Nate Wooley

Throw Down Your Hammer and Sing
Porter PRCD-4022

Daniel Levin Quartet

Live at Roulette

Clean Feed CF 147 CD

One of the trumpeters who, over the past few years, have committed to lower-case improvisation, Brooklyn-based Nate Wooley has also subtly adapted his distinctive playing to different situations. As a matter of fact, listening to these noteworthy CDs, it may appear as if Wooley, who was born in the Pacific Northwest, has a separate Midwestern and East Cost persona.

That statement may be a bit louche however. That’s because the fragmented texture-gliding he exhibits with Chicagoans cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm – who may be the most-frequently recorded cellist in New music – and bassist Jason Roebke, who anchors a clutch of Windy City combos – is close to what the trumpeter brings to some New York groups. However as a charter member of cellist Daniel Levin’s quartet since 2001, he attentively tries to meld with the impressionistic and legato impulses from the cellist as Live at Roulette attests. The band is filled out by vibist Matt Moran, who also plays in drummer John Hollenbeck’s ensembles, and bassist Peter Bitenc.

On the other hand, jagged, discordant and slightly off-centre timbres on the five tracks on Throw Down Your Hammer and Sing aptly demonstrate how fungible textures from buzzed brass growls and portamento string slices can be. Although Roebke mostly sticks to pedal-point shuffles and rhythmic thumps, the resulting tones from his bull fiddle are the only ones that can’t be mistaken for others from the remaining improvisers’ instruments.

“Sans Aluminumius” for example, builds up from metallic, unattached ruffling and buzzing lines that are so opaque that only latterly do they partition into string scrubs and elongated air blowing. Precedents could come from New music, but very few of those designed compositions include what sounds like the string players abrasively rubbing their knuckles on their instruments’ exposed wood. Further, as string strategy sluices to tremolo runs and rubato slides and stops, Wooley brays unaltered air through his horn’s body tube. The finale finds the others still figuratively wrenching their instruments’ bodies apart as the trumpeter flutters an epistle of rubato grace notes

Sul ponicello and col legno string expositions figure into other tracks as do brass twists and tremolo pacing, but the contrapuntal results are usually kept from sounding too similar when Lonberg-Holm unleashes electronic-patched slide-whistle-like shrills and burbles.

On “Anywhere, Anyplace At All” – a spot-on description of an improviser’s life plan – the signal-processed whirligigs switch on-and-off in seconds, coloring the string players’ combined sul tasto rumbles and the trumpeter’s unvarying tongue positions. Eventually as the program jump from elevated to sonorous pitches and from andante to adagio, sandpaper-like bass string thumping and scrubbing plus dislocated chromatic note twists provide a polyphonic backing to the cellist’s strident scratches and spiccato runs.

“Saint Mary” on the other hand is more concerned with diverted clicks of the bow against strings and unprocessed air circulating through valves and tubing. Echoes and minute sweeps are reminiscent of some of Levin’s sonic strategies.

With distinct syntax, the 10 group-compositions on Live at Roulette are in the main, gentler, more legato and touching on mainstream elements from both jazz and so-called classical chamber ensembles. Sometimes the set up involves waves of chromatic brass tones and pitter-patter vibe resonation, backed by Bitenc’s pedal point and shaded by harmonies from the cellist.

Titled with the participants’ names, a few of the tracks could be designed as miniature musical portraits, but in band context. “Matt” for instance, may depend on repeated sustain pedal notes and continuous double-timed rhythm from Moran, but Levin and Wooley contribute as well. The cellist builds up from a buzzing murmur to sul ponticello runs while a similar initial silence on the trumpeter’s part is replaced by internal Bronx cheers.

Not to be outdone, the two tracks entitled “Nate/Daniel I” and “Nate/Daniel II” includes participation from the others. While “Nate/Daniel II” encompasses mutual inchoate dissonance made up of growls and squealing split tones from Wooley and rhythmic string thumps from Levin, “Nate/Daniel I” is more collegial

Levin’s faltering string patterns are given added strength from Bitenc’s sweetening thumps and plucks. These background colors could allow Wooley’s chromatic gestures to transform into a skewed version of “Summertime” – if he could rouse himself from languendo to do so. That promise remains unfulfilled, but the trumpeter’s understated tone splinters are given added poignancy by an additional sonic undercurrent from Moran’s vibe motor pulses.

Additionally each of these solo, duo or party-line conversions exhibit strategies that include building on enharmonic patterns to showcasing singular techniques. Moran’s bell-like ringing and chiming mallet work decorates or bonds certain tracks; while portamento string runs frequently shatter into col legno wood slaps or double bass walking. Buzzing and dislocating multiphonics come into play from the brass, string and rhythm instruments, but if partials are exhibited as well as the root notes, it’s always with modest understatement; never in-your-face.

Each of these CDs offers a double bonus. Not only can you chart the improvisational progress of Wooley, but you also get a glimpse into the compositional strategy of evolving Chicago and New York-centred musicians.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Throw: 1.Tacones Altos 2. Sans Aluminumius 3. Southern Ends Of The Earth 4. Saint Mary 5. Anywhere, Anyplace At All

Personnel: Throw: Nate Wooley (trumpet); Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello) and Jason Roebke (bass)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Conversation I 2. 2. Matt 3. Delicate 4. 4. Peter 5. Lightspeed Particles I 6. Nate/Daniel I 7. Conversation II 8. Scratchy 9. Lightspeed Particles II 10. Nate/Daniel II

Personnel: Live: Nate Wooley (trumpet); Daniel Levin (cello); Peter Bitenc (bass) and Matt Moran (vibraphone)

December 12, 2009

Daniel Levin Quartet

Live at Roulette
Clean Feed CF 147 CD

Nate Wooley

Throw Down Your Hammer and Sing

Porter PRCD-4022

One of the trumpeters who, over the past few years, have committed to lower-case improvisation, Brooklyn-based Nate Wooley has also subtly adapted his distinctive playing to different situations. As a matter of fact, listening to these noteworthy CDs, it may appear as if Wooley, who was born in the Pacific Northwest, has a separate Midwestern and East Cost persona.

That statement may be a bit louche however. That’s because the fragmented texture-gliding he exhibits with Chicagoans cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm – who may be the most-frequently recorded cellist in New music – and bassist Jason Roebke, who anchors a clutch of Windy City combos – is close to what the trumpeter brings to some New York groups. However as a charter member of cellist Daniel Levin’s quartet since 2001, he attentively tries to meld with the impressionistic and legato impulses from the cellist as Live at Roulette attests. The band is filled out by vibist Matt Moran, who also plays in drummer John Hollenbeck’s ensembles, and bassist Peter Bitenc.

On the other hand, jagged, discordant and slightly off-centre timbres on the five tracks on Throw Down Your Hammer and Sing aptly demonstrate how fungible textures from buzzed brass growls and portamento string slices can be. Although Roebke mostly sticks to pedal-point shuffles and rhythmic thumps, the resulting tones from his bull fiddle are the only ones that can’t be mistaken for others from the remaining improvisers’ instruments.

“Sans Aluminumius” for example, builds up from metallic, unattached ruffling and buzzing lines that are so opaque that only latterly do they partition into string scrubs and elongated air blowing. Precedents could come from New music, but very few of those designed compositions include what sounds like the string players abrasively rubbing their knuckles on their instruments’ exposed wood. Further, as string strategy sluices to tremolo runs and rubato slides and stops, Wooley brays unaltered air through his horn’s body tube. The finale finds the others still figuratively wrenching their instruments’ bodies apart as the trumpeter flutters an epistle of rubato grace notes

Sul ponicello and col legno string expositions figure into other tracks as do brass twists and tremolo pacing, but the contrapuntal results are usually kept from sounding too similar when Lonberg-Holm unleashes electronic-patched slide-whistle-like shrills and burbles.

On “Anywhere, Anyplace At All” – a spot-on description of an improviser’s life plan – the signal-processed whirligigs switch on-and-off in seconds, coloring the string players’ combined sul tasto rumbles and the trumpeter’s unvarying tongue positions. Eventually as the program jump from elevated to sonorous pitches and from andante to adagio, sandpaper-like bass string thumping and scrubbing plus dislocated chromatic note twists provide a polyphonic backing to the cellist’s strident scratches and spiccato runs.

“Saint Mary” on the other hand is more concerned with diverted clicks of the bow against strings and unprocessed air circulating through valves and tubing. Echoes and minute sweeps are reminiscent of some of Levin’s sonic strategies.

With distinct syntax, the 10 group-compositions on Live at Roulette are in the main, gentler, more legato and touching on mainstream elements from both jazz and so-called classical chamber ensembles. Sometimes the set up involves waves of chromatic brass tones and pitter-patter vibe resonation, backed by Bitenc’s pedal point and shaded by harmonies from the cellist.

