece is the 23 minute title suite, an earthy, free-flowing amalgam of all Grdina's thoughts on the sad state of affairs in which the world finds itself. Emotive to the plight of all, he lets his players speak their minds, expressing their concerns and hopes. The strings feature first in a slow, forlorn movement along a barren, embattled landscape. After six minutes of this mournful allure, Grdina, Loewen, and Babin break the troubled aura, clearing the way for Irabagon to set fire to the battlefield. The piece then weaves all togetheras it should, as the world shouldbuilding, fluttering, falling back, culminating in a swelling, hopefully optimistic finale.
Irabagon's slurring, punchy stabs front the trio on the off-kilter bop of "Varscona" until a squealing rain of raw strings, like the furtive, heightened cries of justice from refugees along the way, slices the track in two. Above this caterwauling Grdina sails until the track ends on something so unexpected from what has transpired to that point: a smiling, purely cathartic, jumping swing. "Resist The Middle" and "Ever Onward" then purposely and exultantly revisit "Resist's" active minimalism and kinetic flow.
Track Listing
Resist; Seeds 11; Varscona; Resist the Middle; Ever Onward.
Personnel
Gordon Grdina
oudJon Irabagon
saxophone, sopraninoTommy Babin
bassKenton Loewen
drumsPeggy Lee (cellist)
celloJesse Zubot
violinEyvind Kang
violaAlbum information
Title: Resist | Year Released: 2020 | Record Label: Irabbagast Records
< Previous
I See You; I Hear You
Comments
Tags
Album Review
Mike Jurkovic
Groov Marketing And Consulting
Resist
Irabbagast Records
Gordon Grdina
Matt Mitchell
Jim Black
Tommy Babin
Kenton Loewen
East Van Strings
Peggy Lee
Jesse Zubot
Eyvind Kang
Jon Irabagon