Zoe Efstathiou/Oda Dyrnes – Kyaness (Allekung Records, 2021) ****½

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Kyaness, which comes out only on vinyl, is the duo of Zoe Efstathiou, a Greek expat pianist based in Sweden and Oda Dyrnes who comes from Norway and plays cello. Kyaness is a women’s duo, a fact not too often encountered even in the, supposedly, much more open field of experimentation. From the little I have discussed this subject with Zoe Efstathiou, I can certainly comment that she is preoccupied on all this. More on a later interview, I hope to believe.

Since some of us notice such things, one comment on the vinyl: Kyaness comes out as a thick one hundred eighty grams of vinyl which along the artwork and layout, make it a great buy…

It’s of great importance the fact that the quality of the sound is really-really good. Both musicians focus on their instruments as devices of making sounds, pushing them t their limits, allowing them to be something different than that they usually (and than their musical traditions want them to be) are. Both the cello and the piano are sounding objects and not just instruments that someone (technically articulate or not, it doesn’t matter) plays in the orthodox way. The focus in on the detail.

What I really enjoyed from listening to the risks both musicians took, is that they proceeded with the passion of the newcomer. They seem perfectly happy to challenge the instruments, so to challenge themselves and the years they have spent playing and studying. They play in unison, as a duo, and not like two individual voices that are able to cooperate. This is the trick, I believe. To be able to intertwine and interact collectively. The listener gets a unity of sounds out of this, when it never matters who is doing what. Apart from the aforementioned passion, they succeed in this not by luck, but by hard work, I believe, and a masterful approach to both instruments. No one ever said (or, at least, I believe so) that being technically advanced is a bad thing per se. It’s how and why you put your skills into practice.

Kyaness definitely falls into the category of experimental music. But again it’s how you do things that discriminates something new (a procedure which involves a lot of risk) than someone who only uses a word with some burden on it, but it’s just another mannerism. The recording and mixing by Egil Kalman manages to bring to life, like a live recording, all the micro-sounds and micro-moves: the reverberations of the inside of the piano, the micro-sounds of the bow and the strings of the cello, the sudden silences of the limited spaces occupied by the instruments.

Kyaness is one of the best electro acoustic recordings of the past couple of years for me. If you want to listen and buy it, go here: https://zoeefstathiou-odadyrnes.bandcamp.com/album/kyaness

@koultouranafigo

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René Lussier - Le Trésor De La Langue (ReR Megacorp, 2021) ****½

By Eyal Hareuveni

Le trésor de la langue (The treasure of the language) is a 3-discs box set reissue of one of the most ambitious and masterful works of Canadian, Québécois experimental guitarist René Lussier, originally released by Ambiances Magnétiques (a label Lussier co-founded) in 1990. This is a loving aural celebration, or “audio road movie sculpted in the heart of words” for the spoken French dialect of Québec, its unique and quintessential tones, melodic inflection, phrases and rhythms, depicting the importance of the language for the Québécois culture. Lussier commented recently in an interview with The Wire that his music “is fed with everyday life”.

The box set includes the original album, a live version with new arrangements, captured at shows at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville and the jazz festival of Montréal, and few European festivals during 1994, and other live performances documented by filmmaker Fernand Bélanger and released as Le trésor archange in 1996. The three parts of this ambitious project were released by Lussier in 2007 but were out of print, until ReR’s Chris Cutler offered to rerelease all as a boxset, with notes by Lussier, the original liner notes by Robert Marcel Lepage, and notes on all three versions. This boxset is the second reissue of Lussier’s music by ReR, following Complètement marteau, released with Circum Disc earlier this year.

It is important to note that Le trésor de la langue is by no means favors Québecoise nationalism. The album includes poet Richard Desjardins’ "Qui s'en souvient?” (Who remembers it), relating to the demise of Native American societies by Spanish, French and English colonialism (“If I have the right to speak French or English? / From the bottom of my heart, from the bones of my body, / go ask the Iroquois / And hurry up while there’s still some”). Lepage refers in the liner notes to the Québécois French language as a “thorny issue” and relates to the heated events in Canadian politics in the seventies and eighties about separating Québéc from Canada as "poisoned snag" for the preservation of the language.

Obviously, an intimate knowledge of Québécois French would intensify the joy of experiencing Le trésor de la langue, but even without any knowledge of the French language, it is clear that Lussier has done a highly imaginative work. His sensitivity to the nuances in each syllable, word, phrase or inflection - taken from interviews with residents of Québec or samples of politicians’ interviews and speeches - transforms expressions into corresponding musical gestures, arranged and orchestrated as evocative and sometimes even shocking textures. Lussier was assisted in the live performances of Le trésor de la langue by Bob Ostertag, known for his sampling expertise, and even though Ostertag does not speak French he handled the spoken samples of Québécois French as sonic material, ready for free improvisations and hilarious coincidences. Other comrades in this project are fellow Québécois reeds player Jean Derome (another co-founder of Ambiances Magnétiques), Fred Frith (who played with Cutler in Henry Cow, and hosted Lussier in his Guitar Quartet), late cellist Tom Cora, among many others.