Titled with the participants’ names, a few of the tracks could be designed as miniature musical portraits, but in band context. “Matt” for instance, may depend on repeated sustain pedal notes and continuous double-timed rhythm from Moran, but Levin and Wooley contribute as well. The cellist builds up from a buzzing murmur to sul ponticello runs while a similar initial silence on the trumpeter’s part is replaced by internal Bronx cheers.

Not to be outdone, the two tracks entitled “Nate/Daniel I” and “Nate/Daniel II” includes participation from the others. While “Nate/Daniel II” encompasses mutual inchoate dissonance made up of growls and squealing split tones from Wooley and rhythmic string thumps from Levin, “Nate/Daniel I” is more collegial

Levin’s faltering string patterns are given added strength from Bitenc’s sweetening thumps and plucks. These background colors could allow Wooley’s chromatic gestures to transform into a skewed version of “Summertime” – if he could rouse himself from languendo to do so. That promise remains unfulfilled, but the trumpeter’s understated tone splinters are given added poignancy by an additional sonic undercurrent from Moran’s vibe motor pulses.

Additionally each of these solo, duo or party-line conversions exhibit strategies that include building on enharmonic patterns to showcasing singular techniques. Moran’s bell-like ringing and chiming mallet work decorates or bonds certain tracks; while portamento string runs frequently shatter into col legno wood slaps or double bass walking. Buzzing and dislocating multiphonics come into play from the brass, string and rhythm instruments, but if partials are exhibited as well as the root notes, it’s always with modest understatement; never in-your-face.

Each of these CDs offers a double bonus. Not only can you chart the improvisational progress of Wooley, but you also get a glimpse into the compositional strategy of evolving Chicago and New York-centred musicians.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Throw: 1.Tacones Altos 2. Sans Aluminumius 3. Southern Ends Of The Earth 4. Saint Mary 5. Anywhere, Anyplace At All

Personnel: Throw: Nate Wooley (trumpet); Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello) and Jason Roebke (bass)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Conversation I 2. 2. Matt 3. Delicate 4. 4. Peter 5. Lightspeed Particles I 6. Nate/Daniel I 7. Conversation II 8. Scratchy 9. Lightspeed Particles II 10. Nate/Daniel II

Personnel: Live: Nate Wooley (trumpet); Daniel Levin (cello); Peter Bitenc (bass) and Matt Moran (vibraphone)

December 12, 2009

Michael Bates’ Outside Sources

Live in New York
Greenleaf Paperback Series Vol 4

Andy Milne-Benoît Delbecq

Where is Pannonica?

Songlines SGL SA-1579-2

Harris Eisenstdat

Guewel

Clean Feed CF 123 CD

RIDD Quartet

Fiction Avalanche

Clean Feed CF 121 CD

EXTENDED PLAY: Canadians at Home and Aboard

By Ken Waxman

Ancient but apt, the saying “you can take a boy out of the country, but can’t take the country out of the boy” is more accurate if the country is Canada and the “boys” are male and female musicians in the United States. No matter how busy they are, improvisers are always ready to play north of the border. Last month, for instance, Toronto-born, Brooklyn-based drummer Harris Eisenstadt played two Toronto shows in one day before continuing an American tour.

Being Canadian doesn’t mean cutting yourself from other interests as Eisenstadt demonstrates on Guewel (Clean Feed CF 123 CD. Named for the Wolof word for griots, the band – cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, trumpeter Nate Wooley, French hornist Mark Taylor and baritone saxophonist Josh Sinton – plays the drummer’s arrangements of West African pop music and ceremonial rhythms which he learned overseas. The tunes contain elements of southern dance tracks and brass band marches. Each horn man has the melodic smarts to meld with Eisenstadt’s multi-faceted drumming, producing catchy yet non-simplistic tunes. With his hunting horn sonorities, innate lyricism and pumping vamps, Taylor is a standout. The sympathetic arrangements stack horn parts atop one another in such a way that every solo becomes almost three-dimensional. Should a tune like Rice and Fish/Liti Liti begins mellow and impressionistic, then a drum beat signals a timbral shift with Taylor’s jujitsu tongue-fluttering matched with near Mariachi-styling from the other brass players. N’daga/Coonu Aduna transcends its marching band flavor as Sinton riffs harshly, accelerating to whoops and brays, while the meandering brass trill rococo detailing around him and Eisenstadt clatters, pops and ruffs.

Another notable reedist is Canadian turned Brooklynite Quinsin Nachoff, featured on bassist Michael Bates’ Outside Sources Live in New York (Greenleaf Paperback Series Vol 4 Another Brooklyn-Canadian, Bates studied double bass at Banff Centre for the Arts and the University of Toronto. Other players are trumpeter Russ Johnson and drummer Jeff Davis. Playing all Bates compositions, the band is straight-ahead enough to maintain a swinging pulse, yet imaginative enough to give everyone free range for creative expression. Nachoff for example, punctuates one tune with gradually accelerating glissandi; Johnson another with high-pitched triplet tonguing. A bravura performance on Damasa finds everyone discovering theme variants. Johnson offers tremolo vibrations; Nachoff snuffled and exhaled split tones; Bates chiming runs and Davis opposite sticking plus blunt backbeats.

Davis is also part of the RIDD Quartet on Fiction Avalanche (Clean Feed CF 121 CD with CanCon provided by his spouse Kris Davis, who studied at the U. of T, and the Banff Centre. Outstanding on 10 group compositions, solos are weighed among Davis’ sensitive drumming, sweeping colors from distaff Davis, Reuben Radding’s tough, but restrained bass, and the kinetic runs of saxophonist Jon Irabagon. On Fiction Avalanche, the pianist percussively chords a counter melody that extends rasping bass slides and flattened reed vibrations. Monkey Catcher is a screaming blues expanded by Irabagon’s fortissimo split tones, yet tamed by Davis’ chord progression, key-clipping and flailing. Sky Circles is both atmospheric and lyrical. In unison the saxophonist’s buzzy trills and the pianist’s comping outline the theme. Segmented by winnowing squeals from Irabagon, the pianist moors the improvisation while advancing the theme chromatically.

Double the number of pianos appears on Where is Pannonica? (Songlines SGL SA- two1579-2 It was recorded at the Banff Centre by Paris-based Benoît Delbecq who also participates in Vancouver’s Creative Music workshop, and Torontonian Andy Milne, who studied at York and Banff before heading south. Delbecq admits that he couldn’t always distinguish his touch from Milne’s during the playback, but the usual division of labor finds him manipulating inside strings and using electronic loops, while Milne’s stays the acoustic course. Bouncing off each other’s ideas, the impression the two give is of subtle invention. Still each can surprise with the use of spiky patterns and percussive note clusters. Dividing the composing chores as well, the molded and layered tunes are paced so that when they unwind the polytonal qualities available from the soundboard and other innards decorate the keyboard’s strums and resonations. Probably the best number is Milne’s two-part Water’s Edge. Demonstrating quick-moving, overlapping tremolo lines, the piece modulates from andante to allegro and is harmonized by default. Spacious with cascading portamento, sharpened key jabs glance off bell-pealing-like string plunks.

Fine efforts all, these CDs preview what you’ll hear next time one of these expatriates gigs in Toronto.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 15 #3

November 2, 2009

Harris Eisenstdat

Guewel
Clean Feed CF 123 CD

RIDD Quartet

Fiction Avalanche

Clean Feed CF 121 CD

Andy Milne-Benoît Delbecq

Where is Pannonica?

Songlines SGL SA-1579-2

Michael Bates’ Outside Sources

Live in New York

Greenleaf Paperback Series Vol 4

EXTENDED PLAY: Canadians at Home and Aboard

By Ken Waxman

Ancient but apt, the saying “you can take a boy out of the country, but can’t take the country out of the boy” is more accurate if the country is Canada and the “boys” are male and female musicians in the United States. No matter how busy they are, improvisers are always ready to play north of the border. Last month, for instance, Toronto-born, Brooklyn-based drummer Harris Eisenstadt played two Toronto shows in one day before continuing an American tour.

Being Canadian doesn’t mean cutting yourself from other interests as Eisenstadt demonstrates on Guewel (Clean Feed CF 123 CD. Named for the Wolof word for griots, the band – cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, trumpeter Nate Wooley, French hornist Mark Taylor and baritone saxophonist Josh Sinton – plays the drummer’s arrangements of West African pop music and ceremonial rhythms which he learned overseas. The tunes contain elements of southern dance tracks and brass band marches. Each horn man has the melodic smarts to meld with Eisenstadt’s multi-faceted drumming, producing catchy yet non-simplistic tunes. With his hunting horn sonorities, innate lyricism and pumping vamps, Taylor is a standout. The sympathetic arrangements stack horn parts atop one another in such a way that every solo becomes almost three-dimensional. Should a tune like Rice and Fish/Liti Liti begins mellow and impressionistic, then a drum beat signals a timbral shift with Taylor’s jujitsu tongue-fluttering matched with near Mariachi-styling from the other brass players. N’daga/Coonu Aduna transcends its marching band flavor as Sinton riffs harshly, accelerating to whoops and brays, while the meandering brass trill rococo detailing around him and Eisenstadt clatters, pops and ruffs.

