Umberto Petrin

Voir Loin
Spasc(H) CDH 832.2

As involved with poetry and visual art as music, Italian pianist Umberto Petrin has long been concerned with a melding of these three lively arts. A published poet as well as a painter, his collaborations have ranged from those with metaphysical painter Walter Lazzaro and Italian poet Luigi Pasotelli to expected ones with top-flight improvising musicians such as alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini – not to mention his membership in the Italian Instabile Orchestra.

Voir Loin is a compendium of this philosophy. For a start, there are improvisation on nine Petrin originals, an Ornette Coleman tune and a Thelonious Monk line by the pianist, bassist Giovanni Maier and drummer Roberto Dani, plus Israel-American tenor saxophonist and bass clarinetist Assif Tsahar on two tracks. Another Instabile member, Maier has recorded with American alto saxophonist Tim Berne among others, while Dani has played with French clarinetist Louis Sclavis.

That takes care of the sonic part. Meanwhile one track features the trio’s sensitive, yet edgy accompaniment to poet Milo De Angelis reading his poem “I e 87”. As for painting, there are visual or color gradation implications in some of the titles, while one, “Rothko’s Enigma” with its harsh piano dynamic, plus repeated broken chords and rasgueado licks from Maier, comments both on American visual artist Mark Rothko’s rough abstractions and his unexpected suicide.

Although he can add a romantic sheen to his playing when he wishes, Petrin’s architecturally shaped improvisations are usually in the Monk–Herbie Nichols genre. This is made most clear on “Visioni di Petrouchka” – an allusion to Stravinsky or the beloved Italian clown? – where the introductory almost semi-classical sweeps soon turn tremolo and resolve themselves as an exuberant fantasia. Taking on a Monkish inflection the organic doubled lines are then drawn out with rough-hewn bass strokes and bell-like rattles from Dani, as the pianist downshifts to sweeping high-pitched sounds.

On the other hand “Nervosa Avidness, Peter, Iridium, Carver” references Nichols’ cross-handed cadences and carefully voiced patterns. But here, Dani adds rattles and bounces, Maier knits circular strokes around the others and Petri’s jagged cross patterns mutate into a rendition of the head of Monk’s “Evidence”, heard on the next track.

Except for some descending bass clarinet clusters at the very end, Tsahar’s only showcase is in the second half of “As the Doors Swing Open, Crack or Slam”. Entering playing ultra-vibrated split tones, the tenor saxophonist encourages the pianist to turn from ruffling, structural cadences to clipping tones. Meanwhile, higher- pitched glissandi from the bassist make common cause with the reedist’s multiphonics. Is it any wonder that less-than-90-second subsequent track is the faux Cool jazz “Please, Relax…”?

Unsurprising Petrin’s reading of “Lorraine”, an early Coleman line characterized by double-stopping from Maier is Monkish as well. As for “1 e 87”, those familiar with both the Italian language and its poetry would best be able to judge.

While non-Italian speakers can’t determine whether the pianist reach his third goal of uniting improvisation and poetry, the chiaroscuro lines he implies in his conic creations confirm that melding of the other two arts takes place.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Clair de Lune 2. Reflex and Refractions 3. Nervosa Evidenza, Petre, Iridi, Carver 4. Evidence 5. Rothko’s Enigma 6. As the Doors Swing Open, Crack or Slam* 7. Please Relax 8. Lorraine 9. Visioni di Petrouchka 10a) Chiarore Residuo 10b) 1 e 87+ 11) Chiarore Residuo*

Personnel: Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet*); Umberto Petrin (piano); Giovanni Maier (bass); Roberto Dani (drums and percussion); Milo De Angelis (voice)+

June 22, 2006

QUINSIN NACHOFF

Magic Numbers
Songlines SGL SA1556-2

ASSIF TSAHAR
Solitude
Hopscotch Records HOP 36

Conventional and unconventional methods of recording with a string quartet are highlighted on these CDs directed by vastly different reed players.

On MAGIC NUMBERS Toronto-based tenor and soprano saxophonist Quinsin Nachoff has taken the traditional route – composing eight pieces that feature him, plus New Yorkers, bassist Mark Helias and drummer Jim Black, improvising in front of a quartet of Montreal string players. In vivid contrast, except for the Duke Ellington-penned title track, all the pieces on SOLITUDE are instant compositions with Brooklyn-based tenor saxophonist and bass clarinetist Assif Tsahar giving equal prominence to percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani and members of the KJLA String Quartet.

Enjoyable in the tradition of those saxophone-and-strings dates that over the years have featured everyone from Stan Getz to Joe Lovano, occasionally the two violins, viola and cello on Nachoff’s CD threatens to fade into mere impressionistic background sounds. Meanwhile, while featuring the same instrumentation, SOLITUDE is as liberated and spiky as the reedist and percussionist would be playing as a duo.

Nachoff, who has recorded with British pianist John Taylor and Dutch cellist Ernst Reijseger and is a member of guitarist Tim Posgate’s Hornband, also teaches jazz at the University of Toronto/ He cites classical and 20th century composers such as Mozart, Debussy Stravinsky and Schoenberg as inspirations, along with mainstream jazz and Black’s rock music leanings. Tsahar whose closest associations are with experimenters such as multi-instrumentalist Cooper-Moore and bassist William Parker puts his faith in atonality and with his unexpected textures produces a more challenging session.

Nachoff’s strategy uses Helias as the bridge between the so-called classical and the so-called jazz impulses in these tunes. But this separation alone points out one weakness here: the failure to fully integrate the string section into the compositions. Plus throughout, the saxophonist’s tendency is to opt for smoothness in most of his solos.

This admixture can work, however. For instance, “How Post-Modern of Me”, which telegraphs its changes in its tongue-in-cheek title, features an interaction among impressionistic string shimmers, rock-style drumming and Nachoff hardening his tone to post-bop, with squeezed split tones and squeals. With the string quartet mediating between rococo and staccato, Black pummeling his kit almost overcomes a final return to impressionism by the strings.

Ostensibly inspired by Berg and Schoenberg, “Whorls “is more austere, with polytonal phrasing built up from the strings. But just as it seems the splayed tones and silences are going to create a desolate nocturne, Nachoff’s saxophone tone makes the results inappropriately gentle as if he was Paul Desmond.

Despite livelier rim shots from Black, wailing lower pitches and measured stopping from Helias, and occasional tongue stops and multiphonics from the saxophonist, overriding string harmonics coupled with mellow reed solos from Nachoff prevent many tunes from igniting. Just as it appears as if an angular fiddles and sax détente is going to arrive, the artful prettiness of the violins is asserted. Wreathing contrapuntal lines in dignified violin-viola-cello synchronization almost push a few pieces into film soundtrack territory.

While Black sometimes uses ratamacues and rebounds to expose his inner John Bonham and Nachoff occasionally honks on tenor, the overall placidity of the string set and the soprano lines reduce MAGIC NUMBERS’s chances of being more than a pleasant collection of interludes.

Maybe Nachoff should have recruited his string section from the Apple? Certainly, when violinists Katt Hernandez and Jean Cook, violist Ljova and cellist Audrey Chan face off with Tsahar and Nakatani there’s no hint of background schmaltz. “Unmoving” and “The Epistemology of Loss” highlight how, rather than being treated as an afterthought, strings can be fully integrated into the action.

The first track begins with clanking and rubbing that is as likely to come from the ribs and belly of the fiddles as from Nakatani’s percussion arsenal. Meanwhile, as Tsahar squeezes altissimo split tones and growled multiphonics from his reed, the bee-busy strings splash and slash high and low-pitched textures around him, creating a contrapuntal counter-melody. Fading to pregnant silence, the 16 strings provide an undertone of squealing pulsations as Tsahar’s timbres accelerate to howling overblowing. Although the others’ tempo quickens, you can still hear his abstract reed-biting on top. Meanwhile Nakatani’s walloped polyrhythms intersect with the other two sections.

More atmospheric and forbidding, “The Epistemology of Loss” features string oscillations and prolonged cymbal echoes that eventually subside for alp-horn-like echoing from Tsahar’s darkening tenor sax tone. Soon, like spirits in a haunted house, the dissonant strings are fluttering, adding sul tasto and sul ponticello squeals behind reed bites. Eventually, melded bass clarinet and fortissimo cello slurs round out the improvisation.