The self-taught Lussier is a one-of-a-kind guitarist with a compositional logic like no other, unbound by genre or style conventions. He is known for his sharp and boisterous sense of humor, and his infectious musical enthusiasm, all found with healthy doses throughout the almost three hours of Le trésor de la langue. For Lussier, the spoken Québécois French language is an extension of the daily soundtrack of our chaotic life, where contacts and jump-cuts are integral elements. He took these contrasts to some extreme detours and cast some of the influential politicians of the era into a circus-like sonic spectacle. For example, the French president Charles de Gaulle 's famous "Vive le Québec libre!" speech of 1967 and the recitation of the FLQ (Front de libération du Québec) Manifesto are matched with subversive and distorted arrangements that strip these pompous, strict speeches from its inflated, condescending importance. In the same manner, Lussier played and edited the melodic flow of the voice of Pierre Bourgault, a Québécois politician and foremost advocate of for sovereignty for Quebec from Canada, reduced the speed of his voice by half, thus emptying the pathos from this voice, and there are many more likewise sonic inventions.

Three decades after it was originally released, Le trésor de la langue may be experienced - for one who has never been to Québéc or speaks French at all, as a prophetic sonic document that rejects separationist and isolationist politics, despite its great love and intimate knowledge of Québécois French language. And, of course, a wild, uplifting sonic roller coaster.

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Vinicius Mendes, Alex Dias, Gabriel Bruce, Victor Vieira-Branco - Duascidades (s/r, 2021) ****½

By Jim Marks

This apparently self-released recording on Bandcamp brings together Brazilians Vinicius Mendes on sax (seemingly alto, though the liner notes do not specify) and flute, Alex Dias on bass, Gabriel Bruce on drums, and Victor Vieira-Branco on vibraphone. The “two cities” of the title are São Paulo, home to Dias and Vieira-Branco, and Belo Horizonte, home to Mendes and Bruce. The product of a four-hour session when the four happened to be in the latter city in mid-2019, the music’s drive suggests the vitality and diversity of contemporary Brazilian jazz. The liner notes describe the scenes in the duas cidades as “very different,” but these musicians come together nicely in a set of tunes based on ideas that each brought into the studio.

“The Dark of Your Embrace” (in two parts) opens the record with some eerie vibraphone soon joined by the rhythm section. Through numerous changes in tempo that keep things unpredictable, Bruce holds together the tension within the group and rounds out the track with a solo. The pace picks up with the interlocking sax and vibraphone of “Guarda Vermelha,” which are propelled by rapid walking bass. Dias also contributes a dizzying solo, and Mendes’s sax alternately shrieks and sings amid Vieiera-Branco’s showers of echoing notes.

After these fairly challenging tracks, the mood changes with “Dias Gentis,” which lives up to its title with a gentler pace and airy melody on the flute and (on the assumption that the title also puns on the bass player’s name) a pleasantly bubbly bassline. Maintaining the somewhat traditional feel, “Miniatura IV” swings in a manner slightly reminiscent of “Bags’ Groove,” with Mendes’s restatements of the theme gradually moving from bop to freer phrasing.

“If I Told Him” again slows the pace as the musicians navigate a ghostly space beyond time signatures, with long sax phrases intertwining with tentative bass amid washes of cymbals and vibes. Similarly experimental, but more snappy, the closing number, “Notas Teleguiadas,” begins with another boppish theme that quickly resolves into a pool of sound from which rattles of drums, tendrils of sax, and some bowed bass emerge before coalescing into the theme again at the end.

Perhaps because of the somewhat uncommon line-up, the playing of Vieiera-Branco in some respects dominates the sound, often blending with Bruce’s cymbals. This is not to discount the contributions of the others, for all four clearly established a good rapport even if the group came together spontaneously, and Mendes is credited with composing more than half of the tracks. Notably, Vieiera-Branco and Dias also have a release as a duo, Três Peças (2019; https://temperphantom.bandcamp.com/album/tr-s-pe-as), recorded at about the same time as this session, that makes for a bit more challenging listen but is worth the effort.

Duascidades has a live feel, with the musicians’ exclamations and grunts occasionally audible in the background. The fact that a four-hour session yielded this much interesting music speaks to their mastery of their craft and knack for improvisation. Notably, there is nothing particularly “Brazilian” about this recording; these adventurous tunes are close in spirit to the kinds of sounds heard on recent releases from Porta Jazz, or Intakt or Relative Impact, for that matter. It seems that there is some compelling free jazz currently being made in the land of bossa nova and samba.