Another notable reedist is Canadian turned Brooklynite Quinsin Nachoff, featured on bassist Michael Bates’ Outside Sources Live in New York (Greenleaf Paperback Series Vol 4 Another Brooklyn-Canadian, Bates studied double bass at Banff Centre for the Arts and the University of Toronto. Other players are trumpeter Russ Johnson and drummer Jeff Davis. Playing all Bates compositions, the band is straight-ahead enough to maintain a swinging pulse, yet imaginative enough to give everyone free range for creative expression. Nachoff for example, punctuates one tune with gradually accelerating glissandi; Johnson another with high-pitched triplet tonguing. A bravura performance on Damasa finds everyone discovering theme variants. Johnson offers tremolo vibrations; Nachoff snuffled and exhaled split tones; Bates chiming runs and Davis opposite sticking plus blunt backbeats.

Davis is also part of the RIDD Quartet on Fiction Avalanche (Clean Feed CF 121 CD with CanCon provided by his spouse Kris Davis, who studied at the U. of T, and the Banff Centre. Outstanding on 10 group compositions, solos are weighed among Davis’ sensitive drumming, sweeping colors from distaff Davis, Reuben Radding’s tough, but restrained bass, and the kinetic runs of saxophonist Jon Irabagon. On Fiction Avalanche, the pianist percussively chords a counter melody that extends rasping bass slides and flattened reed vibrations. Monkey Catcher is a screaming blues expanded by Irabagon’s fortissimo split tones, yet tamed by Davis’ chord progression, key-clipping and flailing. Sky Circles is both atmospheric and lyrical. In unison the saxophonist’s buzzy trills and the pianist’s comping outline the theme. Segmented by winnowing squeals from Irabagon, the pianist moors the improvisation while advancing the theme chromatically.

Double the number of pianos appears on Where is Pannonica? (Songlines SGL SA- two1579-2 It was recorded at the Banff Centre by Paris-based Benoît Delbecq who also participates in Vancouver’s Creative Music workshop, and Torontonian Andy Milne, who studied at York and Banff before heading south. Delbecq admits that he couldn’t always distinguish his touch from Milne’s during the playback, but the usual division of labor finds him manipulating inside strings and using electronic loops, while Milne’s stays the acoustic course. Bouncing off each other’s ideas, the impression the two give is of subtle invention. Still each can surprise with the use of spiky patterns and percussive note clusters. Dividing the composing chores as well, the molded and layered tunes are paced so that when they unwind the polytonal qualities available from the soundboard and other innards decorate the keyboard’s strums and resonations. Probably the best number is Milne’s two-part Water’s Edge. Demonstrating quick-moving, overlapping tremolo lines, the piece modulates from andante to allegro and is harmonized by default. Spacious with cascading portamento, sharpened key jabs glance off bell-pealing-like string plunks.

Fine efforts all, these CDs preview what you’ll hear next time one of these expatriates gigs in Toronto.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 15 #3

November 2, 2009

Andy Milne-Benoît Delbecq

Where is Pannonica?
Songlines SGL SA-1579-2

Harris Eisenstdat

Guewel

Clean Feed CF 123 CD

RIDD Quartet

Fiction Avalanche

Clean Feed CF 121 CD

Michael Bates’ Outside Sources

Live in New York

Greenleaf Paperback Series Vol 4

EXTENDED PLAY: Canadians at Home and Aboard

By Ken Waxman

Ancient but apt, the saying “you can take a boy out of the country, but can’t take the country out of the boy” is more accurate if the country is Canada and the “boys” are male and female musicians in the United States. No matter how busy they are, improvisers are always ready to play north of the border. Last month, for instance, Toronto-born, Brooklyn-based drummer Harris Eisenstadt played two Toronto shows in one day before continuing an American tour.

Being Canadian doesn’t mean cutting yourself from other interests as Eisenstadt demonstrates on Guewel (Clean Feed CF 123 CD. Named for the Wolof word for griots, the band – cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, trumpeter Nate Wooley, French hornist Mark Taylor and baritone saxophonist Josh Sinton – plays the drummer’s arrangements of West African pop music and ceremonial rhythms which he learned overseas. The tunes contain elements of southern dance tracks and brass band marches. Each horn man has the melodic smarts to meld with Eisenstadt’s multi-faceted drumming, producing catchy yet non-simplistic tunes. With his hunting horn sonorities, innate lyricism and pumping vamps, Taylor is a standout. The sympathetic arrangements stack horn parts atop one another in such a way that every solo becomes almost three-dimensional. Should a tune like Rice and Fish/Liti Liti begins mellow and impressionistic, then a drum beat signals a timbral shift with Taylor’s jujitsu tongue-fluttering matched with near Mariachi-styling from the other brass players. N’daga/Coonu Aduna transcends its marching band flavor as Sinton riffs harshly, accelerating to whoops and brays, while the meandering brass trill rococo detailing around him and Eisenstadt clatters, pops and ruffs.

Another notable reedist is Canadian turned Brooklynite Quinsin Nachoff, featured on bassist Michael Bates’ Outside Sources Live in New York (Greenleaf Paperback Series Vol 4 Another Brooklyn-Canadian, Bates studied double bass at Banff Centre for the Arts and the University of Toronto. Other players are trumpeter Russ Johnson and drummer Jeff Davis. Playing all Bates compositions, the band is straight-ahead enough to maintain a swinging pulse, yet imaginative enough to give everyone free range for creative expression. Nachoff for example, punctuates one tune with gradually accelerating glissandi; Johnson another with high-pitched triplet tonguing. A bravura performance on Damasa finds everyone discovering theme variants. Johnson offers tremolo vibrations; Nachoff snuffled and exhaled split tones; Bates chiming runs and Davis opposite sticking plus blunt backbeats.

Davis is also part of the RIDD Quartet on Fiction Avalanche (Clean Feed CF 121 CD with CanCon provided by his spouse Kris Davis, who studied at the U. of T, and the Banff Centre. Outstanding on 10 group compositions, solos are weighed among Davis’ sensitive drumming, sweeping colors from distaff Davis, Reuben Radding’s tough, but restrained bass, and the kinetic runs of saxophonist Jon Irabagon. On Fiction Avalanche, the pianist percussively chords a counter melody that extends rasping bass slides and flattened reed vibrations. Monkey Catcher is a screaming blues expanded by Irabagon’s fortissimo split tones, yet tamed by Davis’ chord progression, key-clipping and flailing. Sky Circles is both atmospheric and lyrical. In unison the saxophonist’s buzzy trills and the pianist’s comping outline the theme. Segmented by winnowing squeals from Irabagon, the pianist moors the improvisation while advancing the theme chromatically.

Double the number of pianos appears on Where is Pannonica? (Songlines SGL SA- two1579-2 It was recorded at the Banff Centre by Paris-based Benoît Delbecq who also participates in Vancouver’s Creative Music workshop, and Torontonian Andy Milne, who studied at York and Banff before heading south. Delbecq admits that he couldn’t always distinguish his touch from Milne’s during the playback, but the usual division of labor finds him manipulating inside strings and using electronic loops, while Milne’s stays the acoustic course. Bouncing off each other’s ideas, the impression the two give is of subtle invention. Still each can surprise with the use of spiky patterns and percussive note clusters. Dividing the composing chores as well, the molded and layered tunes are paced so that when they unwind the polytonal qualities available from the soundboard and other innards decorate the keyboard’s strums and resonations. Probably the best number is Milne’s two-part Water’s Edge. Demonstrating quick-moving, overlapping tremolo lines, the piece modulates from andante to allegro and is harmonized by default. Spacious with cascading portamento, sharpened key jabs glance off bell-pealing-like string plunks.

Fine efforts all, these CDs preview what you’ll hear next time one of these expatriates gigs in Toronto.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 15 #3

November 2, 2009

RIDD Quartet

Fiction Avalanche
Clean Feed CF 121 CD

Harris Eisenstdat

Guewel

Clean Feed CF 123 CD

Andy Milne-Benoît Delbecq

Where is Pannonica?

Songlines SGL SA-1579-2

Michael Bates’ Outside Sources

Live in New York

Greenleaf Paperback Series Vol 4

EXTENDED PLAY: Canadians at Home and Aboard

By Ken Waxman

Ancient but apt, the saying “you can take a boy out of the country, but can’t take the country out of the boy” is more accurate if the country is Canada and the “boys” are male and female musicians in the United States. No matter how busy they are, improvisers are always ready to play north of the border. Last month, for instance, Toronto-born, Brooklyn-based drummer Harris Eisenstadt played two Toronto shows in one day before continuing an American tour.