Other tunes feature prolonged col legno interface from the strings, the percussionist shaking tam tams, rattling, popping and snapping his drum tops and at one point producing a martial bass drum thump. Allowing the fiddles plus to snake discordantly through the compositions, at points the reedist inverts his role to provide an ostinato to the strings. More challenging than Nachoff’s CD, SOLITUDE is also more individualistic, with a foreground role created for the KJLA String quartet.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Solitude: 1. Love Is 2. Unmoving 3. Sand Between a Toe 4. The Epistemology of Loss 5. Of Amazing Most Now 6. Blue Sun 7. Falling 8. By and By 9. Solitude

Personnel: Solitude: Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet); Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion) plus the KJLA String Quartet: Katt Hernandez and Jean Cook (violins); Ljova (viola) and Audrey Chan (cello)

Track Listing: Magic: 1. There & Back 2. To Solar Pizza 3. How Post-Modern of Me 4. October5. Branches 6. Circles & Waves 7. Whorls 8. Sun-Day

Personnel: Magic: Quinsin Nachoff (soprano and tenor saxophones); Mark Helias (bass); Jim Black (drums) plus Nathalie Bonin and Noémi Racine Gaudreault (violins); Jean René (viola) and Julie Trudeau (cello)

May 7, 2006

ASSIF TSAHAR/COOPER-MOORE/HAMID DRAKE

Lost Brother
Hopscotch Records HOP 33

LOST BROTHER seems to be a misnomer, at least if it’s supposed to apply to any of the performers on this trio CD. For if any one of Chicago drummer Hamid Drake and New Yorkers, reedist Assif Tsahar and multi-instrumentalist Cooper-Moore, was ever a “lost brother” he’s certainly found himself as evidenced by this CD. Furthermore so collaborative is their improvising here that you’d think that the three are reuniting musical siblings.

In truth the Israeli-born Tsahar, Louisiana-born Drake and the Virginia-born Cooper-Moore met and first played together as adults. All have extensive recording histories – especially Drake, who seems to have played with nearly every musician from A (Sardinian guitarist Paolo Angeli) to Z (Chicago percussionist Michael Zerang) – and each of the other two has recorded in duo with Tsahar. But this is the three players’ first trio session, with the nine instant compositions giving each enough space in which to express himself. Each is proficient on more than one instrument. Tsahar plays both tenor saxophone and bass clarinet; Drake drums, tablas and frame drums, and Cooper-Moore ashimba, twanger and diddley-bow.

It’s the last who sets the tone for many of the tracks, for the unique timbres of his home-made and Africanized instruments add polyrhythmic lilts to his output. With the twanger for instance, it often sounds as if he’s playing rockabilly guitar and backbeat percussion simultaneously. Then on “The Coming of the Ship”, he wields the one-string diddley bow with the dexterity of a jazz or classical bassist and manages to pull as many tones out of it as those folks would from their carefully tempered four strings.

This piece features raspy tenor sax obbligatos from Tsahar, who alternates among road house-like slurs, watery reed squeaks and glottal tongue stretching – and does so whenever he solos here. Each style fits the particular mood. For instance, the reedist blares ratcheting lines on “Breaking the Water” that eventually work into double counterpoint with Cooper-Moore’s twanger. Somehow at this point though, Cooper-Moore processes his contraption so that its pulsations resemble both rubberized tones and electronic impulses.

Drake’s traps set the backbeat effortlessly that underlines the rhythm on this track and others, but just as easily he can trade the bounces and rebounds of his regular kit for tablas on “Dugong the Sea Cow” or frame drum on “Confessions”. On the former Cooper-Moore’s ashima joins with Drake’s pulsations for a double shot of percussion. As the palm slaps multiply and adapt complementary vibrations, Tsahar’s robust bass clarinet tone thins and becomes more atonal. On the later tune, the reedy authority of the bloated licorice stick isn’t challenged as the polyrhythmic ratchets from the percussionists showcase these surging reed lines.

Some of the song titles appear to relate to Africans’ experience in the middle passage during slavery time, which gives additional significance to the mix of contemporary and primitive instruments. Yet whether you view LOST BROTHER as an allegorical or practical application of improvisationary techniques, it remains an outstanding CD.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Breaking the Water 2. A Falling Leaf 3. Departure 4. Dugong the Sea Cow 5. Seeking the Punto Fijo 6. Confessions 7. The Coming of the Ship 8. The Shepherd 9. Goin’ Home

Personnel: Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet); Cooper-Moore (ashimba, twanger and diddley-bow); Hamid Drake (drums, tablas and frame drum

April 17, 2006

MASASHI HARADA CONDANCTION ENSEMBLE

Enterprising Mass of Cilia (2001)
Emanem 4109

ASSIF TSAHAR & THE NEW YORK UNDERGROUND ORCHESTRA
Fragments
Hopscotch Records HOP27

Utilizing instrumentation more commonly associated with notated chamber music than improvisation, these Boston and New York-based ensembles become individually crafted vehicles upon which the leaders/conductors express themselves.

Although both the 10-piece Conduction Ensemble from Boston and the 19-piece New York Underground Orchestra are top-heavy with string players, the resulting performances bear very little resemblance to one another. Japanese-born, Boston-based Masashi Harada’s version of conduction promulgates a collective creation where each minute gesture or sound is consolidated into a dense whole. He calls his creations music of body. ENTERPRISING MASS OF CILIA’s nearly 66½ minutes may be divided into nine tracks, but the impression is that of a single, dense creation.

By elimination then, FRAGMENTS must be music of mind. Israeli-born Assif Tsahar, a reedist who now divides his time between New York and Europe, envisions a looser structure. On each of the 16 [!] tracks, that combined take up only slightly more than 50½ minutes, the soloist or soloists are named. Despite its title, the CD doesn’t appear to be any more fragmented than CILIA. Like a thought-out jazz composition, these interludes aren’t an interruption but an individual embellishment of the evolving theme.

That said, with the tracks raging in time from slightly more than six to slightly under one minute, not all players make an impression. The most distinctive are trumpeter Nate Wooley, clarinetist Charles Waters, guitarist Mary Halvorson and violist Lev Zhurbin. Instructively, except for Zhurbin, the others are making their name in the Free Jazz arena, Halvorson with Anthony Braxton, Wooley for his work with trombonist Steve Swell and Waters as a member of Gold Sparkle band. Moscow-born, New York-based Zhurbin splits his skills among jazz, so-called classical and film music. Curiously, as well, the only crossover player on these sessions is percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani, who again is more of an individual presence on the Tsahar work.

In fact, Zhurbin’s output might be the most memorable here. Exhibiting a minor key, Eastern-European melancholy, his extended double-stopping and upper partial exhibitions are effectively complemented by variously metallic percussion pulses, frailing and clawhammer picking from Halvorson or squealing flutes, reeds and lower-pitched strings. Elsewhere there’s even a point where the two bassists play a line that almost walks into mainstream jazz.

Chording and/or picking, the guitarist can make common cause with harsh and repetitive counterpoint from each of the four string sections, since unison playing usually confirms their legato, harmonic tendencies. Meanwhile Wooley asserts himself, adding plunger alterations and rippling chromatic work on top of a glissando of riffing, ponticello strings.

Pitch-sliding discord characterizes Waters solos as well. Squealing split tones linked to pummeled percussion from Nakatani almost shove one track into the Free Jazz arena, as he alternates multiphonics with contrapuntal string fills. Rim shot rolls and nerve beats from the sticks, as well as soft plinks from unselected cymbals are Nakatani’s response to the finale. All the while Waters vibrates double-tongued squeals from his clarinet, marking the highest range of a soundscape that elsewhere goes ever which way, including tuba burps and alternating vamping and hoe-down fiddle tones.

One earlier piece rotates on top of pedal-point tuba expression, gradually converging string textures and a single resonated cymbal slap. Another seems to ooze fluttering electronic-type hisses although no electronics are present.

That isn’t the case on CILIA – James Coleman plays theremin and Vic Rawlings manipulates electronics as well as his cello. Almost without exception though, the players featured here are minimalists who before that and since have helped develop techniques to suggest electronic signals from all acoustic tones. Two of the players, saxophonist Bhob Rainey and trumpeter Greg Kelley are particularly adroit. But on the tracks here, when they can be detected, the saxman plays lines or mouth pops and the brassman, exhibits plunger extrusions that he usually reserves for infrequent Free Music sideman gigs.

Overall, the texture is much denser than on FRAGMENTS, with such ordinarily opposite tones as oscillating accordion squeezes, swirling, spiccato string entries and ghostly theremin squawks interlaced so tightly that individualism isn’t an option. With many tones piled on top of one another and solidified, group improvisation is most prominent.

Harada’s vision is paramount. So if sibilant wind from the squeeze box, thumps from percussion, sputtering reed work or what seems to be a jocular hunt-and-peck arco shuffle from the bass and cellos peeks out, soon, like an animal caught in quicksand, it vanishes beneath the writhing concentrated musical mass. Mostly unison and sometimes polyphonic, solid pulsation doesn’t make this CD any less memorable than the other. Except, that is, for those few times when the loops, scratches and sequences appear to draw so closely together that they nearly become immobile and there’s a danger that the CD will ground to a halt.

Luckily it’s at these points that Harada’s conduction skills, or physical impulses from the players, translate into motion. Whether it be minute pizzicato from the strings, the screech of an individual fiddler or an extended spew from the horns, it gives all 10 new directions, propelling them into fresh spectral whirls.