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Cecilia Lopez - RED (Db) (Relative Pitch, 2021) ****

By Lee Rice Epstein

The challenges of conveying site-specific performance as a mass-produced recording. Or, of any one site capturing the performance as planned. (Should that be “hoped”? Certainly, it’s not “expected.”) Or, of a recording capturing any listener’s attention, redirecting it from what may be in the room to what is in the mind, a kind of aurally triggered space, to do so the music itself must feel three-dimensional, droning tones, arco, and rumbling drums intersecting along multiple axis points. Now, add the fourth dimension, not measured by the duration of any particular musical moment, instead, with Cecilia Lopez’s radically compelling RED (Db), it’s the multi-dimensionality of resonant bodies in space. 

The concept, on paper and captured in still images, is wild: a quartet of performers—Lopez on electronics, Brandon Lopez on double bass, Gerald Cleaver on drum set, and Julia Cavagna performing scored movements—are positioned in a performance space with large woven nets suspending, in one net, double basses, and, in another, various sized drums. The performance, captured at Roulette and released on Relative Pitch, is sensational. 

It would be extremely difficult to find players better suited to Lopez’s composition: both Lopez and Cleaver have explored electro-acoustic music, site-specific improvisation, and small group interactions to great success. And, while Cavagna’s specific movements are more difficult to represent in audio, once you watch her interact with the group, the physicality of Lopez’s composition becomes clear. Pushing the suspended nets, Cavagna triggers pulse-like pendulum swings, dopplering through Lopez’s warm drones. 

“RED (Db)” seems to have emerged from a series of “Red” compositions, evolving over several years, as netting and suspended double basses gradually emerged during the piece’s expansion. The current quartet version feels like a dramatic high. Cleaver and Lopez are two of the most talented and creative players, using creative methods to bend and warp the sounds of their respective instruments in rich collaboration with the nets in motion. Put simply, “RED (Db)” is both conceptually invigorating and musically ecstatic. And like some of the best, similarly inventive albums (thinking of Carl Testa’s SWAY series, for example), Lopez’s music rewards multiple listens (and views), as it captures your full attention.

Video by Michael Lucio Sternbach (may require login)

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Jon Irabagon Solo: Bird with Streams & Legacy

By Paul Acquaro

Jon Irabagon - Bird with Streams (Irabbagast, 2021) ****½

Ahh, COVID-19. How much has been written about it and how much has been lost to it? At the same time, how many new possibilities appeared along with the global mayhem? For NYC based saxophonist and composer Jon Irabagon, the pandemic took him and his family on a journey westward to the Black Hills of South Dakota. There the artist found a part of the world overflowing with natural beauty and welcoming solitude. The story goes that he played his saxophone to the trees, the rocks, the rivers, and  streams. From it came an organic exploration of Bird - namely the one and only Charlie Parker - and subsequently a solo album that traces the flight patterns of the venerable saxophonist through his songs.  

Irabagon's own words explain this best:

“My family and I fled New York in March 2020 and went to South Dakota to be with my in-laws. A couple of weeks turned into nearly nine months. I ended up spending six days a week, six hours a day at the canyon. I was working on tone, extended techniques, playing standards, composing. I saw it move from winter to spring to summer and into fall, when it started getting cold. As the time drew to a close I thought I should document my time out there, where I learned so much. It just so happened that Charlie Parker’s centennial came and went while I was there, so I thought I should focus the album completely on his tunes, inspired by his attitude.”

Recorded in a DIY fashion, Bird with Streams is in some sense a field-recording of an artistic metamorphosis. No, not in the caterpillar to butterfly sense, but rather Irabagon is noted saying that he had avoided albums of standards. It seems that after long, daily sojourns hiking to different parts of the Falling Rock park and collaborating with the natural reverb of the canyons - which is sometimes captured in the recording - something changed for him and resulted is this collection. 

Like Anthony Braxton, another intrepid saxophonist who famously reinvented Parker with his sextet nearly 30 years ago, Irabagon mines the legendary be-bopper's music and brings this seminal work into the now. The opening track 'Anthropology' is not rendered at the typical breakneck pace, but quite the opposite as it dips into extended techniques and a fuzzily rendered melody. The follow up 'Sippin' at Bells' is more traditional, the melody bounces along with a full tone, leaping though intervals and splitting off into flights that touch on rougher tonalities, but circle back before abandoning the way. 'Now's the Time' kicks off interestingly with what seems like the gentle roar of a river in the background and bird-like chirps from the sax that slowly turn to an air-filled roar (and there just may be the percussive rendition of the melody expressed by the pressing of the keys as well). 'Hot House' is treated quite differently, the melody is slowed and elongated, but played with bursts of energy that increase as the piece evolves. Along with the 13 Parker tunes, there are two originals, 'B. Schwifty' and 'Get Schwifty' that show the synthesis of Parker's music as well as influence of Rick and Morty.

