Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Carrie Shull/Tara Flandreau/Reuben Radding: The Branch W...

193

Carrie Shull/Tara Flandreau/Reuben Radding: The Branch Will Not Break

Carrie Shull/Tara Flandreau/Reuben Radding: The Branch Will Not Break
The Branch Will Not Break is an impressive collection of musical episodes. To call them songs would be somewhat inaccurate, because they're closer to tone poems or paintings with notes. And this splendid trio—Carrie Shull on oboe and English horn, Tara Flandreau on viola, and Reuben Radding on double bass—is like a collective Jackson Pollock, working on a canvas that barely contains the energy of their ideas.

The opening title tune suggests a traditional symphonic warmup, but the conventional quickly ends as the music escalates to a Philip Glass-like freneticism, with Flandreau's viola and Radding's double bass dancing fiercely alongside Shull's dubbed oboe and English horn. On "Tell the Bees, Radding simply lets his double bass creak as the imagery shifts among a beehive, a traffic jam, gulls shrieking above the seashore, and a ship at sea creaking with the list of the waves.

"In Fear of Harvest is a melancholy, dark, brooding, string-driven piece, and on "Echolocation Shull wails on the oboe like Trane blowing the soprano, moving the disc into the realm of free jazz chamber music. Some of the landscapes here are densely populated; others, like "Twilights and "Zooid, are bleak and spare, but no less affecting. There's even a wry bit of humor involving the use of time in "Temporal Defense, the shortest piece on the disc.

In light of the naturalistic bent of the titles, the final tune, "Obscure Zealots, the most "straight-ahead tune on the disc, could be interpreted as a statement on the trio itself and how each member feels about the somewhat thankless task of expressing love of and concern for the natural world through music. It is this final aspect which gives The Branch Will Not Break both its triumph and its sadness.

Track Listing

The Branch Will Not Break; Tell the Bees; In Fear of Harvest; Echolocation; Zooid; Twilights; Obstruction; Chiroptera Felis; Temporal Defense; Heliotrope; Obscure Zealots.

Personnel

Carrie Shull: oboe and English horn; Tara Flandreau: viola; Reuben Radding: double bass.

Album information

Title: The Branch Will Not Break | Year Released: 2005 | Record Label: Umbrella 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.

Near

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.