Moment's Notice
Reviews of Recent Media
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Jenny Scheinman
All Species Parade
Royal Potato Family
All Species Parade is Jenny Scheinman’s first album in five years since the violinist and drummer Allison Miller co-released Parlour Game (Royal Potato Family) in 2019. This multi-stylistic session was inspired by Scheinman’s return to her native Humboldt County home in 2012, after leaving New York City. Scheinman considered the idea of a musical homage to Humboldt for years, specifically the area known as the Lost Coast, a wild region of coastal northern California, where she was raised. Inspired by the natural environment, she wrote songs about the local flora and fauna and the colorful characters in her hometown, capturing the unique diversity of the Pacific Northwest.
To realize this project, Scheinman assembled a quintet consisting of guitarist Bill Frisell, pianist Carmen Staaf, bassist Tony Scherr, and drummer Kenny Wollesen, who are joined by guest artists Julian Lage and Nels Cline on a handful of tunes; Lage plays acoustic guitar on three tracks while Cline plays electric guitar on two. Adept at all shades of Americana, this line-up is perfectly in sync with Scheinman’s aesthetic sensibilities. Unlike her previous efforts, which tended towards shorter songs, this double album contains ten long pieces that allow her bandmates to stretch out.
Scheinman opens the date with “Ornette Goes Home,” a playful mix of down-home fiddling and free jazz. Scheinman swings vibrantly as Staaf and Frisell meld, while Scherr and Wollesen generate a swelling rhythmic background. Afterwards, the band shifts into the melodious cinematic vibe of “Every Bear That There Ever Was,” which takes its name from the 1932 novelty hit, “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic,” but also references Henry Mancini’s “Pink Panther Theme.”
The album’s centerpiece is an eclectic three-movement suite inspired by the extended works of Duke Ellington that evokes the region’s natural beauty, as well as the environmental threats to it. The calm and measured “Jaroujiji,” dedicated to the Wiyot tribe, opens with Staff’s stately piano and features Lage’s intuitive fretwork accompanied by shimmering cymbals and pulsating bass, while Scheinman’s mournful violin accentuates the somber mood. “The Sea Also Rises” is a foreboding interlude that spotlights Staaf’s dramatic piano musings and Wollesen’s percussive accents. The groove-laden title track on the other hand is a lively feature for Scheinman and Frisell to demonstrate their unique chemistry; equally fluent in jazz and folk idioms, their shared sensibilities invoke myriad traditions throughout this extended vamp.
The remaining program highlights assorted styles. “Shutdown Stomp” is a rustic cross between a hoedown and gypsy jazz, with Lage’s nimble acoustic serving as a foil to Scheiman’s sinewy violin and Staaf’s honky-tonk piano. The pastoral mosaic “House of Flowers” is woven by Scheinman in concert with Cline and Frisell’s’ ethereal offerings and Schaff’s ostinato figures. Named for Cape Mendocino, “The Cape” teams Cline with Frisell to conjure a reverberating surf music groove underpinned by Wollesen’s relentless drive and Staaf’s nostalgic organ washes. The leader sits out the placid “With Sea Lions,” enabling Frisell’s ringing guitar to provide a cloudlike atmosphere for Staff’s shimmering piano and Wollesen’s cymbal flourishes. The album ends with the elegiac “Nocturne for 2020,” a pensive reflection on that pandemic year. Scheinman’s sorrowful lamentations and Lage’s sensitive fingerpicking exude a distinctive Flamenco feel, with empathetic support from the band.
Scheinman’s lyrical playing is imbued with pre-war jazz vernacular and buoyed by superb technique. Her colleagues are given ample room to explore, with Frisell revealing a deep connection with Scheinman, who has worked as a side-person with the guitarist on numerous occasions. Despite the variety of styles, there is a through-line to this project that lends the proceedings a sense of cohesion. All Species Parade succeeds in evoking pastoral wonder, yet also captures the more visceral aspects of the natural world. According to Scheinman, she wanted to convey “A feeling of being part of something bigger than ourselves. Something powerful, fragile and constantly changing. Something alive. I want to recreate that experience of awe.” Mission accomplished.