A wonderful document of an personal exploration of nature and music.

Jon Irabagon - Legacy (A Tribe for Jazz, 2021) ****½

Something besides the saxophone that Irabagon has mastered is the art of satire. Through humor and gentle appropriations, his art extends beyond the musical universe and into imagery and, now, film. It is hard to tell sometimes if what you are seeing is lovingly co-opted - like some of the covers of Mostly Other People Do The Killing's albums or his own recordings like Outright or the evergreen Foxy. So it is with the short opening segment of Legacy, you cannot be entirely sure if it is being playful or dead serious, before it features the saxophonist in a first rate 40-minute solo performance. As Irabagon narrates, images of the saxophonist jogging through the city, walking purposefully through a fancy apartment, and playing to the trees illustrate his declaration of dedication to music and life. I'll go with 'serious but with a wink' as my official assessment of the introduction, which is self-aware but also quite poignant.  

The solo concert is gorgeously choreographed and shot by the Columbus, Ohio-based jazz advocacy nonprofit A Tribe for Jazz. Irabagon is featured on a dark stage, spotlight on the melodies coming from his horn, which come from compositions spanning his on-going career. The concert begins with the slow, thoughtful piece 'Dark Horizon' from his recent double album Invisible Horizon (which is one part with Matt Mitchell and the Mivos String Quartet and one part solo.) Here, bathed in red lights, the camera is always in motion, circling the hat bedecked player as he renders the melody breathily and beautifully. Next, the colors skew purple and Irabagon digs into the more frenetic, swing-like 'Outright!' from 2008's album of the same name. One tune that sticks out is 'Distilled Hope' from 2009's Here Be Dragons, which like many of the tunes that are explored in this concert, is delivered in a rich, vibrant tone. Later in the the concert, the hat is gone and the lights are dark blue with hints of red, and the saxophonist lets out some extended tones along with hushed reedy puffs. On the closing track 'Alliance' (previously unreleased), the hat is back and the tune is beautifully up-tempo and expressive. There is little to take from the hat's coming and going, it is just a part of the austere, detailed scenery that allows the listener/viewer to bask in the music. 

Hardly a retrospective, the film is rather more a statement of intent as Irabagon is an artist who obviously still has a lot more to say! 

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Matt Weston – Four Lies In The Eavesdrop Business (self released, 2021) ****

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Even though every one of percussionist Matt Weston’s solo works is a deeply personal affair (performed, produced and arranged mainly by him), the main difference of Four Lies In the Eavesdrop Business from these previous ventures, like his last solo Tell Us About Your Stupor or his split album with Ted Byrne reviewed here, is that it is mastered by Jason Lescalleet.

As Lescalleet is a master of creating DIY atmospherics and an almost ambient sentiment, I get the feeling that his contribution has made Four Lies In… (which comes out as a double vinyl plus digital album) a totally different affair compared to Weston’s latest discography. We can say that a lot of the good percussionists right now expand the horizon of their work by adding elements who are not, so to say, so percussive. I believe Weston belongs to this category.

In those seven new songs that comprise the bulk of this double vinyl, Weston proves himself as a capable sonic producer, one that does not concentrate in the percussive elements of his art but goes out to find what there exists in areas like timbre, atmosphere, adding depth (plus a good production as well, I might comment) and even a strong cinematic feel.

Most of the songs last over than ten minutes, seemingly being sonic explorations or, as I would like to call them, small independent stories. I’m not sure if the electronic feel (unlike what we usually call electro-acoustic) of the songs, like in the small tale of 'You Tried To Fix The Paranoia,' shows how all of them were created before Lescalleet messed with them… In any case you will find yourself attached to its sounds and absolutely surprised by the sonic environments of all seven tracks.

This ambient feeling I mentioned earlier, makes Four Lies In…a sonic journey not just through any kind of percussion instrument, but by sculpting any kind of sound capable to tell –mostly as a linear narrative- a sonic story.

You can find this double album here https://mattweston.bandcamp.com/album/four-lies-in-the-eavesdrop-business

@koultouranafigo

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Guillaume Tarche - Steve Lacy - Unfinished (Lenka Lente, 2021)

By Stef Gijssels

What a pleasure to browse through this book on Steve Lacy. In over 460 pages it gives testimonials - and even essays - by musicians who worked with Lacy in various capacities in his life. It's written in various languages: primarily English (70% according to the publisher), French (25%) and Italian (5%). Next to testimonials it offers some interesting pictures, factoids, sheet music and even an overview of all albums that interpret music by Lacy. 

