Moment's Notice
Reviews of Recent Media
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Sophie Agnel + John Butcher
Rare
Victo cd138
Tentative but at the same time astonishingly sure-footed, like walking a tightrope blindfolded. It should be no surprise that Rare is so compelling. Butcher and Agnel’s 2019 duet on La Pierre Tachée, part of the saxophonist’s 5 platter vinyl series on Ni Vu Ni Connu, was outstanding, and his October 2024 set with the pianist at Cafe Oto during a residency to celebrate his 70th birthday was one of the highlights. This set recorded five months previous at the 40th edition of the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, presents in five parts totaling just under 50 minutes, though whether separate pieces or extracts culled from a longer performance is not clear. In truth this pairing is just one of many utterly empathetic groupings which Butcher has cultivated, those going under the monikers Vellum (with Tony Buck and Magda Mayas), The Last Dream Of Morning (with John Edwards and Mark Sanders), and Fictional Souvenirs (with Pat Thomas and Stale Liavik Solberg), being just some of the more recent. What all these combinations demonstrate is a sensibility to listen and respond instantaneously in a way which sidesteps expectation and transcends the principals’ chosen instruments.
And likewise, in partnership with Agnel, a track record in no way signifies predictability or rote rejoinder. The duo format ensures an appealing transparency and generates an even more potent communion. Agnel works her own unique palette, sourced as much from under the bonnet as from the keys, although she draws on both simultaneously at times. Her language is one of unconventional textures – clangs, scuffs, plinks, shimmers – but what differentiates her from the increasing ranks of similarly adventurous pianists is her placement and timing. Butcher too has developed this aspect of his playing to a fine art. Few can emulate the way in which he bends technique to his will, melding a staggeringly detailed command of multiphonics and timbre with an overarching sense of musicality. But amid the welter of abstraction both still on occasion harken back, if not to the tradition, then to something slightly less esoteric, a glimmer of a Cecil Taylor or the shade of an Archie Shepp.
Together they fashion a constantly changing equipoise where calibrations of weight, nuance, and attack hover in an exquisite balance. At times silence becomes a palpable participant. A lovely passage arrives in “Rare II” after Agnel abruptly drops out of a crescendo, leaving Butcher’s questioning tenor squawks alone in the void, until eventually quiet piano string twangs offer reassurance that the piece will continue, albeit in very different form. Such keen manipulation of dynamics, manifest through mounting tension and likely, although not guaranteed, release, plays out with abundant drama throughout. Sometimes that stems from the sudden discontinuities, as if having juiced one gambit, they elect to move on to something totally different. A shared privileging of bracing contrast further accentuates the chiaroscuro. Each part intensifies the other, whether at the macro where poised intermittent swells transmute into madcap dashing exchanges, or at the micro where a dark piano rumble vies with grasshopper stridulation sibilance, or even where internalized as when Agnel juxtaposes bass register crashes with a music box tinkling.
Although created in the moment, the performance remains immensely satisfying on repeated listens, Exhibit A for the contention that improvisation is spontaneous composition.
–John Sharpe
Michaël Attias
Quartet Music Vol. I: LuMiSong
Out of Your Head OOYH025
Michaël Attias
Quartet Music Vol. II: Kardamon Fall
Out of Your Head OOYH031
Out of Your Head Records issued two recordings by criminally underrecognized saxophonist Michaël Attias within the past year. The Israel-born, Paris-raised, Minneapolis-schooled New York resident recorded two different quartets over the last four years, both of which are now available, together or separately, depending on the recording format chosen.
Featuring pianist Santiago Leibson, bassist Matt Pavolka, and drummer Mark Ferber, the band that would become LuMiSong first performed together during Covid lockdown in July 2020. The following summer they went into the studio to record, after a gig at Barbès in Brooklyn. Attias edited four of the takes during the following year, overdubbing keyboards and additional saxophones in post-production.