Unlike FRAGMENTS, with its solo variations however, this performance is so uniform and viscous that it never develops enough singularity or identity. When it’s completed as well, it merely ends. Perhaps in the three years since it was recorded, Harada’s solid sound blocks have developed more distinguishing characteristics.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Fragments: 1. First 2. Second 3. Third 4. Fourth 5. Fifth 6. Sixth 7. Seventh 8. Eighth 9. Ninth 10. Tenth 11. Eleventh 12. Twelfth 13. Thirteenth 14. Fourteenth 15. Fifteenth 16. Sixteenth

Personnel: Fragments: Nate Wooley, Sam Hoyt (trumpets); Christopher Meeder (tuba); Charles Waters (clarinet); Natacha Diels, Leah Paul and Jecca Barry (flutes); Mary Halvorson (guitar); Philippa Thompson, Leanne Darling and Jana Andevska (violins); Lev Zhurbin, Jessica Pavone (violas); Loren Dempster, Gil Selinger and Audrey Chen (celli); Terence Murren, Todd Nicholson (basses) Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion); Assif Tsahar (conductor)

Track Listing: Cilia: 1. Spools 2. Enterprising Mass of Cilia 3. Procession of Echo 4. Physio-Mechanical Pulse 5. A Room 6. Sprouting Self-Similarity 7. Element of Resistance 8. Distance Propitiate 9. Fleeting Despot

Personnel: Cilia: Greg Kelley (trumpet); Bhob Rainey (soprano saxophone); Aleta Cole (violin); Frederic Viger (viola); Jonathan Vincent (accordion); Glynis Lomon (cello); Vic Rawlings (cello and electronics); Mike Bullock (bass); James Coleman (theremin)

July 17, 2005

COOPER-MOORE & ASSIF TSAHAR

Tells Untold
Hopscotch Records HOP30

KAHIL EL’ZABAR & DAVID MURRAY
We Is
Delmark DE-557

Reeds and miscellaneous instruments, especially percussion, figure in these improv/roots duo sessions. Multi-percussionist Kahil El’Zabar from Chicago is as expert in relating African rhythmic variations to jazz as New York multi-instrumentalist Cooper-Moore is in adapting temporal Black timbres to improvisations.

Complementing each man’s beat sophistication is, in El’Zabar’s case the tenor saxophone and bass clarinet of Paris resident David Murray, while Cooper-Moore’s partner is Israeli-born Assif Tsahar, whose proficiency on Murray’s chosen instruments extends to additional skills playing muzmar or Arabic oboe, acoustic guitar and thumb piano. Here El’Zabar also offers variations on the batà and thumb piano as well as the regular traps set, while on TELLS UNTOLD, Moore mixes virtuosity on ethnic instruments like the harp, shofar, deedly-bo and mouth-bow with outings on flute, synthesizer and others.

A live session, the five tracks on WE IS take elements from both the jazz and ethnic parts of the two world travelers’ identities. Overall the mood is groove-based and bluesy. No less rhythmically formidable, the other CD is preeminently a studio session, with audio mixing overdubbing and sampling utilized to allow each of the players to perform on more than one of his instruments if he feels the track calls for it. In the end this gives TELLS UNTOLD a wider range of moods than WE IS.

Not that anything could have matched the unbridled enthusiasm with which El’Zabar and Murray’s live performance was greeted. Over the course of five extended compositions, they start in the pocket and don’t quit until they play an encore. Along the way Murray varies his output from reed-shredding altissimo squeals to pulsating honks and smears. Considering he has recorded in every context, from near-R&B to arranged balladic excursions to experimental blowouts to collaborations with African griots, the transitions are seamless and his confidence is unshakable.

As much a showman as a shaman – Cooper-Moore shares this trait – El’Zabar, who studied drumming in Africa and is a longtime Association for the Advancement of Creative Music member, revels in versatility. While pounding what sound like batà and djembe drums, creating single strokes and double pulses, he vocalizes. Muttered and bellowed, the result takes in aspects of tribal chants, work songs, Calypso word play, R&B and, on “One World Family” folksy affirmation.

Singing in a pleasant tenor voice, his bell shaking and tambourine rattling add a populist tinge to Murray’s bass clarinet playing, which exploits all the instrument’s registers to comment on the tune and dialogue with the singer. Building his solos out of tongue slaps, tongue stops and key percussion, the reedist squeals, squeaks, sweeps and trills on one hand and lets loose with bottom-pressured arpeggios at another time.

Out-and-out experimentation appears on the title tune with El’Zabar on the traps set feeding ruffs, flams and bounces to the saxman. Proving he can still get worked up to a near ecstatic state in the right circumstances, Murray spins harsh cadences and swooping arpeggios, and sails into false registers. Much of the time he spins out irregular variations that sound both the notes and their vibrated nodes as he plays.

The musicians’ many identities are on show on “Blues Affirmation”, a more than 18-minute Africanized blues. Following a thumb piano intro and the percussionist scat singing, Murray enters as a breathy Ben Webster clone but soon snorts out harsh, guttural snarls and treetop squeals. Vocalizing as if John Lee Hooker had grown up in rural Mali, El’Zabar and the saxophonist begin trading vocal-and-instrument riffs with marimba-like resonation on naturally amplified wooden keys the only backing. Climax is the vocalist growling and squeezing half-expressed accents from his throat as the underlay of thinning tenor sax obbligatos smooth out to reference the Swing era reed playing first introduced at the top.

No slouch when it comes to playing his tenor saxophone and bass clarinet, Tsahar also takes on many persona on TELLS UNTOLD’s nine tracks. Studio technology allows him to play two or more of his instruments at the same time. Adding to all this, and often double tracked as well, is Cooper-Moore whose collection of ethnic, vernacular, legit and hand-made instruments provides all the extra textures you could want.

Pastoral, finger picking acoustic guitar lines played by Tsahar, matched with recital-quality flute from Cooper-Moore begin the CD’s almost 13½-minute title track. Soon enough though, the sounds of a breathy bass clarinet (Tsahar) and drums (Cooper-Moore) are also heard, succeeded by wiggling trills from the tenor, this time matched with rattles (Cooper-Moore) and thumb piano (Tsahar). Midway through, the reedist starts testifying on the muzmar or Arabic oboe until bop drumming and snorting saxophone tones reappear to face off, match up, fade and rise. Is this a comment on the connection between Equatorial Africa, the Maghreb and American improv? Finally, the concentrated twanging of the single string deedly-bo is superseded by a reprise of the initial saxophone line.

This sort of multi-instrumentation, enhanced by audio technology, is featured on most other tracks. Although an outing like “The Hunt’”, except for a bit of thumb piano at the beginning and bell ringing at the end, is mostly a tenor-drums duo. It proves that these players can be as passionate and New-Thingy as Murray and El’Zabar if they wish.

More characteristic are pieces like “Oracles” and “The Procession”, which display Cooper-Moore’s carpenter’s shed full of obscure and original instruments to best advantage.

“Oracles” features either the deedly-bo or the mouth-bow being stretched like a gigantic elastic band, produces a scouring tone that’s both elastic and abrasive. On top of this Tsahar, on tenor, expels distinctive multiphonics, breaking them apart and combing them with the latex lacerations for a perfect union of experimental and primitive tones.

In contrast, “The Procession” features a bouncy march-like tempo that suggests market day in an African village. Yet here the rhythmic component doesn’t just arise from Cooper-Moore’s drums, harp and deedly-bo. Pushing aside a flute-thumb piano counter melody, the reedist’s concentrated squeaks and squeals show that this sort of extended technique can have a rhythmic as well an abrasive function.

Whether your interest is in traditional groove-oriented modernism or multi-faceted primitivism extended with technology, you’ll find much to like in both of these discs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: We: 1. Groove Allure 2. We Is 3. Blues Affirmation 4. One World Family 5. Sweet Meat

Personnel: We: David Murray (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet); Kahil El’Zabar (drums, bells, batà, djembe, thumb piano and other percussion plus vocals)

Track Listing: Tells: 1. The Eight 2. Tribes Gathering 3. Oracles 4. The Hunt 5.Tells Untold 6. Deviations 7. Forlorn 8. Another World Another Time 9. The Procession

Personnel: Tells: Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, acoustic guitar, muzmar and thumb piano); Cooper-Moore (harp, ashimba xylophone, drums, flute, deedly-bo, mouth-bow, twiner, shofar, synthesizer and the bell)

June 20, 2005

ASSIF TSAHAR/MAT MANERI/JIM BLACK

JAM
Hopscotch 21

CRAIG TABORN
Junk Magic
Thirsty Ear THI 57144.2

Ever since he first appeared on disc as part of his father, reedist Joe Maneri’s, Boston-based microtonal trio, violist Matt Maneri has been turning heads with his playing. Versatile enough to move effortlessly from the harshest excesses of loud, so-called ecstatic jazz to the supplest examples of understated chamber improv, he’s created a legitimate role for the bloated fiddle in exploratory situations.

These two discs add luster to the achievements of this now New York-based string-slinger. But, to be honest, he sounds more commanding on the nine free improvisations recorded with reedist Assif Tsahar and percussionist Jim Black then in the more tightly controlled atmosphere of keyboardist Craig Taborn’s date.

JAM’s advantage is that it spreads responsibility for the creations among the three participants. Except for the fact that he has to perform at a more restrained volume because of his instrument, there’s never any indication, for instance, that Black is merely the accompanist to the improvising duo.

That said, some of the most impressive work comes from Maneri on the final track. Described as playing an electric 5-string violin, he’s the antithesis of the fiddling fusion speed demon. On “Part 9”, for instance, his pace is slow, but still creates double-stopped, angled multiphonics. Only when Tsahar’s meandering trilling turns sibilant alto-like timbres to more intense overblowing, does Maneri’s multi-string pulsation get louder. Black contributes irregular pulses that conclude with clip-clop, ambulatory expressions, after which the saxist and violinist emulate an imaginary meeting between Albert Ayler and Leroy Jenkins.