Being Canadian doesn’t mean cutting yourself from other interests as Eisenstadt demonstrates on Guewel (Clean Feed CF 123 CD. Named for the Wolof word for griots, the band – cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, trumpeter Nate Wooley, French hornist Mark Taylor and baritone saxophonist Josh Sinton – plays the drummer’s arrangements of West African pop music and ceremonial rhythms which he learned overseas. The tunes contain elements of southern dance tracks and brass band marches. Each horn man has the melodic smarts to meld with Eisenstadt’s multi-faceted drumming, producing catchy yet non-simplistic tunes. With his hunting horn sonorities, innate lyricism and pumping vamps, Taylor is a standout. The sympathetic arrangements stack horn parts atop one another in such a way that every solo becomes almost three-dimensional. Should a tune like Rice and Fish/Liti Liti begins mellow and impressionistic, then a drum beat signals a timbral shift with Taylor’s jujitsu tongue-fluttering matched with near Mariachi-styling from the other brass players. N’daga/Coonu Aduna transcends its marching band flavor as Sinton riffs harshly, accelerating to whoops and brays, while the meandering brass trill rococo detailing around him and Eisenstadt clatters, pops and ruffs.

Another notable reedist is Canadian turned Brooklynite Quinsin Nachoff, featured on bassist Michael Bates’ Outside Sources Live in New York (Greenleaf Paperback Series Vol 4 Another Brooklyn-Canadian, Bates studied double bass at Banff Centre for the Arts and the University of Toronto. Other players are trumpeter Russ Johnson and drummer Jeff Davis. Playing all Bates compositions, the band is straight-ahead enough to maintain a swinging pulse, yet imaginative enough to give everyone free range for creative expression. Nachoff for example, punctuates one tune with gradually accelerating glissandi; Johnson another with high-pitched triplet tonguing. A bravura performance on Damasa finds everyone discovering theme variants. Johnson offers tremolo vibrations; Nachoff snuffled and exhaled split tones; Bates chiming runs and Davis opposite sticking plus blunt backbeats.

Davis is also part of the RIDD Quartet on Fiction Avalanche (Clean Feed CF 121 CD with CanCon provided by his spouse Kris Davis, who studied at the U. of T, and the Banff Centre. Outstanding on 10 group compositions, solos are weighed among Davis’ sensitive drumming, sweeping colors from distaff Davis, Reuben Radding’s tough, but restrained bass, and the kinetic runs of saxophonist Jon Irabagon. On Fiction Avalanche, the pianist percussively chords a counter melody that extends rasping bass slides and flattened reed vibrations. Monkey Catcher is a screaming blues expanded by Irabagon’s fortissimo split tones, yet tamed by Davis’ chord progression, key-clipping and flailing. Sky Circles is both atmospheric and lyrical. In unison the saxophonist’s buzzy trills and the pianist’s comping outline the theme. Segmented by winnowing squeals from Irabagon, the pianist moors the improvisation while advancing the theme chromatically.

Double the number of pianos appears on Where is Pannonica? (Songlines SGL SA- two1579-2 It was recorded at the Banff Centre by Paris-based Benoît Delbecq who also participates in Vancouver’s Creative Music workshop, and Torontonian Andy Milne, who studied at York and Banff before heading south. Delbecq admits that he couldn’t always distinguish his touch from Milne’s during the playback, but the usual division of labor finds him manipulating inside strings and using electronic loops, while Milne’s stays the acoustic course. Bouncing off each other’s ideas, the impression the two give is of subtle invention. Still each can surprise with the use of spiky patterns and percussive note clusters. Dividing the composing chores as well, the molded and layered tunes are paced so that when they unwind the polytonal qualities available from the soundboard and other innards decorate the keyboard’s strums and resonations. Probably the best number is Milne’s two-part Water’s Edge. Demonstrating quick-moving, overlapping tremolo lines, the piece modulates from andante to allegro and is harmonized by default. Spacious with cascading portamento, sharpened key jabs glance off bell-pealing-like string plunks.

Fine efforts all, these CDs preview what you’ll hear next time one of these expatriates gigs in Toronto.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 15 #3

November 2, 2009

Daniel Levin Quartet

Blurry
hatOLOGY 653

Drummer-less chamber-improv without compromise, this CD is more lucid than Blurry. Cellist Daniel Levin, trumpeter Nate Wooley, vibraphonist Matt Moran and bassist Joe Morris clearly and resourcefully demonstrate how extended techniques can be interlaced with shaded pointillism to create a satisfying group effort.

Throughout the cellist’s multi-toned arches and spiccato interjects plus the trumpeter’s smeary growls and plunger excavations are as germane for the evolution of the eight tracks as the bassist’s stolid thumps and the vibist’s shimmering key bounces. Encompassing smooth transitions from one instrument’s contributions to another’s, these mostly Levin-composed lines, feature uncommon exchanges involving say a splintered chromatic aside from Wooley, supported by fundamental connective plucks from Morris. Frequently polyphonic, the tunes are melded and molded using note clusters that move them through quasi-romanticism, stark improvisation and luminescent vibrations.

If Wooley’s muted purring plunger work and Levin’s pizzicato rhythms suggest Cootie Williams and Jimmy Blanton when “Sad Song” begins, then tonal dislocations attain English garden delicacy rather than Ellington’s robust depictions by the finale. Yet Morris’ striated double-stopping halts the slide to gentleness. Crackling brass flanges perform the same function on “Cannery Row” balancing too lustrous reverberations from the vibraphone.

Most distinctive is “209 Willard Street”, a gently shaded piece that could be defined as impressionism with prickly asides. Moderato and andante, the theme is depicted by the cello’s sonorous tones, yet the rubato exposition is cycled through enough excursions in double counterpoint from muted trumpet and staccato vibe smacks that sentimentality is leeched from it.

-- Ken Waxman

-- In MusicWorks Issue #102

November 20, 2008

Bruce Eisenbeil Sextet

Inner Constellation Volume One
Nemu 007

By Ken Waxman

Taking up most of the CD with his almost 47½-minute Inner Constellation suite, Manhattan-based guitarist Bruce Eisenbeil structures his composition to take advantage of the cohesive layered textures available from each section of his mini-orchestra. With the strings Jean Cook’s violin, Tom Abbs’s bass, and his own guitars; the horns trumpeter Nate Wooley and saxophonist Aaron Ali Shaikh; plus Nasheet Waits drums, the through-composed work is properly represented, while individual improvisations are showcased as well.

Most impressive among the contrapuntal theme comments are Cook’s angled, spiccato glissandi, with the flying staccato often straddling a walking bass line – when not creating pedal-point refraction by itself or exposing tremolo palpitations, echoed by unison horns. Wooley’s chortling runs are expressed open horn, while his quivering shakes and distinct multiphonics seem forced from his horn’s deepest reaches. Elsewhere, the brassman contributes heraldic tutti flourishes when needed, or in contrast, makes space for Abbs to discontinue his tandem time-keeping with Waits’ bouncing ruffs or wood-block resonation, for the bassist to showcase double-stopped, beneath-the-bridge scrapes and near wood-cracking slides.

Inner Constellation is resolved when the atmospheric polyphony of stop-time cries from the saxophone and whinnying asides from the trumpet uncover a sprightlier and speedier rhythmic variation from the guitarist’s supple finger styling. As the composition dissolves with a defining rasgueado from the composer, the promise of a Volume Two appears very inviting.

In MusicWorks Issue #100

April 3, 2008

Scott Tinkler

Backwards
Extreme Records XCD-058

Axel Dörner

Sind

Absinth Records aR 010

Chris Forsyth & Nate Wooley

The Duchess of Oysterville

Creative Sources CS 087 CD

Reinterpretation of instruments’ roles and timbres arises for different musicians in different places at different times. Additionally, not every player reconfigures his or her instrument and playing style in the same way. These factors have to be weighed in order to appreciate these solo trumpet (and etc.) sessions from three different continents.

For the past few years German trumpeter Axel Dörner has been involved with dissecting brass textures in his improv-oriented work; and Sind is a further refinement of that. Other brass explorers include Austrian Franz Hautzinger, Argentinean Leonel Kaplan plus Greg Kelley and Nate Wooley of the United States. Wooley, who like Dörner, also plays in more conventional settings, teams up with long-time associate guitarist Chris Forsyth for one brief (fewer than 25 minute) out-of-the-ordinary improv on The Duchess of Oysterville.

While Dörner and Wooley divide their experimental/conventional persona, Scott Tinkler, on the other hand, is a renegade mainstreamer. An award-winning Australian jazz trumpeter who has recorded and toured with such bands as Mark Simmons Freeboppers, Tinkler moves past his comfort level on Backwards, his first real-time, all -solo improvised session.

Although he also utilizes textures resulting from the interaction of his trumpet individually with a piano, a cymbal, a bass drum and a bucket of water; his antipodean date is the most conventional of the three CDs here. While the German and the America brass men have decided to use their trumpets as non-specific instrumental sound- generators, Tinkler is still incontrovertibly a trumpeter, with his three three-valve instrument a vehicle for solo jazz improvisation. The contrast is striking.