Quartet Music Vol.I: LuMiSong begins with the propulsive “#63 (Settled),” which establishes the date’s dynamic sensibility with a 21-bar form in an odd meter. Attias’ ardent alto delivers a strident theme, bolstered by Leibson’s echoplex augmented Wurlitzer, while the rhythm section accentuates lush moods. The energy escalates in “Mister Softee Is A Front,” a gnarly post-bop construction that leans into the avant-garde. The only unedited piece on the first session, it features an episodic structure that stops and restarts several times, with a twisted, looping melody that highlights a bristling solo from Attias, followed by an exuberant excursion from Leibson. Providing respite, the multi-sectional “NME” begins as a somber exploration, building slowly to a groove-laden vamp with layers of overdubbed saxophones and synths. The recording ends with “Hexway Liner,” another intervallic, 21-bar number that spotlights Leibson’s spiky pianism and guest cellist Christopher Hoffmann’s stirring arco.
For the follow-up, Quartet Music Vol. II: Kardamon Fall, Attias retained pianist Leibson and replaced the rhythm section with bassist Sean Conly and drummer Tom Rainey. While the instrumentation remains essentially the same, Attias’ approach is different, as the record was made post-pandemic, live-in-the-studio, using all acoustic instruments without post-production overdubs or edits. Attias continues to juxtapose ballads with barnburners however, an all-inclusive aesthetic that finds similarities between moods, rather than differences. That sensibility can be heard in the album’s first two pieces: “Kardamon Spring (Femme Centaure)” is slow-moving, ethereal and stark; “Trinité” on the other hand is far more brazen, presenting a bent, repeated line that finds the quartet interweaving and spiraling into a frenzied climax. Heard in sequence, they set the stage for the remainder of the program. Tunes like “Manners” draw from both aspects, building from hushed impressionism to heated abstraction and back again. Numbers like the glacially paced “Avrils” reward close listening: although Attias’ breathy romanticism dominates, Conly’s delicate bass solo stands out, supported by nuanced piano and sensitive percussion. On all these pieces, density is balanced with spaciousness, providing a mirror image of the previous session.
Regardless of the rhythm section, Attias sounds fully invested in the rapport shared by each of his bands, who navigate written passages with the same gracefulness that they bring to improvised sections. Taken together, these two quartet sessions provide a telling overview of Attias’ expansive aesthetic. Balancing infectious grooves and oblique melodies with prismatic tone colors and variegated textures, he conceives of a music that seethes with momentum, whether revealed or implied.
–Troy Collins
Duck Baker
Breakdown Lane: Free Jazz Guitar 1976-1998
ESP 5100
A master improviser goes anywhere at any moment with fluidity, fluency, and conviction. Duck Baker always meets this standard, but Breakdown Lane, a survey of solos – and two duets with Eugene Chadbourne – recorded between the mid ‘70s and the late ‘90s, is exceptionally broad in scope and persuasive in its statement about the compatibility between vernaculars and free improvisation. The inclusion of Ornette Coleman’s “Peace,” Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the A Train” (a duet with Chadbourne) and Thelonious Monk’s “Straight No Chaser,” certainly speak to Baker’s grounding in jazz. However, on most of the collection’s 16 tracks, Baker keeps jazz and other idioms at arm’s length, close enough to dance with if called upon by the moment, but sufficiently distant to sidestep when indicated. He does both very well.
Glints of sundry wellsprings are strewn throughout the album. The difference between Baker and other guitarists is the speed with which he evokes nodal points like the Middle East and the American South, or alludes to the jazz tradition, and then heads off in another direction. These moments subsequently become highlights of bigger pictures, dabs of color that extend the depth of field and sharpen the perspective of Baker’s instant compositions. In country music, breakdown refers to a piece where all hands solo and also to devices within a performance that creates contrasts; more often than not, the tracks compiled for Breakdown Lane are studded with savory contrasts. It is a remarkable retrospective.
