British double bass player-composer Olie Brice is known for his ongoing work with Paul Dunamll and Eddie Prévost. Brice has a new quartet featuring his favourite collaborators, tenor sax player Rachel Musson (who recorded duo and trio albums with Brice), pianist Alexander Hawkins (who has played with Brice in the trumpeter Nick Malcolm Quartet), and drummer Will Glasser (who has played in Brice Trio and Octet). The debut album of the quartet was written in a period of intense emotions for Brice, reflecting the grief and pain of losing his father, Tosh Brice, and fused with the horror and despair at the genocide in the war in Gaza (Brice is a Jew who has lived in Jerusalem).
The six pieces, recorded at the Fish Factory in London in October 2024, reflect the emotional intensity and urgency, as well as the uplifting, life-affirming power of music. The opening piece, “Listening Intently to Raptors” is dedicated to the great American double bass player John Lindberg, and its title comes from Brice and Lindberg’s email correspondence during the COVID-19 lockdown, and relates to Lindberg Raptor Trio and one of the latest albums of Lindberg (Western Edges, Clean Feed, 2016). This piece cements Brice’s commanding, thoughtful playing as well as the egalitarian dynamics of the quartet. “After a Break” marks the end of composer’s block, with the assistance of Steve Lacy's music, introduced by an emphatic, playful duo of Brice and Musson, answered by the duo Hawkins and Glaser, before all intensify together the playful commotion.
The melancholic ballad “Morning Mourning” reflects on the loss of Brice’s father and the process of grief, introduced and concluded with Brice’s bass solos that are so beautiful and masterful, radiating humbly his deep emotions, accompanied gently by Hawkins, Glaser’s delicate touches on the cymbals, and Musson's lyrical articulation of the theme. The following, short “Happy Song for Joni”, dedicated to Brice’s beloved goddaughter, suggests the complete opposite, a fiery free jazz piece that pushes Musson’s to raw and urgent solos.
“A Rush of Memory Was All It Was” is dedicated to Cecil Taylor and Jimmy Lyons, and its title is a quote from American poet Nathaniel Mackey (whose poems often reflected on Taylor’s music). It exhausts the full, explosive power of this quartet, in the spirit of the inspired, wise, and uncompromising free improvising mentors. This impressive album is concluded with “And We Dance on the Firm Earth” (a quote from a poem by Barbadian poet Kamau Braithwaite), a soulful, optimistic piece, led by Musson’s emotional sax playing, driven by the rhythm section of Hakins, Brice, and Glaser. It suggests, as Brice notes, that “life is complicated, and the music also comes from joy and love”.
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