In contrast, “Part 6” finds Tsahar weaving tweaks and trills into low-pitched output from his bass clarinet. Amazingly Maneri’s deliberate hesitation and wiggling note placement move from Eastern European single-string patterns to an accordion-like squeezed tone. Black’s pitter-pattering flams and rolls and Tsahar’s near-inaudible exposition means that the torque put on the tempo by the fiddler spins out a fleet counter theme which polyphonically redefines the piece.

Tongue slaps, intense reed biting and a cornucopia of fog horn effects give the reedman plenty of irreverent inflections he can contribute to musical expositions, as do Maneri’s bow lifting ponticello, arco beats and snaky, pizzicato fills. When the percussionist adds subtle cymbal pressure, irregular snare pulses and what seem to be tambourine shakes, sideslipping tones not only resolves themselves into new melodies, but also make the trio sound like a larger group.

JUNK MAGIC features a quintet, as opposed to JAM’s trio. With Taborn, who is best known as a member of altoist Tim Berne’s groups, programming as well as playing different keyboards, the textures available outpace those from three acoustic instruments. But a little bit of electronica can go a long way. There are times during the seven tracks that the result sounds like playtime at the cloning lab, with that human touch lacking.

Adding to this robotic disconnect is the drumming of David King, who also plays with acid-jazz band the Bad Plus. While many tunes here are more rhythmically powerful than those on the JAM CD, the beats themselves are often overly mechanized. King’s favored lick -- or what Taborn asks him to play -- is the backbeat and that vamp is as omnipresent here as on any techno date.

Furthermore, tenor saxophonist Aaron Stewart may have worked with Anthony Braxton and Steve Coleman. But on the evidence here, his solos exhibit more smooth or fusion tones than you would hear on either man’s CDs. “Primatica”, for instance, finds the saxman slurring tones in a limited arc, to join claves, off-beats and cymbal slices from the drummer. Maybe this is modified Detroit techno backbeat?

“Mystero” may be a little more abstract, as sine waves meet off-kilter snare and bass drum beats. But the semi-sweet tenor line sounds as if it’s been electronically altered, perhaps with an EWI. The drumbeats seem programmed as well, with only Maneri’s spiky, dissonant playing adding some humanity to the proceedings.

It’s the same story on “Bodies at Rest and in Motion”, where Taborn’s acoustic piano pitter-patters and King’s drum thumping only gain mettle when they meet fiddle arpeggios. Maneri sawing away on all strings adds some additional tough -- and humanoid -- input. On his own, the pianist’s conventional soloing and the backup loops are as strident and mechanized as what you’d hear on a video game soundtrack.

Then on “The Golden Age” [!], at 11-plus minutes, the CD’s longest track, Maneri’s legato, double stopped classical overlay lasts only until ululating, calliope-style crescendos and dive-bombing buzzes are exposed from the keyboardist and percussionist respectively. As the backbeat kicks in and an electronic ambience settles over the soundfield, the fiddle timbre doubles as well. Soon squeaky string ponticello and whirling electronic squeals end the piece.

Some may regard this CD as magic, others as junk. It’s actually somewhere in between. Taborn is trying to introduce new concepts to expand the simple rhythms and melodies that characterize techno, electronica and breakbeats. But he doesn’t appear to have given himself enough leeway to whole-heartedly hook into free music.

Definitely someone to watch as he evolves an original style, Taborn’s efforts here come out second best when compared to the acoustic professionalism on the JAM disc. But Manner proves his versatility on each session.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Jam: 1. Part 1 2. Part 2 3. Part 3 4. Part 4 5. Part 5 6. Part 6 7. Part 7 8. Part 8 9. Part 9

Personnel: Jam: Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet); Mat Maneri (electric 5-string violin); Jim Black (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Junk: 1. Junk Magic 2. Mystero 3. Shining Through 4. Primatica 5. Bodies at Rest and in Motion 6. Stalgmite 7. The Golden Age

Personnel: Junk: Aaron Stewart (tenor saxophone); Craig Taborn (piano, keyboard, programming); Mat Maneri (violas); David King (drums)

May 17, 2004

COOPER-MOORE/ASSIF TSAHAR

America
Hopscotch 18

Avatarof invented-from-necessity instruments, Cooper-Moore is able to put all of his talents to good use on this 10-track CD.

Those who only know him as a risk-taking pianist in bands like In Order To Survive will discover the down-home side of his personality as he improvises on traditional Southern instruments like the one-string diddley-bo, mouth bow and banjo. Those -- usually in New York -- who have seen him use these skiffle band ingredients in folkloric settings will marvel at his skills at piano, drums-skins and cymbal, as well as a vocalist.

AMERICA isn’t a one-man show in any way, though. In full-partnership is Assif Tsahar, on hand to play tenor saxophone, bass clarinet and classical guitar. With instrumental smarts wedded to populist protest material, the CD comes across as a weird amalgam of the ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC and SILENT TONGUES. Or imagine Albert Ayler, Dock Boggs, Phil Ochs, Cannonball Adderley and Curtis Mayfield doing a gig together.

Throughout, there are all sorts of odd juxtapositions. The second version of “Lament for Trees” for instance, evolves from a mournful ballad with echoes of “Three Blind Mice” to something that showcases ultra-modern reed screeches, altissimo cries and flutter tonguing from Tsahar’s tenor. All the while Moore is providing the rhythm with shimmering, double bass-like diddley-bo vibrations. Or take the title tune, where to the accompaniment of tough reed lines from Tsahar and a relentless synth-like beat, lyrics like “America do you think about the lives that you have stolen” are shouted out by Moore with the intensity of a 1960s folk-protest singer.

At times, frailing, Appalachian Mountain banjo licks ricochet, at others, somehow the stringed instrument takes on the properties of a whining bottleneck guitar. On the same piece Tsahar adds legato clarinet textures and gut-string guitar accompaniment until Moore explodes all over his axe with harsh, dissonant plucks -- making it sound as if it has as many strings as an oud.

Spurred by reed multiphonics, Moore can also use just drum tops and a cymbal to replicate a veritable Art Blakey-like percussion fest that meets Tsahar’s squeals, snorts and irregular vibrations head on. In other places, woody, legato breaths from the bass clarinet join trills that aurally resemble penetrating piccolo timbres and are perhaps created by a vertically blown recorder.

Crisp, experimental textures aren’t ignored, either. The more than nine-minute “Wounded Knee” finds the saxman spitting out split tones to achieve higher, more varied timbres. Meanwhile Moore ranges around the piano keyboard using contrasting dynamics and focused note clusters to centre and pinpoint certain patterns, while strumming chords with the other hand.

Elsewhere, the pianist will start a repetitive melody with his right hand, only to add colorful asides with his left. Cadenza fills provide the sort of weight needed, so that the reedist has a base on which he can comfortably solo. Later Moore seesaws between modal-like tremolos and a boogie-woogie feel as the sax output wavers from treetop-high textures to a final reed squeak.

From beginning to end AMERICA is both an impressive socio-anthropological, as well as a musical statement.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. America 2. Back Porch Chill 3. Tuscarora’s Cry 4. 12th Avenue Messenger 5. Lament for Trees 6. The Tortoise & The Buzzard 7. No Cracklin No Bread 8. Lament for Trees 9. Beyond The Years 10. Wounded Knee

Personnel: Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet and classical guitar); Cooper-Moore (piano, banjo, diddley-bo, mouth bow, drum-skins, cymbal and vocal)

March 15, 2004

ASSIF TSAHAR/PETER KOWALD/SUNNY MURRAY

MA: Live at the Fundacio Juan Miro
Hopscotch 15

MARIO SCHIANO/XU FENGXIA/MARTIN BLUME
Dear Peter…
Improjazz PRGT 001

German bassist Peter Kowald’s peripatetic life and willingness to improvise with musicians of all stripes and nationalities immensely widened the circle of musicians who mourned his sudden death from a heart attack at 58, in September 2002.

His enthusiasm for musical collaboration, which seemed to augment in the year or so before his death -- a characteristic he shared with other first generation European improvisers such as Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker and Derek Bailey -- has meant that a raft of recent CDs have celebrated the bassist’s skills. Although not one is the definite last session, MA is one of the more impressive efforts.

That’s because it has elements of both familiarity -- his linkage with Israeli-born, Brooklyn-based reedman Assif Tsahar, with whom Kowald had recorded in the past -- and freshness, since it’s the first and last meeting between the bassist and veteran American Sunny Murray, drummer on the Albert Ayler LPs Kowald so admired as an apprentice Free Jazzer in Wuppertal.

DEAR PETER on the other hand, recorded in Rome a little more than a month after the bassist’s passing, is a celebration of Kowald’s achievements though non-specific improvisations. Rather than featuring a bassist trying to replicate his style, the trio involved includes a fellow German, veteran drummer Martin Blume; Italian saxophonist Mario Schiano, who has intersected with German, British and other improvisers since the 1970s; and Chinese-born, Berlin resident Xu Fengxia on guzheng and voice, whose improv partners have included German multi-reedist Wolfgang Fuchs and American bassist Joe Fonda.