–Bill Shoemaker
Joe Chambers + Kevin Diehl + Chad Taylor
Onilu
Eremite MTE 82
“Summit meeting” is a term that has all but fallen out of use in music commentary, but it is applicable to the eponymous debut of Onilu, the trio of Joe Chambers, Kevin Diehl, and Chad Taylor. (Onilu is Yoruba for drummer.) For over a half-century, Chambers has brought an incisive compositional sensibility to percussion-centric music; and while most of the eight compositions are credited to Sonic Liberation Force leader Diehl and/or the nearly ubiquitous Taylor, Chambers’ gravity centers the proceedings. While there is abundant energy and exhilaration throughout the album, there is also a current of palpable solemnity that, arguably, can best be mustered in tandem with an esteemed elder like Chambers.
There is a gentle seesawing between pieces rooted in traditional materials like “Nyamaropa,” a piece that first appeared on the Nonesuch Explorer classic now titled Zimbabwe: The Soul of Mbira – Traditions of the Shona People, and recently composed works like Taylor’s buoyant “Mainz,” a piece which Jeff Parker has recorded two notable contrasting versions. Even when the intensity of the material approaches a boil, as on “A Meta Onilu” when all three man a drum kit, each stroke seems prescribed by ancient protocol. With each listening, not only do the layers in every piece vibrate more vividly, but each piece becomes more entwined with the others.
Onilu is unassumingly profound. It does not shout from the ramparts, nor does it shake its fist at the oppressors. It relays a message that has been passed down through centuries, despite it being waylaid by the middle passage and repressed through enslavement and its aftermath. It is a message of determination and resolve and ultimate conviviality. It is a recording that meets the current moment.
–Bill Shoemaker
Sylvie Courvoisier + Mary Halvorson
Bone Bells
Pyroclastic PR40
With Bone Bells, the third album by the formidable duo, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and guitarist Mary Halvorson, two of the premier talents on the NYC scene, are on a roll. Building on the acclaim for Halvorson’s Amaryillis ensemble and Courvoisier’s storied trio and audacious interpretation of Stravinsky’s Rite Of Spring with fellow pianist Cory Smythe, this outing will only cement their standing yet more.
After a near decade-long association, both know each other well enough to write expressly for this outlet and it shows. They retain the convention of contributing concise compositions, four from each, which reinforce their egalitarian ethos. While their debut Crop Circles repurposed some potent existing tunes, and the follow up Searching For The Disappeared Hour was more introspective and enigmatic, the program this time out contains a number of striking cuts, all infused with a sense of innate playfulness. And, of course, the playing is exemplary. Courvoisier combines chamber rigor, jangling preparations and willful digressions into a signature style distinguished by sudden about faces. Meanwhile Halvorson sounds like no-one else. Her crisp single line picking, alternately springy and spiky, remains readily identifiable after just a few notes, notwithstanding her diversity of pitch flexing effects and attacks. And the interest extends to the writing as well with themes which are as fascinating as the settings for improvisation they engender.
Take the slightly dissonant lilt of the title track, where Halvorson solos with deliciously sighing guitar backed by against-the-grain piano chords, while in turn Courvoisier sparkles as she veers from precise runs into bravura sweeping glissandos, while never straying outside the framing parameters. Or the dramatic juxtapositions and switchbacks of “Esmeralda,” establishing the volatile ground for the subsequent exchanges. On her pieces especially, Halvorson utilizes the pianist’s independence of limb to increase depth and complexity. Courvoisier deploys a clanking ostinato stumble on “Folded Secret,” then more of a basso continuo on “Beclouded”, maintaining these constructs even when soloing herself, bluesy and wayward on the former, flashing at glinting hyper speed on the latter.
Courvoisier’s charts are similarly eventful: “Nags Head Valse,” named after an English pub they came across on tour, advances with a suitably tipsy gait, while on “Silly Walk,” “Salt Peanuts” like instrumental shouts jostle with more measured ruminations, only to give way to a thorny dialogue of explosive crashes, scrubbed textures and rattling interventions. Even beyond such detours into the weeds, odd quirks enliven the proceedings yet more, right until the very end where the final “Cristellina e Lontano” closes on a single sustained bass register note. An unexpected and thoughtful culmination to a dazzling exhibition.
–John Sharpe
