Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Steve Swell: The Center Will Hold

4

Steve Swell: The Center Will Hold

By

View read count
Steve Swell: The Center Will Hold
Unusual instrumentation inspires NYC-based trombonist Steve Swell to ever greater heights on the six compositions comprising The Center Will Hold. Pride of place goes to veteran drummer Andrew Cyrille, who certainly deserves the extra billing he receives on the cover. Beside him are a mixture of long time colleagues of the trombonist, violinist Jason Kao Hwang and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, and more recent collaborators, pianist Robert Boston, who fulfilled a leading role on Swell's accomplished Brain In A Dish (NoBusiness, 2019), and, on one of her first recordings, chromatic harmonica-player Ariel Bart, a 22 year old newcomer from Israel, who adds a startling new shade to Swell's palette.

Swell uses familiar building blocks of riffs and simple themes in novel ways in episodic open-ended settings on the first three tracks, where they frame exciting opportunities for individual expression, grasped with both hands by his talented crew. The dissonant annunciatory blasts from trombone and harmonica which launch proceedings immediately focus attention, while Cyrille provides the glue which binds together the swathes of improv color which follow. Swell's first feature, smearily zigzagging between registers, is one of the notable moments, as are the Sun Ra-evoking sonorities conjured by Bart and Boston on organ.

On the title cut, named in optimistic opposition to a line in the poem The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats, a propulsive vamp punctuates a series of arresting vignettes which include a bristling twosome between Boston's piano and Cyrille's drums, and a lightly-textured solo from the drummer in which he seemingly references the cadences of "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" among other infectious motifs. Among the striking passages in "Mikrokosmos II" are a klezmer-inflected summit between Bart and Hwang which spins woozily out of control, and a mercurial interchange between the leader and Boston, as well as an electronics-fuelled shape-shifting double act between Hwang and Lonberg-Holm.

Thereafter Swell tilts to more recognizable forms, with the punchy "Laugh So You Don't Cry" housing a sequence of stirring features, not least his own which veers between tight squiggly figures and sustained emotive cries, while Bart notably supplements her bent notes with an affecting human keen. Later, on the swinging "Robo Call" Hwang successfully juxtaposes effects laden screeches and distortions against the anthemic narrative. The closing "Spontaneous Protocols," as its name suggests, represents more of a returns to the early gambit, as it unfolds into a chain of duets with the always inventive Cyrille the common denominator.

Swell has produced a well-rounded program chock full of tremendous playing; it ranks alongside his finest releases.

Track Listing

Celestial Navigation; The Center Will Hold; Mikrokosmos II; Laugh So You Don't Cry; Robo Call; Spontaneous Protocols.

Personnel

Steve Swell
trombone
Jason Kao Hwang
composer / conductor
Ariel Bart
harmonica

Album information

Title: The Center Will Hold | Year Released: 2020 | Record Label: Not Two Records

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.