As a matter of interest, MA, recorded live in Barcelona, Spain, two months before Kowald’s death, is cast in the classic Ayler Trio mould, with one more than 70 minute instant composition divided on disc into seven tracks for easier playback.

More discordant than melodic, Tsahar, 33, spends most of the CD on tenor saxophone advancing the type of screeching slipsliding sounds Ayler brought to jazz. His bass clarinet improvisations are harsh as well, but with an undercurrent of buzzing melody that peeps through every so often to mate with Kowald’s unvarying rhythmic pulse. Senior citizen Murray, 66, remains in clangorous and obstreperous form nearly 40 years after he first recorded with Ayler. There are times, in fact, that between the rumbles from his bass pedal and snare plus brush-directed scrambles from his ride cymbal that you have to sense more than hear Kowald’s contributions. At the same time longtime Free Jazz followers may be surprised to hear the bassist introduce standard 4/4 time one-third of the way through “Ya” and direct the beat that way for the remainder of the track.

Although much of the reedist’s improvising starts in overdrive and goes on from there, his altissimo flurries and extended hocketing yowls add to excitement, as does the spetrofluctuation and key pops he exhibits on “Da”. At times he uses overblowing to generate intense honks or float tiny tunelets à la Sonny Rollins. Mixed with the squeals and flutter tonguing are some genuine melodies -- one of which towards the end eerily and unintentionally resembles “God Save The Queen” -- and on close listen, he sounds surprisingly straightahead.

Also unexpectedly restrained when he relaxes into it, Murray’s ruffs and drags are focused with pinpoint accuracy to elicit dark-toned, four string bowing from Kowald, while his steady flams and rat tat tats meet lacerated string sounds and tiny, below-the-peg squeals from the bassman. There’s even a point where the drummer sounds out a definitive march tempo.

Double-pulsed guitar-like strums inform some of Kowald’s work here, but his most characteristic trope occurs on “Ka”, where he moves nearly soundlessly to the foreground, stretching the strings with tiny bow movements, producing clicking sounds from below the bridge, as flinty reverberations fellow each thrust. Flailing vibrations create wailing tones that reify the mettle of those steel strings. At points the differentiated timbres created resemble those of a ngoni or African lute.

Xu’s guzheng or so-called Chinese zither is the real unconventional instrument on the four similarly titled improvisations that make up DEAR PETER. But such is the versatility of the 25-string machine -- not to mention her technique honed by years of traditional study -- that when not used in an Oriental manner, the zheng has tones that can resemble the Western double bass or 12-string guitar.

An example of this appears on “Dear Peter part 3”, where Schiano’s crooked alto tone encourages bowed accompaniment from the bass strings of Xu’s instrument. Plucking the strings with her right hand and touching the strings with her left hand to produce the desired pitch, she replicates the dark-toned bass scrawls of the European instrument. Subtly Blume uses rubbed drumsticks as his percussion contribution. Later when he mixes in more parts of his kit, flailing guitar-like noises appear from the zheng, though it’s as if she has a effects pedal underfoot, since her strings ring with what could be electrified distortion and delay. As he does in almost every performance, the altoist quotes “Lover Man” at this juncture, but considering the circumstances the lyric “Oh lover man where can you be” seems particularly apt.

The only other spot where the performance is particularly funereal is on “Dear Peter part 1”, where Xu’s keening vocal line and the harp-like glissandos from the zheng add up to intimations of a threnody -- at least to Western ears. It’s a good bet that followers of Chinese traditional music may not hear it the same way though, since at points her vocal, while definitely Oriental includes the strained delivery and guttural tones of a blues singer. She’s obviously as expressive with her voice as her axe. Schiano’s repeated honklets that ascend to high-pitched cries add to the mood, while Blume’s percussion manages to approximate the sound of an African hollow log. Later on, a single bell peal may indeed reference Christian burial rites.

Three-sided conversation among accomplished improvisers, neither of these CDs should be limited to being heard as a dirge for a departed hero. Instead both are excellent demonstrations of Kowald’s life force celebrated in proper settings.

Meanwhile life goes on. Younger improvisers like Xu and Tsahar show in their playing and associations in general that Kowald’s welcoming of different forms of improvisation is ongoing.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: MA: 1. Ma 2. Ya 3. Ka 4. Da 5. Ba 6. Wa 7. Ma

Personnel: MA: Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet); Peter Kowald (bass); Sunny Murray (drums)

Track Listing: Dear: 1. Dear Peter part 1 2. Dear Peter part 2 3. Dear Peter part 3 4. Dear Peter part 4

Personnel: Dear: Mario Schiano (alto and soprano saxophones); Xu Fengxia (guzheng, voice); Martin Blume (drums)

November 10, 2003

ASSIF TSAHAR

Ayn Le-any
Hopscotch 7

JORRIT DIJKSTRA
30 micro-stems
Trytone TT559-014

MARK WHITECAGE & HIS VIRTUAL COMBO
Ducks on Acid
Acoustics ELE 415 CD

Adding electronics to acoustic instruments has clearly redefined the idea of solo-improvised performances. Loops, delays, processing and the like mean that, for example, an inventive woodwind player can now create as singularly as he wants or exhibit all the applications and more that you would expect from an entire reed combo.

Still, as the old record guys used to say in the pre-CD days, “it’s all in the grooves”. In other words no quantity of mechanics will improve the work of a mediocre player, while the truly inventive will go beyond standard electronic settings to add more than a gloss of modernity to their improvisations.

Two of this trio of solo discs uses electronic attachments. The third, by New York reedman Assif Tsahar offers up three solo selections that are as naked as the photograph of the swimmer on the cover -- who may be the Israeli-American bass clarinetist and tenor saxophonist himself.

Each CD -- the others are by Boston-based, Dutch saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra and Jersey City, N.J. reedist Mark Whitecage -- is a heartfelt solo expression. Luckily, as well, their many virtues intrinsically relate to the men tonguing their reeds rather than to the doodads amplifying their output(s).

Tsahar, known for his downtown sympathies in bands with players such as drummer Hamid Drake and bassist William Parker plainly designed his CD around the second of the three untitled tracks. At almost 34½-minutes, this tenor saxophone feature is bookended by two trilling, bass clarinet split tone explorations of at about six minutes each. Think of them as the appetizer and desert to the entrée.

Meaty as all get-all, this main saxophone course shows how chef Tsahar can prepare an entrée without any sous-chefs onside. Often heavy on the seasoning, he mixes up some altissimo reed squeaks, dissonant claxon suggestions, basso circular tones and --most appropriately -- tongue slaps to spread over firm base of lightly accented notes in many patterns. Eventually these tone streams are succeeded by raggedly pitched blue notes, which begin to resemble human screams. A form of staccato (Middle Eastern?) blues, these shrieks bisect a speedy, jagged line which at times makes it sound as if he’s playing “Reveille” from deep inside his horn.

As Tsahar varies his vibrations, he bites hard on his reed, producing a tone as elevated as a standing rack of lamb, spicing it up with a few lungfuls of pure squeak. Then, as his vibrato widens, he adds balladic seasoning to the recipe, echoing inflections within his cylindrical tube. After a last minute addition in a high, false register, he proffers his creation with a few tiny reed breaths for proper presentation. Done like dinner, this long improv is just as nutritious and notable as a well-prepared meal.

More contemporary, Dijkstra structures his solo session using the musical versions of the microwave and food processor -- the lyricon, a pitch shifter and an analog modular synthesizer -- as well as the equivalent to the traditional carving knife: his alto saxophone. Outside of a few outmoded concepts about pure improvisation nothing gets carved up however. Part of Amsterdam’s improv scene since the mid-1980s, Dijkstra has worked with such Dutch masters as saxophonist Willem Breuker and pianists Guus Janssen and Cor Fuhler, as well as collaborating with the Vancouver, B.C. band Talking Pictures.

On his own, the sax man uses electronics judiciously, unlike trendy foodies who would rely on an electric knife when a sharp straight edge would do. Thus his brandishing of the lyricon, a primitive synthesized saxophone developed in the 1970s. On “Old Roman Road”, for instance, he manages to produce short, elastic tones that wiggle out of the instrument, creating irregular vibrations, which, coupled with reed percussion, seem to replicate gamelan or bell-like sounds.

While he also takes advantage of the lyricon’s lyrical (sic) attributes, Dijkstra also uses the novel sounds it can spew out to contrast with his sax tone. “Residence”, for instance, features an echo meeting up with the alto’s lower register. With electronics providing the mechanized continuum, he shouts and growls through his horn, whistles in its top range and expels continues boar-like snorts from the bottom. Guitar, electric organ and cello resemblances also appear.

“Hickory” features the nervous tick created by a repeated, stuttering note, and, as the piece aims for staccatissimo, reed hiccups and scratched, yakety-sax tones vie for aural space with low register squeezes and smears.

Elsewhere the saxman comes up with a contrapuntal melody on one tune, with tongue slaps from one horn and legato lines from the other, then uses spetrofluctuation to comment on the proceedings. Still later, honks, key pops and brief unison legato lines play hide-and-seek throughout another theme, with Dijkstra alone coming across as ROVA or the World Saxophone Quartet.