–Troy Collins
Thumbscrew
Wingbeats
Cuneiform Rune 520
Wingbeats is the eighth Thumbscrew album in ten years. The trio of guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Michael Formanek, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara are highly respected in creative improvised music circles, which puts the onus on the prolific group to avoid repetition. Wingbeats is the latest recording by the ensemble to emerge from one of the trio’s frequent City of Asylum residencies in Pittsburgh. These regular sequestrations allow the band to workshop new pieces with an attention to detail that would otherwise be unfeasible in a less focused setting. Benefitting from the creative synergy that occurs when collaborators share physical proximity for an extended period, Thumbscrew offers another enthralling program that features three tunes from each band member along with a cover of a classic Charles Mingus composition.
Each work was specifically conceived for this lineup, instilling a sense of stylistic cohesiveness to the proceedings. The album opens with Fujiwara’s contrapuntal title track, which juxtaposes melodic simplicity with rhythmic complexity; Halvorson augments sinuous arpeggios with fluid pitch bends while Formanek maintains a lockstep rhythm with Fujiwara’s metrically complex drum part. Providing contrast, the hushed mystery of “Greenish Tents” reveals the subtle side of Halvorson’s compositional abilities. Designed to showcase Fujiwara’s vibraphone – an instrument that has expanded the group’s sonic palette as of late – the chamber-esque piece features interplay so intertwined that it can be difficult to differentiate between guitar and vibes.
Formanek’s “How May I Inconvenience You” opens with an introductory bass solo that leads into the main theme, where Halvorson’s serpentine fretwork takes flight before Fujiwara dramatically concludes it. Fujiwara’s “Irreverent Grace” also begins with a focused bass statement that is sensitively elaborated upon by Halvorson, with incandescent vibraphone work from the composer. Halvorson’s writing for this line-up also continues to favor the rhythm section’s adroit interactions, as demonstrated by the playful tempo displacements of “Phyrric.” Formanek takes lead position again, with Halvorson in a more supportive role before Fujiwara takes the reins. The close coordination between the bassist and guitarist can also be heard in “Wayward,” where Formanek deftly counterpoints Halvorson’s graceful glissandos.
“Knots” begins with taut funk rhythms that are reprised by the conclusion, with a center section spotlighting Halvorson rapidly navigating a vertiginous chord progression. Although Halvorson uses a range of electronic effects, she largely eschews distortion on this set, as demonstrated by the unadorned rubato melody of “Singlet,” which is buoyed by a countermelody from Formanek, lending the abstract three-way conversation the feel of a round. Once again emphasizing the close harmonizing of Fujiwara’s luminous vibraphone and Halvorson’s crystalline guitar, Formanek’s “Somewhat Agree” introduces an intricate pattern, with a complementary line from Formanek. The piece diverges into a brisk contrapuntal excursion whose structure is repeatedly challenged by improvisational breaks – foremost among them being Halvorson’s increasingly phantasmagoric extrapolations. The album concludes with a spry reading of Mingus’ “Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk.” The trio’s freewheeling take embraces the composition’s subtle shifts in tempo and rhythm, augmenting its lyrical theme with shades of collective chaos that ends the set with a joyful noise.
One of the most consistently compelling ensembles in today’s creative improvised music scene, Thumbscrew is still capable of surprising listeners, remaining accessible enough to have broad appeal while exploring more challenging aesthetics. Another engrossing effort, Wingbeats balances sophisticated writing with adroit improvisational interplay, offering a listenable program of both the expected and unexpected – a captivating document of the harmonious chemistry shared by three master musicians.
–Troy Collins
Charles Tolliver Music Inc.