The texts and testimonials, sometimes short, some very long are by Steve Adams, Irene Aebi, Guillaume Belhomme, Etienne Brunet, Frank Carlberg, Kent Carter, Andrea Centazzo, Allan Chase, Alvin Curran, Martin Davidson, Jean Derome, Jorrit Dijkstra, Jean-Marc Foussat, Christoph Gallio, Ben Goldberg, Guillermo Gregorio, Phillip Johnston, Peter Katz, Suzanna Klintcharova, Gilles Laheurte, Vincent Lainé, Pablo Ledesma, Urs Leimgruber, Dave Liebman, James Lindbloom, Giancarlo nino Locatelli, Michala Marcus, Gianni Mimmo, Uwe Oberg, Roberto Ottaviano, Evan Parker, Jacques Ponzio, Jon Raskin, P.-L. Renou, Patrice Roussel, Bill Shoemaker, Josh Sinton, Bruno Tocanne, Jason Weiss, Elsa Wolliaston and Seymour Wright.

The book is not intended to be read in one go, but it's a great publication for some short reading bouts every day, full of personal anecdotes, little stories but also insights into Lacy the composer, the soprano player, the songwriter, and also the person, his dedication and vision on music. 

With humble honesty German pianist Uwe Oberg's first paragraph reflects what was also my first impression of Lacy: "I didn't catch the spirit of their music. I found Lacy's playing cool and reserved, austere, maybe not fast enough. Too little drama, not enough dynamics. And merely soprano saxophone. I was 23 and had never heard someone play like Lacy". Obviously that changed quickly, and he gives interesting views of what it means to play Lacy on the piano, how structure, themes and improvisation so unique to the saxophonist remain intact yet open possibilities for interpreters. He writes about Lacy Pool, his own tribute band, ending his text with the words: "I love to play Lacy because of the intrinsic logic of his music, the beauty of his lines, the vibrant radiance of his sound, his awareness for tradition, his eagerness to experience new things. And of course the unconditional freedom his music exudes". Oberg, like me, is no longer 23, and our tastes have clearly changed in the same direction. 

Canadian saxophonist Jean Derôme explains how he went to a music summer camp in France as a 22-year old, where Lacy was one of the teachers, and receiving Lacy's note books for the day with his handwritten music, each item dedicated to another artist, with a picture attached. The young Derôme ran to the nearest copy shop to copy the books, as a basis to start imitating his great example. Today, Derôme has his own Lacy project, called "Somebody Special", which released an album two years ago with Lacy compositions and songs. 

Dutch saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra tells about how he received lessons from Lacy in Boston, and how the master started playing "raindrop sounds" on his horn, while watching the rain outside. Dijkstra asked why he played these particular pitches. "He answered, a bit mysteriously, 'because they sound like the rain'. I'm not sure if he had another secret theoretical explanation, but I immediately agreed that this scale ressembled the melancholic, droopy feeling of being in a rainstorm." Dijkstra revels in Lacy's compositional talent ("not just nice tunes with a cool harmony, or vehicles for blowing"), offering deep insights in some Lacy compositions such as "Existence". He also mentions that when he visited Lacy's widow, the singer Irene Aebi, she gave him scans of the 50-odd composition notebooks that Lacy penned. All the originals are now available for consultation at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. 

In a very long essay, French producer Vincent Lainé gives a deep analysis of Lacy's music (unfortunately for many of our readers it is in French) in which he mentions an interview with Lacy by Philippe Carles, "qui lui demande à quoi il pense quand il joue - un paysage, une femme ou des accords - le saxophoniste répond: "Non, je ne pense jamais ni aux accords, ni au changements d'accords. Jamais à ce genre de choses. En fait, je ne pense pas en quoi que ce soit. J'essaye seulement de suivre la musique, de rester avec elle, de ne pas la perdre de vue. Si vous la perdez, vous êtes dans le pétrin, vous en faites des gâchis, mais si vous ne la perdez pas, c'est parfait" ("who asks him what he thinks of when he plays - a landscape, a woman or chords - the saxophonist replies: "No, I never think of chords or chord changes. Never of that sort of thing. I don't think about anything at all. I'm just trying to follow the music, to stay with it, not to lose sight of it. If you lose it, you're in trouble, you mess it up, but if you don't lose her, that's perfect"). 