Split-second electronic delay matched with a straight reading of the theme characterizes the expansive “Linea Recta”. Featuring breezy, electric piano-like glisses from the lyricon and more standard thematic material from other horns, the line gradually dissolves and become more abstract, like an instrumental reading of Alvin Lucier’s “I Was Sitting In A Room”. Referencing electric guitar treatments as well as the plugged-in piano, the tones eventually give way to the bubbling and snaps of unprocessed electronics.

If Tsahar ignores electronics and Dijkstra uses it for his own ends, Whitecage still seems to be experimenting. Granted that he’s working with more primitive equipment -- a pitch processor, delay and zoom, mostly triggered by his clarinet. Still, he appears to be more fascinated by the process than the result.

Throughout, there’s little graininess or extended tonal manipulation in his playing; he appears to be playing legato for the sake of legato and natural so as not to upset the electricity. Yet this approach is an anomaly compared to the excellent work he does with other improvising musicians like bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen.

At times, using a 1960s synthesizer that runs on a 9-volt battery, he come up with a sound that seems to be a combination of a syndrum and a Pong game. Other times it’s as if Eddie Harris, one of the first saxists to plug in a Varitone, has returned to life. All and all, the buoyant output here is more novelty and much less assured than his acoustic work. Sure, he can create the sound of a clarinet choir and toss lines back and forth between a live horn and electronics, but so can many others.

The most embarrassing track is called “DD’s Acid Trip”, where Whitecage uses his voice to create processed mumbles, retches and yowls that resemble the vocal cadences of Walt Disney’s favorite fowl. New gizmos -- to use his term -- aren’t needed to capture this on disc. Like acid trips themselves, the idea would probably have been better off left in the 1960s.

About the only really memorable track is “Transparency”. Here the reedist seems to not only be able to dart in and out of the soundfield playing live and accompanying lines simultaneously, but use white noise as a backup. There’s even a point mid-way through where it sounds as if he’s playing “Sweet Betsy from Pike” or another folk ballad. His variations on that theme show how he could eventually use his electronic set-up in a more sophisticated manner.

Whitecage has recorded many fine acoustic CDs with different bands, and as a player, he’s someone who should be investigated on those sessions, rather than this attempt at solo electronics.

When it comes to electronics, 30 MICRO-STEMS is a far superior use of contemporary treatments, while AYN LE-ANY is a fine solo outing that will interest many woodwind fanciers.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Ayn: 1. Ayn Le-any 1 2. Ayn Le-any 2 3. Ayn Le-any 3

Personnel: Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet)

Track Listing: Ayn: 30: 1. Contrapunt #5 2. 30 micro-stems 3. Koot 4. Residence 5. Faster than my shadow 6. Old Roman Road 7. Contrapunt #8 8. Hickory 9. Linea recta 10. Mind the gaps 11. Transducer (Contrapunt #14) 12. Carpet

Personnel: 30: Jorrit Dijkstra (alto saxophone, lyricon, electronics)

Track Listing: Ducks: 1. Oleo 2. Simple Entry 3. Snip-it 4. See No Evil 5. Synare samba 6. Let’s Make Believe 7. Transparency 8. DD’s Acid Trip 9. Pong 10. Morning Mood 11. Really Two 12. Oleo

Personnel: Ducks: Mark Whitecage (alto saxophone, clarinet, electronics)

June 23, 2003

ASSIF TSHAR and the ZOANTHROPIC ORCHESTRA

Embracing the Void
Hopscotch 9

ASSIF TSHAR and the NEW YORK UNDERGROUND ORCHESTRA
The Labyrinth
Hopscotch 12

Different as free jazz and New music, on show here are two distinct manifestations of the composing and arranging skills for larger groups by tenor saxophonist Assif Tsahar. Both are engrossing, remarkably mature, compositional works for someone best known for his impassioned blowing with the likes of bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake.

EMBRACING THE VOID has a slight edge however. That’s because all 14 members of the Zoanthropic Orchestra appear better able to personalize the emotional cauldron of Tsahar avant jazz pieces than the 19 musicians of the New York Underground Orchestra can contour THE LABYTINTH into a more original form.

VOID’s clearest antecedent seems to be The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra (JCO)’s 1968 COMMUNICATIONS LP. Designed by Mike Mantler to showcase New Thing soloists such as cornetist Don Cherry, tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and pianist Cecil Taylor, it proved that heartfelt experimental music wasn’t confined to small groups.

Tsahar, who was born in Israel the year after that JCO session was taped, and arrived in New York in 1990, has the same idea, but his 10-part, personalized suite is much more democratic. Nearly every one of the musicians gets a chance to solo here. More to the point, all of the music written by Tsahar appears to be intricately arranged so that each part meshes with the next.

Framed by squealing, post-Ayler solos by the tenor man in the first and -- in altissimo -or even sopranino pitch -- the final number, the almost 56-minute composition balances elements of jazz and other traditions with expressive atonality. Sometimes, as on “Part 3”, the music will contain Balkan and Klezmer components, mixed with some high frequency piano chording from pianist Craig Taborn, whinnying trumpet from Matt Lavelle and cellar deep blasts from Reut Regev’s trombone.

With the other ‘bone chairs filled by Curtis Hasselbring and Steve Swell, the Zoanthropic has a section reminiscent of Duke Ellington’s famed group, with any of the three able to express the restrained elegance of Lawrence Brown as well as more so-called primitive tones. Swell, a fixture in advanced Manhattan bands, is especially able to slide through a variety of plunger-affixed positions, creating a 1920s “Jungle” sound like a Internet age Tricky Sam Nanton.

Later on, a section with Mingus-like Holiness church boogie rhythm finds Swell and another Israeli-born downtowner, alto saxophonist Ori Kaplan, trading licks after the saxman has finished a screeching, triple tonguing solo, and as the band builds to a crescendo behind him. The piece also gives bassist Tom Abbs, Jump Arts mainman, enough breadth to individually sound out stinging arco notes.

When he wants to, Taborn, who has earned his spurs with reedist Roscoe Mitchell and altoist Tim Berne, can speed skate over the keys like a young Cecil Taylor. Other times he can be overtly bluesy, as on “Part 9” when he sets up tenor saxophonist Aaron Stewart’s floating mid-period John Coltranish solo. Stewart, part of the Fieldwork trio and sideman of choice for veteran pianist Andrew Hill, enlivens his outing with mid-range honks and extended techniques, centred on hissing air through his horn.

Elsewhere on the reed front, baritone saxophonist Alex Harding, a sometime Arkestra member gets to exhibit his dual identities on “Part 4”. At one point his tone is as mellow and well-modulated as Gerry Mulligan in his West Coast days, a few bars later he’s digging up the building’s foundations with his reed, spewing out multiphonics as he smears his notes, nearly duking it out with the brass section.

As the band meanders from Basie to Boulez and back again, often you’ll note meticulously arranged unison passages playing off against a moving bass line, or hear the entire band creeping along behind the soloist. Gold Sparkle Band drummer Andrew Barker creates Sunny Murray-like polyrhythms one minute and produces varsity football half-time marching tempos -- complete with rim shots -- a few tracks later. POMO eclecticism is on tap as well on “Part 5”, which features Oscar Noriega, who has worked with pianist Satoko Fujii producing tongue-slapping Eric Dolphy emulations from his bass clarinet. Meanwhile, Anthony Braxton-associate cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum cuts across the band’s massed stop time tutti with a screeching Cat Anderson-like tone.

Distressingly, a year later when Tsahar relocated from Manhattan to Brooklyn to conduct the New York Underground Orchestra through his sprawling, nearly 72½-minute “The Labyrinth”, it seems that some of these players weren’t available. In addition, three violinists, two violists, two cellists and three bassists joined the band, with the woodwinds confined to flutes and clarinets. The result seems more self-consciously philharmonic than, say jazz-classical. Plus many of the additional tones are muffled in the recording or the mix.

Not that there isn’t impressive work here as well. Early on, trombonist Regev who on the earlier CD seems to be an adherent of the gritty Al Grey school creates some elegant muted passages in front of pulsating strings and horns. This symphonic backing don’t prevent Noriega’s bass clarinet to indulge in enough multiphonics to twist the strings echoing aviary tones. Later on, Charles Waters, another Gold Sparkle Band member, uses the string section sawing in the background to cushion a clean, clear clarinet solo that comes out half-Benny Goodman and half-Ornette Coleman (if the later ever played the licorice stick). And trumpeter Nate Wooley, although surrounded by a larger string section than in some of Stan Kenton’s more bloated orchestras, manages to at least push the orchestra into some conventional swinging passages.

Deficiency doesn’t rest with the soloists. It’s the orchestral passages, that with this string-heavy configuration, seems to meander from Debussy-like preciousness to New music bleakness to near-static minimalism. Tsahar’s conduction and writing on “The 5th Path” tries to work out of this conundrum. Muted -- or is it muffled? -- trumpet passages from Lavelle initially displayed on top of unvarying pizzicato pluck from the strings, are soon joined by Wooley for a dramatic fanfare which encompasses rooster crows and plunger work. As the strings move from diminuendo to crescendo and back, both brassmen create a stop time pulse as Tatsuya Nakatani showcases vibes, wood block and other unconventional percussion sounds.

