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Dominic Duval/The Equinox Trio: Equinox
by Robert Spencer
A bass/cello/piano trio, such as is featured on this disc, is a study in dark textures, making this disc sound like the soundtrack to a morose and crabbed European art film. This is especially true of the up-tempo sections of “Paratum 'The Whisper'" and “Strange Tools," which is dominated by high tones, whistles, and inarticulate cries: ...
Joe Henderson: In Pursuit of Blackness / Black is the Color
by Robert Spencer
Rather famously, Joe Henderson released a series of albums for Milestone in the early Seventies that courted popular acceptance in a variety of ways: most notably, he played modal proto-world music with Alice Coltrane and added an electric piano and other frou-frou to his ensembles in order to catch the fusion crowd. Nothing worked, and these ...
Brasserie Trio: Musique M
by Robert Spencer
The Brasserie Trio's Musique Mèchanique is a rare treat: three master musicians with verve, imagination, and even a sense of humor. Working without a rhythm section, the three horn men here have such a strong sense of time that they can move easily from swing to rubato and back, and a bassist or drummer is never ...
Clusone 3 (hat Hut: Rara Avis
by Robert Spencer
“We all know how 20th century composers from Messiaen to Ellington to Dolphy cribbed melodies" from birds, says Kevin Whitehead in the liner notes to this collection of fourteen bird songs by the celebrated Clusone 3: Michael Moore (alto sax, clarinet, melodica), Ernst Reijseger (cello), and Han Bennink (drums). None of those three are represented on ...
Evan Parker: Waterloo 1985
by Robert Spencer
The intoxicating spirit of the kind of “free" improvisation that this disc exemplifies comes from the in-the-moment interplay between the players, a microscopic call-and-response activity that creates a music of flows, eddies, tensions, and releases. Over the single hour-long track on this disc, Evan Parker , Paul Rutherford, Hans Schneider, and Paul Lytton play undulating music ...
Scott Tinkler: Sofa King
by Robert Spencer
In the old days a trumpet quartet on a record date was unusual. Miles Davis recorded a quartet disc, but he more often preferred to augment his group sound with a saxophonist. Clark Terry recorded in a quartet with Thelonious Monk, and Freddie Hubbard with Herbie Hancock, but such dates are generally rare. (All right, I ...
Borah Bergman/Oliver Lake: A New Organization
by Robert Spencer
Borah Bergman plies his unique off-kilter lyricism here in the company of Oliver Lake, who shares his ability to deflect melodic progressions into unexpected areas. This particular duo combination can set off as many sparks as one might expect: many of the tracks contain a good deal of pedal-to-the-floor intensity, but there is more than just ...
Steve Lacy + 6: The Cry
by Robert Spencer
Steve Lacy, the great master of the soprano saxophone and one of the unacknowledged greatest improvisers ever, continues a long series of art songs and settings of poetry in this new 2-disc set from Soul Note, the always challenging Italian label. Stretching back to the Sixties Lacy and vocalist Irene Aebi have recorded songs by lyricists ...
Joe Maneri Quartet: Tenderly
by Robert Spencer
Joe Maneri is a real original. A professor at the New England Conservatory of Music, he has developed a microtonal system involving a 72-note scale, but he is by no means merely a theoretician; on this disc he brings theory to thrilling life in a quartet with his son Mat, who plays a 6-string electric violin, ...
Jan Garbarek: Rites
by Robert Spencer
This sprawling new double CD by Jan Garbarek is an apotheosis of the vision and approach he has pursued more or less single-mindedly for almost thirty years now. Virtually all the roads he has visited in the past are revisited, in one way or another, here, and in as crisply competent and subtly virtuosic a fashion ...