He also mentions the incredible amount of time Lacy spent on refining his music: "Le premier morceau composé du cycle Tao est 'The Way', en 1967. 'The Breath' suivra en 1969 et les autres l'année suivante. Le cycle est enregistré en intégralité en 1971, mais sans paroles, comme l'indique sans ambages la pochette de l'album Wordless. Ce n'est qu'en 1979 qu'il est enregistré en version vocale, soit '20 ans pour lire six poèmes'. ("The first piece of the Tao cycle is 'The Way', composed in 1967. 'The Breath' is from 1969 and the other ones the following year. The cycle is recorded in its entirety in 1971, but without lyrics, as indicated in the liner notes of the album Wordless. It is only in 1979 that it is recorded in vocal version, or to put it differently, it took him '20 years to read six poems')

Swiss saxophonist Urs Leimgruber writes: "Steve was not only a musician, he was a real artist and creator. He had a totally open mind toward any form of music, visuals, film, literature, dance. His definition of jazz: "We want to play like that, never mind the others, we want to play our own way - it's partisan music - we are the partisans of music"". 

Italian percussionist Andrea Centazzo mentions that "in this horrible pandemic 2020, sitting at home without gigs, I had the opportunity to go over about 300 tapes (!!!) which I had in storage without labels, being a total disaster at archiving my work. And suprise! I found some recordings left over from the duo and trio sessions! Once again, restoring the sound, I got enough material to release my seventh album with Steve, entitled Scraps". Who knows what more will turn up from other sources. 

It's impossible even to capture the wealth of information and the depth of the insights you receive here from many people who knew Lacy personally or who dug deep into his music, his philosophy, his admiration for Monk, and so much more. One of the fun aspect of this book is the enthusiasm with which it is written, as well as the creative angles used by some musicians to capture Lacy's essence. One nice example is Giancarlo nino Locatelli who writes a number of short poetic lines about Lacy, mentioning his last words to visitors at the hospital: 'Drop the bullshit and keep the tempo'. 

The few examples given above demonstrate that Lacy's legacy is still very much alive, and will continue to inspire and offer ingredients for today's music. 

You can order directly from the publishing company. 

A must-have for all fans of modern music. 

This is not the first book written about Steve Lacy.  Jason Weiss published "Steve Lacy: Conversations" in 2006, a collection of 34 articles and texts written about Lacy during his life. 

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John Zorn - Bagatelles (Tzadik, 2021)

By Gary Chapin

Disc 1 & 4  *****

Disc 2  ****½

Disc 3 ****

There’s a scene in Amadeus when Salieri is getting his first look at young Mozart’s scores. He reads through them as he walks into his studio. The soundtrack swells up with whatever piece he’s reading, and he falls into a reverie. The scores fall from his hand, the leaves of music like the leaves of a tree in autumn. My question is this: was Salieri translating the written word to the sound of violins, cellos, etc., in his mind? Was he imagining what it would sound like? Or was he reacting to the musical ideas in their pure form. Was he reacting to the musical notations as direct ideas, unmediated by timbre? I wonder because, what if those same ideas emerged not from a Viennese orchestra, but from a British band shell group, or an accordion orchestra, or a punk group?

I wonder because this— the question of musical ideas and their relationship to the enacted timbral experience— is one of the fascinations that infuses my love of John Zorn’s body of work.

In 2015, from March to May, Zorn set out to compose a new book of tunes (as he had previously with the three books of Masada tunes) and came up with three hundred. His goal was to compose tunes that were “more atonal” then previous tunes books, and to create tunes that would serve as heads around which improvisers could blow freely. Five years of performances happened with a wide and deep variety of ensembles/players, and then some “choice” groups went into the studio. The four discs of this Bagatelle’s box set are the first fruits of that harvest, the discs featuring, respectively, the Mary Halvorson Quartet, Erik Friedlander and Michael Nicholas, Trigger, and Ikue Mori.

No compositions are repeated in the set. I had hoped at least some would be so that I could make comparisons, to look at the impact of musician and genre and instrumentation on a tune. Still, ostensibly, all the tunes of the book are the same kind of thing. This isn’t a knock on the creativity of the effort. It’s just a fact that a bunch of tunes consciously composed as a set will have some sort of unity to it. Do the mysteries of timbre, idiom, improv upset this assumption?

Not only are the groups different players, they are playing from different worlds. Trigger is hard core/punk guitarbassdrum trio (forgive the sloppy taxonomy). Mary Halvorson’s is a two guitar post-bop/po-mo/free quartet. Erik Friedlander and Michael Nicholas are two free improv cellists in Zorn-land. And Ikue Mori is … Ikue Mori.

This is an extraordinary set. The tunes are clever, intriguing, and bewitching. In the “head-blow-head” sense they provoke great improvisations from great improvisers. The tunes are a conceptual core threaded throughout in the form of melodies that hold together radically different aesthetic experiences. It is the melodies that hold this boat together. The melodies “are” the tunes.