Another time sweet violin and cello lines follow a brass choir intro that gives way to pealing percussion and the odd bass clarinet accent. Yet the andante motion seems merely movement for its own sake. On the last track are Jonah Sacks’ mournful cello presages, Impressionistic strings, twittering flutes and a clarinet and bass clarinet that seem to be trading fours oblivious of what’s unrolling around them. Finally, an exaggerated, extended pianissimo chord is grasped by the reeds and horns until it fades away.

While re-creators -- read copyists -- like Wynton Marsalis, receive awards for using orchestral resources to calcify the tradition, innovators like Tsahar are trying to do something more with larger ensembles. Obviously he doesn’t succeed every time. Plus there is some inexcusable sloppiness on the first disc’s booklet, where performers’ names are spelled incorrectly. They’re correct below.

However, without trying to be hyperbolic, from the evidence here it would seem that one Tsahar almost-failure could be worth a few Marsalis so-called successes. Despite it’s weaknesses, THE LABYRINTH offers some thought-provoking music and EMBRACING THE VOID is a definite triumph. What more could a musically questing composer want?

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Void: 1. Embracing the Void Part 1 2. Embracing the Void Part 2 3. Embracing the Void Part 3. 4. Embracing the Void Part 4 5. Embracing the Void Part 5 6. Embracing the Void Part 6 7. Embracing the Void Part 7 8. Embracing the Void Part 8 9. Embracing the Void Part 9 10. Embracing the Void Part 10

Personnel: Void: Taylor Ho Bynum, Matt Lavelle, Antoine Brye (trumpets); Curtis Hasselbring, Steve Swell and Reut Regev (trombones); Ori Kaplan (alto saxophone); Aaron Stewart, Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophones); Alex Harding (baritone saxophone); Oscar Noriega (bass clarinet and alto saxophone); Craig Taborn (piano); Tom Abbs (bass); Andrew Barker (drums)

Track Listing: Labyrinth: 1. The lst Path 2. The 2nd Path 3. The 3rd Path 4. The 4th Path 5. The 5th Path 6. The 6th Path 7. The 7th Path 8. The 8th Path 9. The 9th Path 10. The 10th Path

Personnel: Labyrinth: Matt Lavelle, Nate Wooley, Marianne Giosa (trumpets); Reut Regev (trombone); Charles Waters (clarinet); Oscar Noriega (bass clarinet); Sabine Arnaud, Muriel Vergnaud (flutes); Melinda Rice, Jean Cook, Katie Pawluk (violins); Stephanie Griffin, Jessica Pavone (violas); Okkyung Lee, Jonah Sacks (cellos); Terrence Murren, Byrne Klay, Todd Nicholson (basses); Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion); Assif Tsahar (conduction)

May 5, 2003

ASSIF TSAHAR/HAMID DRAKE

Soul Bodies, Vol. 1
Ayler aylCD-0024

ASSIF TSAHAR/HAMID DRAKE/PETER KOWALD/HUGH RAGIN
Open Systems
Marge 28

Stripped down to music’s internal skeleton, real-time improvisation is so basic that it can often be as chancy as trying to reconstruct a human being from his bone structure alone. But when it does work, the results are as spectacular as the accomplishments of anthropologists who use the properties of a few bone shards to discover nearly everything about a vanished personage.

Master drummer Hamid Drake and reedman Assif Tsahar pull out their symbolic pick axes and labor in the improv trenches at 2001’s Vision Festival in New York on SOUL BODIES. During the course of three long pieces they firmly and distinctively bring into being living, breathing bodies of outstanding improvisations. If they miscalculate in any way, it’s in not spending enough time solidifying the souls to enlighten these improv creatures.

Three weeks previously, Drake and Tsahar were in Paris as guests at a friend’s wedding. Turning the celebration into a busman’s holiday, the two subsequently went into a studio with veteran German bassist Peter Kowald and American trumpeter Hugh Ragin, who were specifically invited to take part, and produced OPEN SYSTEMS. It’s more than 72½ minutes spread among seven compositions that relate as much to hard core energy music of the late 1960s as the former disc does to spirituality.

Israeli-born, Tsahar, 32, has played with such young and older sonic investigators as bassists William Parker drummers Susie Ibarra and Rashied Ali since he arrived in the New York at 21. Fourteen years older, Chicago’s Drake has had a decades-long association with tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, and over the years has also anchored bands with such other powerful saxophonists as Ken Vandermark and Peter Brötzmann. Kowald, 57, was Brötzmann’s associate as a European first generation free jazzer in the 1960s. Since then he has worked with almost every major Continental and American explorer and recently recorded an album with Tsahar and Ali. Known for membership in bands lead by reedmen David Murray and Roscoe Mitchell, Ragin, 50, is acting director of Jazz Studies at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, when he’s not collaborating with other forward-looking musicians.

See the Drake-Tsahar partnership as a musical marriage made in heaven on the first CD and you won’t be far wrong. Essentially what you hear is free jazz at its freest. The idea is to play until you can’t play any more … and than play some more. That doesn’t mean that anything is perfunctory or histrionic either. Between them, the two have too many years of study and experience for that.

While the booklet notes talk about the musicians’ ability to master hemiola -- playing three against two patterns -- and melodic and harmonic excursions on dominant and subordinate chords, the result isn’t technical in the least. On tenor, Tsahar produces a compendium of energetic effects, from protracted sheets of sound, sardonic, sonic blasts, repeated freak notes and slashing tone runs whose closest antecedent was Albert Ayler’s freaky circus band concept. He will sometimes construct whole, protracted sections in altissimo and other times produce enough multiphonics to resemble a brace of saxophones. Everything here takes place at full throttle, with forward motion sometimes giving way to miniscule melodies that resemble Sonny Rollins’ “East Broadway Run Down” or even “Listen to the Mockingbird”.

Not to be outdone by the reed and metal twists and turns, Drake keeps up a constant percussive barrage, encompassing a sufficient number of drum rolls, cymbal shimmers and bass drum accents. When he solos, the beat never lets up and there are times he too suggests the strength and power of more than one percussionist. Yet unlike showy rock drummers, he never becomes overbearing, and his segueways mesh perfectly with the sax work.

“Clay Dancers”, featuring Drake accompanying himself on frame drum and vocals and Tsahar on woody bass clarinet, is the only soul respite from the sheer physicality of the body music of the other tracks. Producing lingual tones that appropriately resemble both a muezzin’s call to prayer and a cantor’s incantation during a synagogue service, Drake’s percussive, accentuated chanting and Tsahar’s indivisible runs from one end of his curved horn to the other combine to create a whirling Dervish-like near-religious ecstasy. All music has similar roots, and the two prove it here.

Perhaps on a promised Vol. 2 of this session, the more peaceful side of the music will be elaborated as well. No matter, as it stands now the only drawback of this disc is that Drake’s first name is misspelled as “Hammid” on the front cover.

With additional recruits, the tenor saxophonist and drummer turn more to the song form on OPEN SYSTEMS, but despite the background of a wedding celebration this is no sylvan collection of smooth candlelight-and-wine love songs. Instead the Paris studio is the scene of some of the raunchiest energy music produced since members of the Art Ensemble and tenor man Frank Wright were regular residents of the French capital.

Take the saxman’s “The Lizards in the Maze”, one of four Tsahar compositions elaborated here. Beginning with a powerful Wilbur Ware-type string-punishing intro courtesy of Kowald, the freebop head soon gives way to a selection of solos. Even when he soars at the top of his range, Ragin still properly balances every note. In contrast, the tenorist’s tone sometimes slips into altissimo, but is always made up of staccato-inflected sound particles. Probably reminding Drake of his long-time employer Anderson, the percussionist usually meets Tsahar’s steaming thrusts with protracted tattoos, then follows the duet with a calm but heartfelt solo that starts off heavy on the snares and cymbals, but then turns proper attention to all parts of the kit.

Building from an early Ornette Coleman Quartet type of head, “The Call” offers more of the same, with Drake in his Ed Blackwell role providing a steady rat-tat-tat and Kowald as Charlie Haden providing the rhythmic bottom. On “Lonely Woman” --

a real Coleman line -- he authors a solo which has the different strings on his instrument dialoguing with themselves, and that let’s you know that his assumed identity here was just momentary role playing. Channeling Don Cherry, who spent some time in Paris himself, Ragin not only to creates whinnies and smears to follow Tsahar’s lead, but manages to expose a tiny, melodic passage of modulated beauty, built on short, sharp ascending horn bursts. Odd man out with his tenor tone obviously closer to John Coltrane’s or Ayler’s than Coleman’s alto conception, Tsahar spews out a well-nuanced solo, and after time spent chasing the brass man through the stratosphere, elaborates another motif that drags everyone back to the initial theme.

This drawing together seems to be the motif behind Tsahar’s “Dream Weaverts”(sic), dedicated to the newly married couple. Although Ragin, using a sort of funky burr sometimes sounds as if he’s playing Charles Mingus’ “Weird Nightmare” or Ayler’s “The Truth Is Marching In” -- and what are the brassman’s views on marriage? -- the bowed bass and bass clarinet mirror one another with irregular reverberating vibrations. Despite sections where each horn appears to be heading in a contrasting direction, they pull back to meld together before the end. Is there a wedlock partnership metaphor here somewhere?

