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Conference Call: What About...?
ByThe soul does not disguise the feelings of nervy minds, not in the case of Conference Call, at any rate. Questions are asked: "What About the Future?" The answers are complex and probative, but always dazzling, like the assault of a myriad lights of a new city. Things look good: reedman Gebhard Ullmann's saxophone swings; drummer George Schuller's skins fibrillate, flashy and cock-sure; Joe Fonda's bass is grave and sonorous and roars from the depths; and pianist Michael Jefry Stevens is playful, his arpeggios skittering and tearing up the keys. Resolution is, at times, full of towering architecture and immediacy, while elsewhere, songs develop without the haste of arrival. Their enigma is held over until the audience is left gasping for breath. "After Life" is spread likewise over two burgeoning sections until it is brought to a dramatic close in "Part 3," on the second disc.
Yet not everything dallies, seemingly testing the wind with ideas, phrases and long loping lines. Some songs move more rapidly, searing the ears like brilliant flashes of speeding light. Again, their movement is anything but predictable, with "Circle" moving in waves. "Conference Call" is more elusive: at times, an oblique shout out to Steve Lacy; at other times a quick call to Heiner Stadler, at the time he was involved in his A Tribute to Monk and Charlie Parker (Tomato, 1978). History is well learned, and kept alive through dissonance and consonance. Heritage is playfully encountered in "Could This be a Polka," and then again, more pensively, in "Translucent Tones (Gestalt in Three)."
The collective sonic palette explored further in "Litmus" and "What About...?" is anything but uncertain, being, perhaps, the start of a new, elastic dialogue to add volumes to the literature of music. The poetics of music have been well preserved by Conference Call.
Track Listing
After Like (Part 1); After Like (Part 2); What About The Future?; Circle; Conference Call; Litmus; After Like (Part 3); Could This Be A Polka?; Translucent Tones; What About...?
Personnel
Gebhard Ullmann: tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet; Michael Jefry Stevens: piano; Joe Fonda: bass; George Schuller: drums, percussion.
Album information
Title: What About...? | Year Released: 2010 | Record Label: Not Two Records