Undivided

Movement Between Clouds
Multikulti Project MPT 002

By Ken Waxman

Sometimes there can be too much of a good thing. At least that’s how it appears since American clarinetist Perry Robinson has joined the Undivided combo, adding his voice to what previously had been an indivisible whole, despite every member being from a different country.

Not that there’s anything particularly grating about the playing of the clarinetist who has followed a singular path since the 1960s. However by appending another reed sound to that of Polish bass clarinet, clarinet and tarogato player Wacław Zimpel, means that tentativeness infects this CD, compared to the band’s stronger debut session as a quartet, recorded five months previously. As a matter of fact, figuring that this record of a Warsaw concert is programmed in chronological order, all five don’t seem to be fully in sync until the final track, the nearly 20-minute “What A Big Quiet Noise.”

Here, finally the piano voicing of long-time American expatriate Bobby Few becomes as muscular as it had previously been metronomic. Ukrainian bassist Mark Tokar, somewhat of an invisible – or inaudible – man beforehand, produces string rumbles and launches into a well-paced linear solo, encompassing downwards rubs and col legno pops. Add the focused flams and cymbal colors from German drummer Klaus Kugel, and suddenly the rhythm section is boiling with barely restrained tension. As Few concentrates on tremolo patterning the reedists combine for altissimo extensions, with Robinson flutter tonguing in response to a pressurized obbligato from Zimpel. Eventually the piece climaxes with sluicing double counterpoint from both horns, complemented by strummed piano chords plus ruffs and rolls from the drummer.

Putting aside the hesitancy that results from a band slowly integrating a new member, this final track demonstrates that Undivided could soon be undivided once again. It probably is. Considering this CD is two years old, more recent documents would tell the story.

Tracks: Hoping The Morning Say; Moves Between Clouds; What A Big Quiet Noise

Personnel: Perry Robinson: clarinet; Wacław Zimpel: bass clarinet, clarinet and tarogato; Bobby Few: piano; Mark Tokar: bass; Klaus Kugel: drums and percussion

--For New York City Jazz Record December 2011

December 5, 2011

Lou Grassi Po Band

Live at the Knitting Factory Vol. 1 (with Marshall Allen)
Porter Records PRCD 4051

Nu Band

Live in Paris

NoBusiness Records NBCD 16

By Ken Waxman

Recorded almost exactly seven years apart, these high-class discs illuminate drummer Lou Grassi’s hard-hitting yet rhythmically sophisticated style in two advanced group contexts. At home with styles ranging from ragtime to free form, Grassi advances any project in tandem with other players, never drawing undue attention to himself.

A welcome document involving the drummer’s long-constituted – since 1995 – Po Band, Live at the Knitting Factory features flutist/saxophonist Marshall Allen, linchpin of the Sun Ra Arkestra, guesting with the 2000 version of the group. Besides Grassi, trumpeter Paul Smoker, trombonist Steve Swell and clarinettist Perry Robinson are featured along with the late bassist Wilber Morris. That same year, Grassi hooked up with three other mature players to form the Nu Band. Live in Paris, recorded in 2007, demonstrates the close cooperation which has allowed it to flourish. Although each Nu Band member is a leader in his own right – as are Po Band’s participants – the CD’s extended tracks demonstrate the group’s collegial if not musical harmony. Mercurial reedist Mark Whitecage and fiery brass man Roy Campbell have an ideal setting for their contrapuntal connections, while the drummer and solid bassist Joe Fonda – who plays in as many bands as Grassi – not only keep the music on an even keel, but solos impressively.

An example occurs on “Avanti Galoppi”, where Fonda’s taut string spanks and steady pumps unite with the drummer’s cymbal splashes and rim shots to press Whitecage’s dyspeptic clarinet squeals and Campbell’s brassy triplets further outside. In contrast, Morris’ work with the Po Band, finds the bassist and Grassi refracting textures off one another without melding. Although the two produce an ostinato upon which the horns can improvise, Morris is a more delicate stylist than Fonda. The bassist, who died in 2002, plucks cleanly and clearly, with notes audible among accelerating polyphony from four horns. More physical, and at points rhythmically vocalizing alongside his bass strokes, Fonda can both press the tempo forward chromatically and fracture the beat with quick spiccato runs or double-stopped bowing.

A similar comparison exists with the two trumpeters. Meeting Allen’s curlicue twists and Swell’s guttural cries midway, Smoker frequently unleashes razor-sharp triplets which are gradually stretched, stacked and sluiced to fragmented textures. On “Bolero Francaise”, meanwhile, Campbell showcases brassy trumpet flourishes. His arching, open-horn joins Whitecage’s segmented split tones in accelerating to dissonant tones and circular-breathed multiphonics.

If these extended techniques characterize Whitecage’s style as he solos during Live in Paris, Allen, his opposite number with the PO Band, operates more like a jokey, disruptive factor. With an alto saxophone style that encompasses curlicue line twists, ghost tones and altissimo squeals, Allen creates situations where contrapuntal opposites are united by stacking reed tones with his screeching on top and Robinson’s moderato tongue fluttering on the bottom; or massing the brass and reed players to riff in measured forward motions.

Although Po Band veteran Robinson’s role is muted amid the aggressive polyphony, Swell asserts himself with little problem. Stretching the instrumental tessitura, his plunger trombone blasts and back-of-throat cries match stuttering reed jumps and rooster-like crowing from Smoker, plus bell-ringing and solid thumps from Grassi. “LoRa” is a trombone showcase as the cacophony eases so that his tailgate slurs and blustering grace notes are clearly heard.