For instance on “Crank”, the Australian turns extended metallic whines and single brass bites into bel canto harmonics that use brassy triplets and grace notes to show off the instrument’s textural scope. This may be an impressive display of trumpeting, but how dissimilar is it to the showy displays of earlier high note specialists like Maynard Ferguson?

Similarly, Tinkler often uses octave jumps, braying tones and fluttering muted grace notes to measure chromatic progressions and to create two – or more – streams of sounds. Frequently they’re also Bizarro replications of the primary tone; other times they’re pinched, gravelly honks. But throughout the disc there’s never a doubt that what’s on show – and being commented on – is a trumpet’s extreme timbral range.

Perhaps Tinkler’s most successful sonic foray is “String Theory”, where he breaths tones onto a piano’s strings and manipulates the resulting vibrations with pedal pressure that amplifies and extends the horn notes. While hand-muted cadenzas and higher-pitched pig-like squeals are aurally reflected back as through a blurry mirror, this reflective trope isn’t new. Wallowing in faux plunger tones may be novel for a freebopper, but like Wallace Roney copping a Freddie Hubbard lick, Tinkler is actually solidifying rather than extending already existing brass properties.

Unique textures do arise from Wooley’s variations however. The Duchess of Oysterville involves hooking up barely-there breaths and ventilated squeaks with the disassociated oscillations and crinkling, interrupted current flow of Forsyth’s guitar. Throughout the entire piece an unidentified rhythmic tapping – is it the guitarist’s foot; the trumpeter’s palm? – is heard, yet it’s merely one of the sonic undercurrents. Elsewhere, for instance, a timbre could be ring modulator manipulation only to eventually reveal itself as the friction arising from harsh guitar-string strums. Then as Forsyth brushes the same strings, chromatic tongue-slapping echoing from the trumpet’s lead pipe and bell is heard as its counterpart. Ratcheting friction of breath against metal is another of Wooley’s motifs as is valve-depression. Meanwhile, the duo’s pronounced electronic signal pulsation, interrupted by mouth pops and short tonal vibrations lead to buzzing polyphonic layering. The CD’s climax: a single string stroke and amp waver.

If evaluating Backwards alongside The Duchess of Oysterville is a bit like comparing apples and oranges and apples, than consider what sort of exotic fruit Sind must be. Dörner’s more-than-63-minute magnum opus involves 22 identically named tracks, which range in length from more than 5½ minutes down to nine seconds and are designed to be played in any order. The clincher: five are completely silent.

A long-time sonic explorer, Berlin-based Dörner takes affiliated breaths and creates watery bubbling without utilizing additional props. On a later track, internal sewer-like sounds echo from inside the metal tube out of the bell. Soon an auxiliary whistle adds to the tremolo action, almost as if a blurry electronic output has been triggered.

Using circular breathing, rubato breaths continuously sound, while a single blow through the lead pipe produces the approximation of a dog whine that echoes back and forth, then fades away. The rhythmic undercurrent of Forsyth and Wooley is replicated as well in one episode where Dörner appears to be hitting the instrument with his palm while simultaneously expelling air. Not that air has to be expelled however. Another track features nose intakes that create kazoo-like blats.

Among the dense flanged pulsations and balloon-like deflations, growling buzz-saw pitches and blurry flutters are also heard. Rolling capillary tones pulsate and oscillate so that a vibration similar to that produced when a seashell is held against the ear is revealed. But this particular reverie ends with the added fillip of a concentrated Bronx cheer.

Despite all this – and his determined yet fanciful transformation of a brass instrument into a singular sound source – at one point Dörner confirms the trumpet’s identity. After an episode of basso rumbling and high-pitched peeps, he suddenly corkscrews out both a recognizable tongue flutter and a melodic phrase that could only come from a brass instrument.

Those interested in hearing a fine trumpeter showcase his command of the instrument can find much to praise in Backwards, which in retrospect may be an unfortunate title choice. Those fascinated by the potential forward motion of brass instruments may prefer Sind and/or The Duchess of Oysterville.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Sind: 1. 1≤n≤22 (03.09) 2. 1≤n≤22 (05.36) 3. 1≤n≤22 (04.22) 4. .1≤n≤22 (02.06) 5. 1≤n≤22 (03.12) 6. 1≤n≤22 (03.30) 7. 1≤n≤22 (02.42) 8. 1≤n≤22 (02.07) 9. 1≤n≤22 (01.53) 10. 1≤n≤22 (04.39) 11. 1≤n≤22 (01.16) 12. 1≤n≤22 (00.09) 13. 1≤n≤22 (04.04) 14. 1≤n≤22 (02.04) 15. 1≤n≤22 (05.30) 16. 1≤n≤22 (00.33) 17. 1≤n≤22 (02.28) 18. 1≤n≤22 (00.32) 19. 1≤n≤22 (01.44) 20. 1≤n≤22 (03.52) 21. 1≤n≤22 (02.09) 22. 1≤n≤22 (05.18)

Personnel: Sind: Axel Dörner (trumpet)

Track Listing: Duchess: 1. The Duchess Of Oysterville

Personnel: Duchess: Nate Wooley (trumpet) and Chris Forsyth (guitar)

Track Listing: Backwards: 1. Duet for Fingers and Bell End 2. Crank 3. Let 4. Slam it down Fast to be a Solo Man 5. Intercontinental Trumpet Fantasy 6. Grand Casa 7. The New Forwards 8. String Theory

Personnel: Backwards: Scott Tinkler (trumpet)

December 9, 2007

Chris Forsyth & Nate Wooley

The Duchess of Oysterville
Creative Sources CS 087 CD

Axel Dörner

Sind

Absinth Records aR 010

Scott Tinkler

Backwards

Extreme Records XCD-058

Reinterpretation of instruments’ roles and timbres arises for different musicians in different places at different times. Additionally, not every player reconfigures his or her instrument and playing style in the same way. These factors have to be weighed in order to appreciate these solo trumpet (and etc.) sessions from three different continents.

For the past few years German trumpeter Axel Dörner has been involved with dissecting brass textures in his improv-oriented work; and Sind is a further refinement of that. Other brass explorers include Austrian Franz Hautzinger, Argentinean Leonel Kaplan plus Greg Kelley and Nate Wooley of the United States. Wooley, who like Dörner, also plays in more conventional settings, teams up with long-time associate guitarist Chris Forsyth for one brief (fewer than 25 minute) out-of-the-ordinary improv on The Duchess of Oysterville.

While Dörner and Wooley divide their experimental/conventional persona, Scott Tinkler, on the other hand, is a renegade mainstreamer. An award-winning Australian jazz trumpeter who has recorded and toured with such bands as Mark Simmons Freeboppers, Tinkler moves past his comfort level on Backwards, his first real-time, all -solo improvised session.

Although he also utilizes textures resulting from the interaction of his trumpet individually with a piano, a cymbal, a bass drum and a bucket of water; his antipodean date is the most conventional of the three CDs here. While the German and the America brass men have decided to use their trumpets as non-specific instrumental sound- generators, Tinkler is still incontrovertibly a trumpeter, with his three three-valve instrument a vehicle for solo jazz improvisation. The contrast is striking.

For instance on “Crank”, the Australian turns extended metallic whines and single brass bites into bel canto harmonics that use brassy triplets and grace notes to show off the instrument’s textural scope. This may be an impressive display of trumpeting, but how dissimilar is it to the showy displays of earlier high note specialists like Maynard Ferguson?

Similarly, Tinkler often uses octave jumps, braying tones and fluttering muted grace notes to measure chromatic progressions and to create two – or more – streams of sounds. Frequently they’re also Bizarro replications of the primary tone; other times they’re pinched, gravelly honks. But throughout the disc there’s never a doubt that what’s on show – and being commented on – is a trumpet’s extreme timbral range.

Perhaps Tinkler’s most successful sonic foray is “String Theory”, where he breaths tones onto a piano’s strings and manipulates the resulting vibrations with pedal pressure that amplifies and extends the horn notes. While hand-muted cadenzas and higher-pitched pig-like squeals are aurally reflected back as through a blurry mirror, this reflective trope isn’t new. Wallowing in faux plunger tones may be novel for a freebopper, but like Wallace Roney copping a Freddie Hubbard lick, Tinkler is actually solidifying rather than extending already existing brass properties.

Unique textures do arise from Wooley’s variations however. The Duchess of Oysterville involves hooking up barely-there breaths and ventilated squeaks with the disassociated oscillations and crinkling, interrupted current flow of Forsyth’s guitar. Throughout the entire piece an unidentified rhythmic tapping – is it the guitarist’s foot; the trumpeter’s palm? – is heard, yet it’s merely one of the sonic undercurrents. Elsewhere, for instance, a timbre could be ring modulator manipulation only to eventually reveal itself as the friction arising from harsh guitar-string strums. Then as Forsyth brushes the same strings, chromatic tongue-slapping echoing from the trumpet’s lead pipe and bell is heard as its counterpart. Ratcheting friction of breath against metal is another of Wooley’s motifs as is valve-depression. Meanwhile, the duo’s pronounced electronic signal pulsation, interrupted by mouth pops and short tonal vibrations lead to buzzing polyphonic layering. The CD’s climax: a single string stroke and amp waver.