Finally, Drake presages the pietistic passages he’d be singing three weeks hence in New York on “Hearts Remembrance”, where his measured Arabic (?) chanting is complimented by reverberating didgeridoo-like vocal sounds from Kowald and Ragin. Manipulating the buzz of the frame drum and adapting the bass clarinet’s natural resonance and some meshed, muted trumpet, the four allude to timeless, primitive music, that by title again suggests the newlyweds, and in sound references the duo CD.

Each of these CDs offer exceptional showcases for two younger improvisers already on their way to be recognized as major stylists. Whether you prefer the duo straight or in a larger, economy side with extra musical ingredients is up to you.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Soul: 1. Introduction 2. Soul Bodies 3. Clay Dancers 4. Heart’s Mind

Personnel: Soul: Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet); Hamid Drake (drums, frame drum, vocal)

Track Listing: Open: 1. Lonely Woman 2. The Lizards in the Maze 3. Fathers and Mothers (For Albert Ayler) 4. Hearts Remembrance 5. Standing Motion 6. Dream Weaverts 7. The Call

Personnel: Open: Hugh Ragin (trumpet); Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet); Peter Kowald (bass, voice); Hamid Drake (drums, frame drum, voice)

March 1, 2002

ASSIF TSAHAR/HAMID DRAKE

Soul Bodies, Vol. 1
Ayler aylCD-0024

ASSIF TSAHAR/HAMID DRAKE/PETER KOWALD/HUGH RAGIN
Open Systems
Marge 28

Stripped down to music’s internal skeleton, real-time improvisation is so basic that it can often be as chancy as trying to reconstruct a human being from his bone structure alone. But when it does work, the results are as spectacular as the accomplishments of anthropologists who use the properties of a few bone shards to discover nearly everything about a vanished personage.

Master drummer Hamid Drake and reedman Assif Tsahar pull out their symbolic pick axes and labor in the improv trenches at 2001’s Vision Festival in New York on SOUL BODIES. During the course of three long pieces they firmly and distinctively bring into being living, breathing bodies of outstanding improvisations. If they miscalculate in any way, it’s in not spending enough time solidifying the souls to enlighten these improv creatures.

Three weeks previously, Drake and Tsahar were in Paris as guests at a friend’s wedding. Turning the celebration into a busman’s holiday, the two subsequently went into a studio with veteran German bassist Peter Kowald and American trumpeter Hugh Ragin, who were specifically invited to take part, and produced OPEN SYSTEMS. It’s more than 72½ minutes spread among seven compositions that relate as much to hard core energy music of the late 1960s as the former disc does to spirituality.

Israeli-born, Tsahar, 32, has played with such young and older sonic investigators as bassists William Parker drummers Susie Ibarra and Rashied Ali since he arrived in the New York at 21. Fourteen years older, Chicago’s Drake has had a decades-long association with tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, and over the years has also anchored bands with such other powerful saxophonists as Ken Vandermark and Peter Brötzmann. Kowald, 57, was Brötzmann’s associate as a European first generation free jazzer in the 1960s. Since then he has worked with almost every major Continental and American explorer and recently recorded an album with Tsahar and Ali. Known for membership in bands lead by reedmen David Murray and Roscoe Mitchell, Ragin, 50, is acting director of Jazz Studies at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, when he’s not collaborating with other forward-looking musicians.

See the Drake-Tsahar partnership as a musical marriage made in heaven on the first CD and you won’t be far wrong. Essentially what you hear is free jazz at its freest. The idea is to play until you can’t play any more … and than play some more. That doesn’t mean that anything is perfunctory or histrionic either. Between them, the two have too many years of study and experience for that.

While the booklet notes talk about the musicians’ ability to master hemiola -- playing three against two patterns -- and melodic and harmonic excursions on dominant and subordinate chords, the result isn’t technical in the least. On tenor, Tsahar produces a compendium of energetic effects, from protracted sheets of sound, sardonic, sonic blasts, repeated freak notes and slashing tone runs whose closest antecedent was Albert Ayler’s freaky circus band concept. He will sometimes construct whole, protracted sections in altissimo and other times produce enough multiphonics to resemble a brace of saxophones. Everything here takes place at full throttle, with forward motion sometimes giving way to miniscule melodies that resemble Sonny Rollins’ “East Broadway Run Down” or even “Listen to the Mockingbird”.

Not to be outdone by the reed and metal twists and turns, Drake keeps up a constant percussive barrage, encompassing a sufficient number of drum rolls, cymbal shimmers and bass drum accents. When he solos, the beat never lets up and there are times he too suggests the strength and power of more than one percussionist. Yet unlike showy rock drummers, he never becomes overbearing, and his segueways mesh perfectly with the sax work.

“Clay Dancers”, featuring Drake accompanying himself on frame drum and vocals and Tsahar on woody bass clarinet, is the only soul respite from the sheer physicality of the body music of the other tracks. Producing lingual tones that appropriately resemble both a muezzin’s call to prayer and a cantor’s incantation during a synagogue service, Drake’s percussive, accentuated chanting and Tsahar’s indivisible runs from one end of his curved horn to the other combine to create a whirling Dervish-like near-religious ecstasy. All music has similar roots, and the two prove it here.

Perhaps on a promised Vol. 2 of this session, the more peaceful side of the music will be elaborated as well. No matter, as it stands now the only drawback of this disc is that Drake’s first name is misspelled as “Hammid” on the front cover.

With additional recruits, the tenor saxophonist and drummer turn more to the song form on OPEN SYSTEMS, but despite the background of a wedding celebration this is no sylvan collection of smooth candlelight-and-wine love songs. Instead the Paris studio is the scene of some of the raunchiest energy music produced since members of the Art Ensemble and tenor man Frank Wright were regular residents of the French capital.

Take the saxman’s “The Lizards in the Maze”, one of four Tsahar compositions elaborated here. Beginning with a powerful Wilbur Ware-type string-punishing intro courtesy of Kowald, the freebop head soon gives way to a selection of solos. Even when he soars at the top of his range, Ragin still properly balances every note. In contrast, the tenorist’s tone sometimes slips into altissimo, but is always made up of staccato-inflected sound particles. Probably reminding Drake of his long-time employer Anderson, the percussionist usually meets Tsahar’s steaming thrusts with protracted tattoos, then follows the duet with a calm but heartfelt solo that starts off heavy on the snares and cymbals, but then turns proper attention to all parts of the kit.

Building from an early Ornette Coleman Quartet type of head, “The Call” offers more of the same, with Drake in his Ed Blackwell role providing a steady rat-tat-tat and Kowald as Charlie Haden providing the rhythmic bottom. On “Lonely Woman” --

a real Coleman line -- he authors a solo which has the different strings on his instrument dialoguing with themselves, and that let’s you know that his assumed identity here was just momentary role playing. Channeling Don Cherry, who spent some time in Paris himself, Ragin not only to creates whinnies and smears to follow Tsahar’s lead, but manages to expose a tiny, melodic passage of modulated beauty, built on short, sharp ascending horn bursts. Odd man out with his tenor tone obviously closer to John Coltrane’s or Ayler’s than Coleman’s alto conception, Tsahar spews out a well-nuanced solo, and after time spent chasing the brass man through the stratosphere, elaborates another motif that drags everyone back to the initial theme.

This drawing together seems to be the motif behind Tsahar’s “Dream Weaverts”(sic), dedicated to the newly married couple. Although Ragin, using a sort of funky burr sometimes sounds as if he’s playing Charles Mingus’ “Weird Nightmare” or Ayler’s “The Truth Is Marching In” -- and what are the brassman’s views on marriage? -- the bowed bass and bass clarinet mirror one another with irregular reverberating vibrations. Despite sections where each horn appears to be heading in a contrasting direction, they pull back to meld together before the end. Is there a wedlock partnership metaphor here somewhere?

Finally, Drake presages the pietistic passages he’d be singing three weeks hence in New York on “Hearts Remembrance”, where his measured Arabic (?) chanting is complimented by reverberating didgeridoo-like vocal sounds from Kowald and Ragin. Manipulating the buzz of the frame drum and adapting the bass clarinet’s natural resonance and some meshed, muted trumpet, the four allude to timeless, primitive music, that by title again suggests the newlyweds, and in sound references the duo CD.

Each of these CDs offer exceptional showcases for two younger improvisers already on their way to be recognized as major stylists. Whether you prefer the duo straight or in a larger, economy side with extra musical ingredients is up to you.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Soul: 1. Introduction 2. Soul Bodies 3. Clay Dancers 4. Heart’s Mind

Personnel: Soul: Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet); Hamid Drake (drums, frame drum, vocal)

Track Listing: Open: 1. Lonely Woman 2. The Lizards in the Maze 3. Fathers and Mothers (For Albert Ayler) 4. Hearts Remembrance 5. Standing Motion 6. Dream Weaverts 7. The Call

Personnel: Open: Hugh Ragin (trumpet); Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet); Peter Kowald (bass, voice); Hamid Drake (drums, frame drum, voice)

March 1, 2001