Over the past quarter century, Grassi has been in demand to play with North American and European musicians on both continents. Hearing how group dynamics are intensified by his work, as demonstrated on these sessions, explains his appeal.

Tracks: Marshalling Our Spirits; RePoZest; LouRa

Personnel: Paul Smoker: trumpet; Steve Swell: trombone; Perry Robinson: clarinet; Marshall Allen: alto saxophone and flute; Wilber Morris: bass; Lou Grassi: drums

Tracks: Somewhere Over the Seine; Bolero Francaise; Avanti Galoppi; The Angle of Repose

Personnel: Roy Campbell, Jr.: trumpet, pocket trumpet, flugelhorn and flute; Mark Whitecage: alto saxophone and clarinet; Joe Fonda: bass; Lou Grassi: drums and percussion

-- For All About Jazz New York February 2011

February 12, 2011

Anat Fort

A Long Story
ECM 1994

Symmetrical and ornamental, Israeli-born pianist Anat Fort’s compositions and playing seem geared more towards the comfort zone of her guests – bassist Ed Schuller, drummer Paul Motian and reedist Perry Robinson – than establishing a unique identity.

Crucial to this arrangement is the drummer, who once piloted the influential combos of Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans. His delicate cymbal taps and perceptive bounces shape the sounds as much as the tyro keyboardist. New York-based for a decade, among other projects, Fort was recently commissioned to create new arrangements of Israeli music. But no Middle Eastern tinges appear on this CD.

Instead Fort announces herself as a stylist wedded to the contemporary American piano tradition. Prodigious in her playing, she balances bravura invention from both hands with a gift for composing serpentine melodies. Most spectacular is “Not the Perfect Storm” where Motian’s circular rolls and rebounds accompany low-frequency pedal- expanded timbres and plinking chordal patterns. In just over seven minutes she references Broadway ballads and Romantic waltzes. Only on “Rehaired”, with staccato key clipping, though, does she move away from expected formulas.

It’s up to the perpetually inventive Robinson to disrupt the CD’s placidity. On “As Two/Something ‘Bout Camels” his split-tones growls spur Schuller to add gravitas to his feature – which pays dividends when the energized pianist instantly integrates his last notes into her solo. “Chapter Two” finds the clarinetist’s sluicing altissimo merging Klezmer-like cries and semi-classical glissandi causing Fort to turn her touch forte.

On her next CD, the pianist’s originality should be as prominent as her invention is here.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For CODA Issue 335

October 3, 2007

Carnival Skin

Carnival Skin
Nemu 003

By Ken Waxman

Blending extended techniques from a variety of genres – including modern notated composition – with elements of Ornette Coleman-like free jazz, Carnival Skin proclaims its individuality in instrumentation.

That’s because the German-American quintet has as one lead voice, Bruce Eisenbeil’s guitar – an instrument whose sinuous fills and rough chording aren’t often heard in hard-core free improv situations. Similarly the overall instrumentation is less than commonplace.

German drummer Klaus Kugel, who works with New York trombonist Steve Swell; and bassist Hillard Greene, who has backed pianist Cecil Taylor; provide the proper rhythm, yet often simultaneously function as complementary soloists. Meanwhile the so-called front line includes the guitar of Eisenbeil, who has also partnered with Swell; the trumpet and piccolo trumpet of younger Peter Evans, who also performs contemporary classical and electro-acoustic music; and veteran clarinetist Perry Robinson, whose affiliation with the New Thing goes back to the early 1960s. Improvising together in twos and threes worked so well that the five decided to attempt this band session.

That such disparate backgrounds should interlock so completely is a tribute both to the players and the material, with the CD including one tune from each band member and the short, group-improvised title track. It features wide intervals floated on Robinson’s rubato upper register warbles, high-note slurs from Evans’ piccolo trumpet and Eisenbeil’s ostinato strumming.

So at ease with jazz language that he at various times suggests Grant Green’s bristling funk-like single-note picking and at others the accelerated slurred fingering and flanged delays that various plectrumists in Coleman’s Prime Time bands aimed at, Esenbeil is no monomaniacal guitar hero.

Instead a more common strategy is blending his cascading fills and sandpaper-like string abrasions with the horn players’ polyphonic output. On the brassman’s “Monster” for instance, the guitarist’s string snapping meets Evans’ quickly vibrated triplets and Robinson’s narrowed tongue squeaks. Elsewhere the trumpeter expresses himself in harder and faster bent notes or plunger choruses and the clarinetist does the same with flute-like whistles or emphasized smears.

Fixated on solid time-keeping throughout, Greene also provides the CD’s most ambitious piece in the almost-12-minute “Iono”. Written as a series of near-concertos, the modal-like melody showcases ringing and resonating guitar rasgueado; low intensity but steady arco lines from the bass; press rolls from Kugel; and backward moving discordant triplets and slurs from the horns, which climax with Robinson’s buzzy, low-pitched solo.

Melodic and discordant at various times – often within the same composition –

Carnival Skin, the band, meets all the compositional challenges presented to it. Carnival Skin, the CD, confirms that unhackneyed, contemporary improvisation can be created no matter the instrumentation or the players’ age or background.

In MusicWorks Issue #96

November 21, 2006