If evaluating Backwards alongside The Duchess of Oysterville is a bit like comparing apples and oranges and apples, than consider what sort of exotic fruit Sind must be. Dörner’s more-than-63-minute magnum opus involves 22 identically named tracks, which range in length from more than 5½ minutes down to nine seconds and are designed to be played in any order. The clincher: five are completely silent.

A long-time sonic explorer, Berlin-based Dörner takes affiliated breaths and creates watery bubbling without utilizing additional props. On a later track, internal sewer-like sounds echo from inside the metal tube out of the bell. Soon an auxiliary whistle adds to the tremolo action, almost as if a blurry electronic output has been triggered.

Using circular breathing, rubato breaths continuously sound, while a single blow through the lead pipe produces the approximation of a dog whine that echoes back and forth, then fades away. The rhythmic undercurrent of Forsyth and Wooley is replicated as well in one episode where Dörner appears to be hitting the instrument with his palm while simultaneously expelling air. Not that air has to be expelled however. Another track features nose intakes that create kazoo-like blats.

Among the dense flanged pulsations and balloon-like deflations, growling buzz-saw pitches and blurry flutters are also heard. Rolling capillary tones pulsate and oscillate so that a vibration similar to that produced when a seashell is held against the ear is revealed. But this particular reverie ends with the added fillip of a concentrated Bronx cheer.

Despite all this – and his determined yet fanciful transformation of a brass instrument into a singular sound source – at one point Dörner confirms the trumpet’s identity. After an episode of basso rumbling and high-pitched peeps, he suddenly corkscrews out both a recognizable tongue flutter and a melodic phrase that could only come from a brass instrument.

Those interested in hearing a fine trumpeter showcase his command of the instrument can find much to praise in Backwards, which in retrospect may be an unfortunate title choice. Those fascinated by the potential forward motion of brass instruments may prefer Sind and/or The Duchess of Oysterville.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Sind: 1. 1≤n≤22 (03.09) 2. 1≤n≤22 (05.36) 3. 1≤n≤22 (04.22) 4. .1≤n≤22 (02.06) 5. 1≤n≤22 (03.12) 6. 1≤n≤22 (03.30) 7. 1≤n≤22 (02.42) 8. 1≤n≤22 (02.07) 9. 1≤n≤22 (01.53) 10. 1≤n≤22 (04.39) 11. 1≤n≤22 (01.16) 12. 1≤n≤22 (00.09) 13. 1≤n≤22 (04.04) 14. 1≤n≤22 (02.04) 15. 1≤n≤22 (05.30) 16. 1≤n≤22 (00.33) 17. 1≤n≤22 (02.28) 18. 1≤n≤22 (00.32) 19. 1≤n≤22 (01.44) 20. 1≤n≤22 (03.52) 21. 1≤n≤22 (02.09) 22. 1≤n≤22 (05.18)

Personnel: Sind: Axel Dörner (trumpet)

Track Listing: Duchess: 1. The Duchess Of Oysterville

Personnel: Duchess: Nate Wooley (trumpet) and Chris Forsyth (guitar)

Track Listing: Backwards: 1. Duet for Fingers and Bell End 2. Crank 3. Let 4. Slam it down Fast to be a Solo Man 5. Intercontinental Trumpet Fantasy 6. Grand Casa 7. The New Forwards 8. String Theory

Personnel: Backwards: Scott Tinkler (trumpet)

December 9, 2007

Axel Dörner

Sind
Absinth Records aR 010

Chris Forsyth & Nate Wooley

The Duchess of Oysterville

Creative Sources CS 087 CD

Scott Tinkler

Backwards

Extreme Records XCD-058

Reinterpretation of instruments’ roles and timbres arises for different musicians in different places at different times. Additionally, not every player reconfigures his or her instrument and playing style in the same way. These factors have to be weighed in order to appreciate these solo trumpet (and etc.) sessions from three different continents.

For the past few years German trumpeter Axel Dörner has been involved with dissecting brass textures in his improv-oriented work; and Sind is a further refinement of that. Other brass explorers include Austrian Franz Hautzinger, Argentinean Leonel Kaplan plus Greg Kelley and Nate Wooley of the United States. Wooley, who like Dörner, also plays in more conventional settings, teams up with long-time associate guitarist Chris Forsyth for one brief (fewer than 25 minute) out-of-the-ordinary improv on The Duchess of Oysterville.

While Dörner and Wooley divide their experimental/conventional persona, Scott Tinkler, on the other hand, is a renegade mainstreamer. An award-winning Australian jazz trumpeter who has recorded and toured with such bands as Mark Simmons Freeboppers, Tinkler moves past his comfort level on Backwards, his first real-time, all -solo improvised session.

Although he also utilizes textures resulting from the interaction of his trumpet individually with a piano, a cymbal, a bass drum and a bucket of water; his antipodean date is the most conventional of the three CDs here. While the German and the America brass men have decided to use their trumpets as non-specific instrumental sound- generators, Tinkler is still incontrovertibly a trumpeter, with his three three-valve instrument a vehicle for solo jazz improvisation. The contrast is striking.

For instance on “Crank”, the Australian turns extended metallic whines and single brass bites into bel canto harmonics that use brassy triplets and grace notes to show off the instrument’s textural scope. This may be an impressive display of trumpeting, but how dissimilar is it to the showy displays of earlier high note specialists like Maynard Ferguson?

Similarly, Tinkler often uses octave jumps, braying tones and fluttering muted grace notes to measure chromatic progressions and to create two – or more – streams of sounds. Frequently they’re also Bizarro replications of the primary tone; other times they’re pinched, gravelly honks. But throughout the disc there’s never a doubt that what’s on show – and being commented on – is a trumpet’s extreme timbral range.

Perhaps Tinkler’s most successful sonic foray is “String Theory”, where he breaths tones onto a piano’s strings and manipulates the resulting vibrations with pedal pressure that amplifies and extends the horn notes. While hand-muted cadenzas and higher-pitched pig-like squeals are aurally reflected back as through a blurry mirror, this reflective trope isn’t new. Wallowing in faux plunger tones may be novel for a freebopper, but like Wallace Roney copping a Freddie Hubbard lick, Tinkler is actually solidifying rather than extending already existing brass properties.

Unique textures do arise from Wooley’s variations however. The Duchess of Oysterville involves hooking up barely-there breaths and ventilated squeaks with the disassociated oscillations and crinkling, interrupted current flow of Forsyth’s guitar. Throughout the entire piece an unidentified rhythmic tapping – is it the guitarist’s foot; the trumpeter’s palm? – is heard, yet it’s merely one of the sonic undercurrents. Elsewhere, for instance, a timbre could be ring modulator manipulation only to eventually reveal itself as the friction arising from harsh guitar-string strums. Then as Forsyth brushes the same strings, chromatic tongue-slapping echoing from the trumpet’s lead pipe and bell is heard as its counterpart. Ratcheting friction of breath against metal is another of Wooley’s motifs as is valve-depression. Meanwhile, the duo’s pronounced electronic signal pulsation, interrupted by mouth pops and short tonal vibrations lead to buzzing polyphonic layering. The CD’s climax: a single string stroke and amp waver.

If evaluating Backwards alongside The Duchess of Oysterville is a bit like comparing apples and oranges and apples, than consider what sort of exotic fruit Sind must be. Dörner’s more-than-63-minute magnum opus involves 22 identically named tracks, which range in length from more than 5½ minutes down to nine seconds and are designed to be played in any order. The clincher: five are completely silent.

A long-time sonic explorer, Berlin-based Dörner takes affiliated breaths and creates watery bubbling without utilizing additional props. On a later track, internal sewer-like sounds echo from inside the metal tube out of the bell. Soon an auxiliary whistle adds to the tremolo action, almost as if a blurry electronic output has been triggered.

Using circular breathing, rubato breaths continuously sound, while a single blow through the lead pipe produces the approximation of a dog whine that echoes back and forth, then fades away. The rhythmic undercurrent of Forsyth and Wooley is replicated as well in one episode where Dörner appears to be hitting the instrument with his palm while simultaneously expelling air. Not that air has to be expelled however. Another track features nose intakes that create kazoo-like blats.

Among the dense flanged pulsations and balloon-like deflations, growling buzz-saw pitches and blurry flutters are also heard. Rolling capillary tones pulsate and oscillate so that a vibration similar to that produced when a seashell is held against the ear is revealed. But this particular reverie ends with the added fillip of a concentrated Bronx cheer.

Despite all this – and his determined yet fanciful transformation of a brass instrument into a singular sound source – at one point Dörner confirms the trumpet’s identity. After an episode of basso rumbling and high-pitched peeps, he suddenly corkscrews out both a recognizable tongue flutter and a melodic phrase that could only come from a brass instrument.

