Jason Robinson

The second installment  of Massachusetts saxophonist Jason Robinson’s musical mediation on his family history is from the same session as Ancestral Numbers I. It has the same high calibre associates and unfortunately an almost identical album cover. In this case however the design near-replication also means that Robinson, who plays tenor and soprano saxophones and alto flute here has created another eight tunes that confirm his compositional smarts, shown to their best advantage by the same group of experienced improvisers: Michael Dessen (trombone); Joshua White (piano); Drew Gress (bass) and Ches Smith (drums and glockenspiel).

A pocket edition of his New York-based Janus Ensemble, this mixture of West Coast (Dessen, White) and East Coast (Gress, Smith), players offers sympathetic interpretation of the mostly FreeBop material which reflects the bittersweet feeling that generated these compositions following the recent death of Robinson’s maternal grandmother. This isn’t program music however. It makes its own case instrumentally, without fastening on specific people and incidents in the extended Robinson family history.

For instance note the characteristics of “Roots and Routes” and “Malachi”. The first has a bright stop-time introduction propelled by unison horn work pulse that later bisects the narrative as powerhouse drumming maintains horizontal swing while altissimo tenor saxophone multiphonics break out from unison horn vamps to mate with dynamic piano patterning and key plops. Unsurprisingly highlighting hearty double bass pulses, “Malachi” shows off Smith’s restrained drumming and bright glockenspiel coloring at the same time as Robinson’s split-tone variations intertwine with Dessen’s gutbucket swoops and emphasized plunger echoes slowly collapse until a group expression spontaneously and promptly cut off development.

Some tunes are mellow and balladic; still others fluid and bouncy, while “Wattensaw” is the freest, Layering glockenspiel clanks, squeezed trombone triplets, savvy keyboard fingering and Robinson’s flute flutters into a pyramid of sound, it also manages to allay the solos with an emphasized groove.

A tougher, livelier and solo rich alternate version of the title tune also on Ancestral Numbers I correlates the two discs and leaves hope that another mediation on the Robinson family history may be in the offing.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Second House 2. Malachi 3. Potentiality 4. Remembering Water 5. Roots and Routes 6. Wattensaw 7. Vestibule 8. Ancestral Numbers (alt)

Personnel: Michael Dessen (trombone); Jason Robinson (tenor, soprano saxophones and alto flute); Joshua White (piano); Drew Gress (bass) and Ches Smith (drums and glockenspiel)