Guitarist Mary Halvorson’s quartet, with Miles Okazaki also on guitar, Drew Gress on bass, and Tomas Fujiwara on drums is easily the most joyous of the four. Halvorson is a dang national treasure, and while it might seem a thankless task to be her “second guitar” the two are having such fun playing off and with each other, and suddenly the fun is happening inside you. It’s the sort of fun that Eric Dolphy had in his compositions, with reckless, daring (as in “I dare you”) musical leaps across chasms of pitch, harmony, and timbre. The guitarists play freely with the envelopes of their instruments. Sometimes approaching the dry tone of “jazz guitar” other times getting at the ineffability allowed by effects boxes and metal melodrama and surfer surrealism. Gress is a dream (he always is), and Fujiware drives the whole band from underneath.

Friedlander and Nicholas’ two cello set (see this review talking about another of Zorn’s two cello project) begins with the sort of wide vibrato jump scare that Bernard Hermann made obligatory long ago. It’s sort of a calling card. Two free jazz cellos just showed up! Moving on, I am reminded very often of Friedlander’s work in the Masada String Trio. Does this make me shallow? It’s come to the point, I’ve heard so much Zorn ‘n’ cello that improvising cellos take me into a particular space — it’s an idiom. Though Zorn aimed for atonal, there’s still plenty of groove happening, and the two cellos shift from stabby-stabby to lush to intricate with facility. As with the two guitars in disc one, the communication here is a treat. These gentlemen are having a good time.

Trigger, featuring guitarist Will Greene, Simon Hanes, and drummer Aaron Edgecomb builds a bridge between Zorn the tunesmith and Zorn the hardcore/punk lover. I am not a hardcore/punk lover. Only a “liker.” I had not heard Trigger before, but when I tapped “play” it immediately felt familiar. I tracked it back to Zorn’s album, Insurrection, featuring different players with Julian Lage and Matt Hollenberg as paired guitars. The first tune on that disc, “Recognition,” occupies the same sonic space as this entire Bagatelle’s disc. But while Insurrection moves into different spaces, this disc does not. It feels like a case of “If you like this sort of thing, then you’ll like this sort of thing.” It further illustrates the fact that Zorn’s tune’s can occupy any idiom with startling success, even if that idiom is not especially interesting to me.

Which brings us to the Ikue Mori disc, which has left me a bit speechless. I am in awe. Mori “plays” a laptop for this work and the pieces have such wit, depth, knottiness, and complexity … it may be just that I’m not very familiar with electronic music these days, but I found myself asking, more than once, how is she doing this? Her sounds are “typical” computery synth sounds or instrument patches (which makes them untypical sounds for this context), and come in quantized fragments that have me wondering what is improvised and what not. Just as so much of Zorn’s work is found in cinema soundtracks, Mori’s work inhabits the space from 1950s electronica to “Song of Storms.” My intrigue and curiosity (i.e., ignorance) don’t form a barrier to loving this disc, which is in the purest sense one of the most beautiful sets of music I’ve heard in years, but drive me to listen again and again and again.

Zorn is in a race (consciously or not) to become the world’s most prolific composer (Zappa, Braxton, and Trad Arr are still ahead, I think). I once heard Zorn lament about folks likening the Masada quartet to Ornette Coleman’s original group. He attributed it to the fact that the two groups had similar instrumentations. But Coleman’s project through those Prestige and Atlantic years was creating weirdo melodies — wonderful weirdo melodies — within which joyfully free improvisors could fly (ditto with Braxton’s 1974 and 1975 recordings for Arista). This work, the Bagatelles, feels like part of the same project, and I kinda can’t imagine a better project to join up with.

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Ken Vandermark (x2) & Nate Wooley

Ken Vandermark & Nate Wooley - The Chicago Manual of Style (Superpang, 2021) ****

Ken Vandermark - Snapshots Vol. 1 (Kilogram, 2021) ****

By Kenneth Blanchard

Were it your ambition to catalog all the sounds that a saxophone is capable of producing, you might need nothing more than these two recordings. I warn you, though, you are going to have to invent a brand-new vocabulary with about twenty-seven thousand words. Best to start with some solid experience, say twenty years naming new ice cream varieties and pharmaceutical products. Then get creative.

Vandermark’s Snapshots Vol. 1 includes six minutes of solo saxophone, released on two sides of a seven-inch vinyl disk and digitally. Side A seemed to me the most adventurous, as I listen to a moment ago. The only sound I’ve name so far is martini glass on keyboard causing computer to studder loudly and percussively, alpha 14. That will leave room for lots of variations in this sound. If you like this kind of music, and I do, you must have developed an ear for the vocabulary of texture. What Vandermark does better than anyone in the business is use the horn as a percussion instrument. By this he divides the music into accessible segments and each segment presents a distinct set of variable textures. “In 20th-century music, a dot placed above or below a note indicates that it should be played staccato, and a wedge is used for the more emphatic staccatissimo.” I got that from Wikipedia. They’re going to need a barrel of dots and wedges for this one.