Those interested in hearing a fine trumpeter showcase his command of the instrument can find much to praise in Backwards, which in retrospect may be an unfortunate title choice. Those fascinated by the potential forward motion of brass instruments may prefer Sind and/or The Duchess of Oysterville.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Sind: 1. 1≤n≤22 (03.09) 2. 1≤n≤22 (05.36) 3. 1≤n≤22 (04.22) 4. .1≤n≤22 (02.06) 5. 1≤n≤22 (03.12) 6. 1≤n≤22 (03.30) 7. 1≤n≤22 (02.42) 8. 1≤n≤22 (02.07) 9. 1≤n≤22 (01.53) 10. 1≤n≤22 (04.39) 11. 1≤n≤22 (01.16) 12. 1≤n≤22 (00.09) 13. 1≤n≤22 (04.04) 14. 1≤n≤22 (02.04) 15. 1≤n≤22 (05.30) 16. 1≤n≤22 (00.33) 17. 1≤n≤22 (02.28) 18. 1≤n≤22 (00.32) 19. 1≤n≤22 (01.44) 20. 1≤n≤22 (03.52) 21. 1≤n≤22 (02.09) 22. 1≤n≤22 (05.18)

Personnel: Sind: Axel Dörner (trumpet)

Track Listing: Duchess: 1. The Duchess Of Oysterville

Personnel: Duchess: Nate Wooley (trumpet) and Chris Forsyth (guitar)

Track Listing: Backwards: 1. Duet for Fingers and Bell End 2. Crank 3. Let 4. Slam it down Fast to be a Solo Man 5. Intercontinental Trumpet Fantasy 6. Grand Casa 7. The New Forwards 8. String Theory

Personnel: Backwards: Scott Tinkler (trumpet)

December 9, 2007

Reuben Radding

Fugitive Pieces
Pine Ear Music PME 002

By Ken Waxman

Proving his versatility once again, Brooklyn-based bassist Reuben Radding heads up a quartet dedicated to providing an American response to the sort of reductionist sounds usually associated with European and Japanese improvisers.

Not that there’s anything xenophobic about the pieces, pointedly linked to Canadian author Anne Michaels book, Fugitive Pieces “which our music has nothing to do with”, he writes. More generically, the seven pieces on the CD demonstrate that the restrained ethos, which Japanese call Onkyo can be adopted some players whose first alliance is with more demonstrative sounds.

Radding, for instance has recorded with hard blowers like saxophonist Daniel Carter and Wally Shoup, while percussionist Andrew Drury has recorded contemporary improv with his own band and composer Laura Andel’s large group. Conversely tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Matt Bauder plays with both jazz-improv combos and in a reductionist setting in his Chicago home town, while trumpeter Nate Wooley holds his own in one band with powerful trombonist Steve Swell, yet has also recorded a microtonal solo CD.

Despite this varied background, on Fugitive Pieces each ensures that individual statements are subordinated to group integration. Reduced to its hub, single strokes or pops from the rhythm section are on display along with brief solitary timbres from mouthpiece or reed. Most distinctively, a darkened, low frequency interface involving vibrating double bass strings manages to add a vibrating continuum to many tracks. Acoustic, yet with the properties of electronica, this recurring undulation defines the session as much as any upfront soloing.

Fugitive Pieces’ half dozen shorter tracks serve as extended preludes and variations on “The Gradual Instant”, the CD’s final tour-de-force, which takes up nearly 32½ minutes. Along the way they experiment with various – for the most part memorable – strategies. Drury, for example, scrapes and scrubs ruffs and cymbal lacerations or exposes skittering single tone drum pummeling, while Radding reveals a buzzy, woody bass resonation. Functioning with tag-time precision, Bauer and Wooley don’t let the differences between reed and brass affect their output. Rarely fortissimo, the oscillating vibrations that are as much spittle and hiss as breaths and timbre, these polyphonic modulations evolve and dissolve.

Again the watchword is connection, as on “Vertical Time” shattering and rolling percussion allows prolonged split tone squeaks from trumpet and wet tongue slaps from the saxophone develop into heraldic, brassy unison fluttering in double counterpoint over low-pitched arco timbres from the bassist. Eventually Wooley’s tremolo interface is interlocked with Radding’s restrained bowing, resulting in a protoplasmic shifting centre.

With all strategies writ large “The Gradual Instant” defines itself from the get-go with a concentrated rumbling pitch that could conceivably come from any one or any combination of instruments. Harsh drum stick force soon underlines the undulating line, extended with reed tongue slaps and mouthpiece osculating brass textures. As triggered bass echoes combine with delicately tapped drum tops and cymbals, a single vibrating vertical reed pitch interrupted by puffs of near motionless air from the trumpet until all nodes are concentrated in such a way that the combination appears to be polyphonic parts of a single larger instrument. As these duple tones slacken, intermittent percussive scuffs, drags and pops, low-pitched sul tasto double bass strokes force the horns’ distant echoing harmonies to take on extra vibrations, underscored in the finale by determined bass stroking recurring in definite intervals. Transformed to one ego-less entity, the ululations produced by all four gradually leech away to silence.

Perfectly timed and interlocking work show that the bassist and associates can memorably operate on low flame for more than an hour without losing the improvisational thread.

In MusicWorks Issue #96

November 21, 2006

Daniel Levin Quartet

Some Trees
Hatology 632

Near flawless chamber jazz, cellist Daniel Levin’s quartet inhabits eight unforced improvisations without ever turning effete or enervated.

Inspired soloing from all concerned – especially the leader, and trumpeter Nate Wooley – provides some of the session’s impetus, while the remainder comes from the powerful rhythmic thrust of Joe Morris’ bass and Matt Moran’s vibes. Morris – a dual threat, best-known as a guitarist – provides the ostinato underpinning for many tunes; while Moran, a member of the Claudia Quintet, sounds quivering key vibrations as often as accompanying wallops, especially when playing in unison with Morris.

Levin, who also works with drummer Whit Dickey and alto saxophonist Rob Brown, uses this session to showcase his compositions plus pay homage to such jazz elders as Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman and Steve Lacy. Throughout, the delicate balance between formalism and freedom is maintained, without falling definitely either way. New to this band is trumpeter Nate Wooley. But the innovative brassman, who partners trombonist Steve Swell among others, brings memorable flair to the proceedings.

Establishing his presence from the first, Wooley’s slurred half-valve work on the lead-off track “It’s For You”, marks his accommodation to the already existing combo with less experimental playing than his solo sessions. Throughout, however, he easily links Levin’s sawing strokes and Moran’s moderato quivers, while on the atmospheric title tune he adopts sequenced grace notes à la mid-period Miles Davis. Often his chromatic obbligatos are matched in double counterpoint by splayed shuffle bowing from the cellist that’s both lyrical and legato.

Careful linear vibe reverberation adds another facet to the interplay as Moran’s pitter-pattering joins the others in polyphonic expression on Lacy’s “Wickets”. With Morris stroking traffic-directing pulses on the bottom, the brass man and the cellist extend themselves still further. Wooley narrows his exhalation to squeal narrowed timbres and Levin amplifies this outpouring with spiccato patterns. Metaphorically adapt, he skims his strings from sul ponticello to sul tasto tones.

Memorably impressive throughout, the only time Some Trees loses a bit of momentum is when Moran lays out on Coleman’s “Morning Song”, the final tune. Interlocking musical alliances which have worked so well until then suddenly reveal a deficiency with one voice subtracted.

Other than that minor caveat, the CD satisfies on all counts.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. It’s For You 2. Out To Lunch 3. Some Trees 4. Sitting On His Hands 5. Zolowski 6. Wild Palms 7. Wickets 8. Morning Song

Personnel: Nate Wooley (trumpet); Matt Moran (vibes [except 8]); Daniel Levin (cello); Joe Morris (bass)

October 17, 2006

GREG KELLEY

i don't want to live forever
Little Enjoyer1/Gameboy 73

NATE WOOLEY
Wrong Shape to be a Story Teller
Creative Sources 038 CD

Docked in the farthest reaches of brass experimentation, neither of these CDs is designed for a casual listener. Unvarnished real-time records of solo trumpet manipulation, together the twitters, shrills, hisses and silences are as far removed from melodic as you can get. Both single track improvisations – Jersey City, N.J.’s trumpeter Nate Wooley’s is a touch under 51¼ minutes, and Boston’s Greg Kelley’s a few seconds longer than 36 minutes – they prove that in the right hands, the textures from three-valve brass can be as expressive yet as unidentifiable as those that come from reed instruments or even electronics.

An old hand at so-called non-electronic electronica, this is Kelley’s third solo trumpet CD. Unlike the earlier ones, he uses shrill, extended spring drum vibrations to contrast with his cyclone-force trumpet breaths here. Someone who often works with bassist Mike Bullock or saxophonist Bhob Rainey in minimalist surroundings, he has also recorded full-out Free Jazz with saxophonist Paul Flaherty and drummer Chris Corsano. Close in age and experience with Kelley, most of Wooley’s other recordings have been in a group context. He is part of saxophonist Assif Tsahar’s massive New York Underground Orchestra and in the Blue Collar trio with trombonist Steve Swell and percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani.