The second side is a little more romantic in the first part, while the second goes full Hymenoptera. Look it up. When it’s not buzzing angrily, it is snorting out short but vigorous bursts of steam. Just what I needed for this Saturday afternoon.

Ken Vandermark is a Swiss army knife of a jazzman. Not only is a virtuoso on the tenor sax and the clarinet, bass clarinet, and baritone saxophone; he is also a master poet when it comes to naming albums. Airports for Light (not of light but for light), Burn the Incline, Beat Reader (I recommend William S. Burroughs), these Vandermark 5 projects come to my mind as I sit on my deck. Turkey vultures are appearing against a well-lit cotton sky.

The Chicago Manual of Style, a title familiar to anyone who has ever submitted a manuscript for review, is a flawless manuscript. It is not easy reading at first, until you realize how the dialogue works. In Time Piece 1, around 3:39, both horns are sputtering fast when Vandermark goes into a series of sharp reports while Wooley begins a haunting wail. That exquisitely spooky sound will remind you of Albert Ayler’s Ghosts.

Brass trio with wind soloist lays down a wobbling machine tone that softens into a more emotionally stable fuzz, one horn sings in, and we get light, brief, knocks from the other. This seems to me to be the heart of the recording. A soft, high cry punctuated by breathy taps. We get a persistent science fiction buzz, a fully charged sonar display, that is romantically evocative at the same time.

'Back and Forth 2' has more of a morning traffic mood, though I am not sure whether it is Chicago or Machiavelli’s Florence. The sound fields lay on one another like colored scarves.

'Time Piece 2' had me thinking of a stopwatch as the enthusiastic chortling on the left earbud traded information with the pensive, deep-dish horn on the right (when the latter isn’t squeaking). Toward the end of the piece, Wooley fades back into a more ghostly tone.

This is marvelous. From the hollow plunk to the breathy series of taps, I don’t believe I can think of anyone who uses horns as percussive instruments better than Vandermark. I am not sure anyone knows what is inside a trumpet better than Wooley. I say, check it out.

Ps. If you want to see them work this magic, check out this clip:

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Bob Bellerue - Radioactive Desire (Elevator Bath, 2021) ****½

By Keith Prosk

Bob Bellerue - with Ed Bear (baritone saxophone), gabby fluke-mogul (violin), Brandon Lopez (contrabass), Jessica Pavone (viola, organ), and Luke Stewart (contrabass) - crafts longform amplified feedback-based environments on the six-track, over-two-hours-long Radioactive Desire.

Bellerue, who here contributes feedback, electronics, suling gambuh, howling, metal, and piano, has done some engineering work for Lopez and Pavone but has not previously played with these musicians on a recording. Indeed, while Lopez and Stewart appear together separately on NYC LIMINAL SERIES, vol. 1 , I don’t think any of these musicians have played together on a recording. Which is somewhat surprising, given that each of these musicians perhaps has a reputation of reveling in the noisier aspects of their instruments. And what’s immediately striking is the composition of the string quartet, rebalanced towards the low end with two basses instead of two violins and also balanced in having two - fluke-mogul and Lopez - known for their visceral acoustic shredding and two - Pavone and Stewart - known for their explorations in amplification, a kind of composition that reveals something about the music.

Because though these pieces swim in feedback and radiate electric, the possible harshness of these environments is always tempered towards emotive movement, rarely running wild and instead underscoring the fragility of what is often perceived as power in sound, a smart balance. There are exceptions, like in the bite of saxophone and violin’s twin snakes on the title track or Bellerue’s crashing Salmoneus in the beginning of “Metal Gambuh,” but I think the group more often subverts expectations of abrasion. Bellerue’s amplified gambuh a plaintive song and his howl more mournful coyote call than heavy metal growl, swaths of sound playing on some arcane catharsis similar to whale song, or the warmth of the organ shining more brightly than its distortions on “Organ Feedback.” I also found what I did not expect elsewhere, “Bass Feedback” accentuating the treble of the group or “Empty Feedback” illuminating the orchestra of its vessels rather than some singular sine sound. There are frenzies, sometimes a shearing squall of strings or the motor chug of bass with the tea kettle whistles of violin and viola and electric dinosaur roars, but I think more often the group plays in pulse, dynamic domes’ troughs and peaks intersecting among fishtailing feedback transitions and beating patterns, all accentuated by cathedral reverb, forming a polyrhythm of waves. Between denser soundings a kind of electric tanpura simmers, inviting the ear to parse the layers of its sonic mille feuille. It stands at a crossroads, of acoustic and electric, power and fragility, harshness and warmth, drone and frenzied movement, and sounds like some ovidian renewal through violence for it.

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