Preoccupied in general with the idea of using the breath as an organic meter, this CD features Wooley experimenting with tongue pops, lip sucking, capillary twitters and pipe scrapes. Separated by meaningful silences, this exercise in extended technique runs from concentrated, moderato electro-acoustic waveforms to shrill wavering movements. Sometimes the buzzing growls and budgie-like twitters stand on their own. Other places the circulation of air through the lead tube takes on the characteristics of a whistling kettle coming to a boil.

Valve manipulation is at a minimum, but as these watery slurs and shrill wavering tones concentrate into a protoplasmic, wiggling mass other vibrations can be sensed as well. Studio crackle and hiss are worked into the piece as are hollow tube resonation and tongue slaps. One, perhaps inadvertent, dramatic peak arrives mid-way through with a single whack of the trumpet against the mic. Then after squeaky oscillations, the finale involves a sequence of very fast rhythmic pulses followed by what sounds like glass shattering.

A fine first effort which alternately mocks and accurately lives up to its title, WRONG SHAPE TO BE A STORY TELLER would honestly have been more memorable if it was even more concise.

I DON’T WANT TO LIVE FORVER is brief enough. It also attains more textural diversity, when the piercing friction of metal rasping against metal interpolates shrill spring-drum timbres into the wind-whistling ambient sound. Wedded to radio wave static interludes and expanses of silence, without these jarring high-pitched shrills, the elongated rumbling reverb may have been too lulling. Dedicated to the shaping of respiration, the track implies that Kelley’s undulating trumpet has connected with fresh sonic pulsations before it cuts off the sound source for an ending… or a new beginning.

Axel Dörner and Birgit Ulher among others are pushing the bounds of trumpet improvisation from a European perspective. Bringing that concept further, Kelley and Wooley are doing the same thing in the United States.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Forever: 1. i don't want to live forever

Personnel: Forever: Greg Kelley (trumpet and spring drum)

Track Listing: Wrong: Wrong Shape to be a Story Teller

Personnel: Wrong: Nate Wooley {trumpet}

February 20, 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

DONEDA/WRIGHT/NAKATANI

from between
soseditions 801

BLUE COLLAR
__ is an apparition
Rossbin RS 016

Tatsuya Nakatani’s irregular percussion pulse is what holds these two trio sessions together. Yet the skills of the Japanese-born, South Bronx, N.Y.-based improviser and sound artist merely underline the objectives of the two hornmen with whom he’s associated on either CDs.

Firmly committed to microtonal improv, saxophonists Michel Doneda and Jack Wright on FROM BETWEEN and brassmen Nate Wooley and Steve Swell on _IS AN APPARATION express themselves in non-linear sound pictures in such a way that not only Free Jazz, but electronics -- albeit without electronic instruments -- are referenced. This far into the 21st century, both duos make their point succinctly. But Wooley/Swell/ Nakatani’s band Blue Collar is more novel, since the brassmen create with three valves each, while sopranino and soprano saxophonist Doneda and soprano and alto saxophonist Wright do so with a multiplicity of manipulated keys.

Oregon-born, New York-based Wooley’s experience encompasses work with saxophonist Assif Tsahar’s big bands and combo work with Denver’s Fred Hess and easterners Andrew D’Angelo and Wright, who is featured on FROM BETWEEN. On this CD though, Wooley utilizes the trumpet not as a brass instrument, but as a sound source, moving into the area explored by Boston’s Greg Kelley and Berlin’s Axel Dörner.

More surprising is the presence of Swell, one of the most accomplished New York ‘bone man, usually found applying modern gutbuck smears in the Free Jazz bands of bassist William Parker and saxist Sabir Mateen, among many others. Here he proves that the intricacies of circular breathing and split-second flutter tonguing are part and parcel of his repertoire.

On the almost 13-minute “[92]”, the longest and most abstract track, the percussionist’s work seems more upfront since it’s a good five minutes before the first brass smears appear. Before that the two hornmen have confined themselves to bubbling bell motions plus the clatter and scrape of valves being loosened. Eventually Swell turns to foreshortened slide positions, while Wooley flutter-tongues and squeezes tones until both combine for a single line, decorating it with vocalized back of the throat grainy mumbles and mouthpiece thumps.

Nakatani’s gentle pings give way to elongated drumstick scratches on cymbal tops in “[22]” and a constant cowbell smack that sounds as if he’s playing the intro to “Mississippi Queen” at one-tenth its speed on “[40]”. The former sounds as if it’s produced by one electronically tinged instrument, where echoing -- and watery -- buzzing from the cymbal’s resound are followed by the oscillating pressure of carefully emphasized brass timbres. The latter finds the brass tones divided among the patting of bass drum and cymbals, with the trombonist turning chromatic plunger tones into a tugboat honk and the trumpeter producing a mosquito-like drone.

Percussion outlay includes gong reverberation, spinning ratchets, drum thunder and times when Nakatani seems to be creating extra colors by either rubbing a washboard or loosening the screws and connections on his kit. Similarly the brass inventory features the men blowing nothing but colored air through the bell, wordless growls and hollers, middle of the horn blats and snarls, mouthpiece kisses, sluicing plunger tones and pedal point blows.

Every technique appears to be on show on “[49]”, as prestissimo snarls and circular breathed whispers from the trumpet meet basso watery blasts from the trombonist. As emphasized triplets and half-valve effects appear from both, the percussionist rattles flams and bounces, strokes his sets of bells and produces ruffs from his snare. When Swell uses his plunger to exact bass notes and Wooley trills rubato on top, Nakatani strikes his cymbal with wire brush and repeatedly resonates a large gong.

A more familiar grouping of reeds and percussion, FROM BETWEEN highlights the increasing internationalism of Free Music. There’s the Japanese-born Nakatani and Easton, Penn.-resident Wright, who has concentrated on the saxophone after a time in academe and in revolutionary politics. Besides Wooley, he has played with Dörner, British bassist Tony Wren and toured the U.S. with Doneda in 2003. Toulouse-based Doneda is a self-taught musician, whose improvising partners include American saxist Bhob Rainey, French percussionist Lê Quan Ninh, dancers, poets and actors.

Another session that offers up electronic-like sounds with acoustic instruments, this CD’s major piece is also its first track. More than 30½-minutes long “hands behind hands” features the saxophonists exploring every tint of the reed color wheel as the percussionist provides a restrained canvas for their aural brush strokes.

Beginning with bubbling raspberries and glottal stops from the saxes, sawing tones from a drumstick on cymbals gradually presage a shrill squeezed tone from sopranino, languidly expelled air, an occasional honk and elongated chirrups. As Nakatani feeds irregular hollow thwacks and gamelan-like cymbal hits to the others, the reedman turn to squealing higher pitched oscillations that then break up into click-clanking bumps, wavering slurs and tongue stops. Before Wright finishes with extended fog horn timbres, his tones sound as if they’re coming from a comb and tissue paper kazoo. Meanwhile, Doneda produces short, jagged squeaks. Small animal reverberations from the sopranino turn to flutter-tongued single tones as the sopranoist blows colored air through his horn. Finally the drummer counters reed mouse peeping with what sounds like a top spinning in the studio.

Then, one reedist’s split-tone harmonies combine with the other’s police-whistle shrills for quivering unison tones that come in and out of focus. Following an extensive period of circular breathing from both horns, one continues to resonate curved tones while the other produces more strident trilled notes. Eventually the joined tones start to resemble sine wave electronics or perhaps ponticello strings.

Faster and more abrasive, the two shorter pieces that follow offer more of the same atonalism, with tongue slaps, French kissed reeds, minute sax whoops, snorts, barks, feral murmurs and mumbled flutter tonguing. More inhibited than with the two brassmen, Nakatani’s quirky accompaniment includes tam tam-like single colored tones and chime resonation. Only in a couple of instances does he use ear splitting multi-hued screeches that result from the drag of a drumstick on a cymbal top.

As an aside, the CD must have the least visually friendly wrapping of any contemporary CD. Packaged in fine, dark cardboard, details are embossed on the black paper and are difficult to make out without eyestrain.

Despite this visual affront, the sounds on this CD and the other are more examples of steadily evolving free music. They can and should be appreciated for unvarnished veracity.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: between: 1. ‘hands behind hands’ 2. ‘of pipes and roots’ 3. ‘... open this surface to clouds’

Personnel: between: Michel Doneda (sopranino and soprano saxophones); Jack Wright (soprano and alto saxophones); Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion)

Track Listing: apparition: 1. [92] 2. [19] 3. [40] 4. [22] 5. [31] 6. [63] 7. [49] 8. [48]

Personnel: apparition: Nate Wooley (trumpet, voice); (Steve Swell, trombone, voice); Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion)

November 8, 2004