Live at the Captain’s Cabin
Reel to Real RTRCD014
Recorded at the Edmonton club in June 1973, Live at the Captain’s Cabin adds significantly to the documentation of a latter, less celebrated iteration of one of the great small groups of the early 1970s. Charles Tolliver’s quartet with John Hicks, Clint Houston, and Clifford Barbaro was a worthy successor to the groundbreaking lineup that the trumpeter formed with Strata East co-founder Stanley Cowell, and was rounded out by Cecil McBee and Jimmy Hopps, born of necessity when the pianist’s time was increasingly devoted to his work with the Heath Brothers, and McBee became the first-call bassist of many era-shaping leaders.
This unit had its own profile that served Tolliver’s searing trumpet and his hard-hitting compositions very well. Hicks had more volcanic capacity than Cowell and was quicker in deploying it. Houston was every bit the heat-generating virtuoso as McBee, and Barbaro’s intensity approached that of Billy Cobham and Alphonse Mouzon. During the course of, presumably, two sets, they performed compositions that appeared on the ‘72 Loosdrecht festival performance (first issued by Strata East on 2 LPs and later on CD by Black Lion) and/or the December ‘73 Tokyo concert (a Strata East release reissued on Tolliver’s first Mosaic Select collection).
Given the changing lineups – Reggie Workman and Alvin Queen were on board for the festival concert, while Cowell performed in Tokyo – there is a remarkable consistency throughout this period in the pinpoint precision with which Music Inc. expressed a fervent, exclamatory spirit. The above-average source recording facilitates the considerable joy of revisiting Tolliver compositions like “Earl’s World,” “Impact,” “Truth,” and “Stretch,” as well as Music Inc.’s take on Neal Hefti’s “Repetition.” When the music is as alive as it is on Live at the Captain’s Cabin, calling it an archival release comes up real short.
–Bill Shoemaker
Judith Wegmann + Jens Ruland + Robert Torche
Kon.Takte
ezz-thetics First Visit 104
Pianist Judith Wegmann, percussionist Jens Ruland, and sound designer/electronics performer Robert Torche developed the project New3Art to investigate the repertoire of compositional work of the 1960s, improvisation, and commissions of work by Swiss composers, delving into “an engagement with space and time [which] has been a central aspect of our individual musical language for years. The exploration of extremes in terms of tension, slowness, and duration.” Their first document of this project, Kon.Takte, provides a superlative introduction to their approach, with performances of “Spiegelung (improvisation by all three musicians),” Karlheinz Stockhausen’s electroacoustic piece “Kontakte (For Electronic Sounds, Piano and Percussion),” and “Geschichten der Gewalt,” a piece by Swiss composer, saxophonist, and sound artist Antoine Chessex. Each explores sound worlds which fuse the acoustic resonances of piano and percussion with electronics and processing for sonically distinctive results.
“Spiegelung” opens the album with the rumbling musings of pattering percussion, low-end piano string scrapes, and resounding piano frame creaks and jolts. Gradually, electronic processing of the acoustic instruments is introduced, and the sounds accrue into a slowly evolving tapestry. Once the sound space is established, details of struck prepared piano, stummed strings, hanging notes and ringing chords, wooden percussive clatter, metallic sonorities of chimes and gongs, and rubbed drum heads emerge from layered, dark-hued, reverberant electronics. There is a patience to the way the three interact, always attentive to the collective proceedings. The mix adeptly balances the inherent qualities of the acoustic instruments with the unfolding real-time electronic processing into a multifaceted amalgamation of painstakingly placed events.
The central piece of the recording is a reading of “Kontakte.” Stockhausen originally created the work as a four-channel tape piece, recording percussion instruments and methodically looping them and modulating the tape speeds to transform pulses into tones which were then further treated with filters and feedback. The composer explained that the title “refers both to contacts between instrumental and electronic sound groups and to contacts between self-sufficient, strongly characterized moments. In the case of four-channel loudspeaker reproduction, it also refers to contacts between various forms of spatial movement.” After its initial creation, the composer expanded the work with the addition of notated piano and percussion parts first performed in 1960 by percussionist Christoph Caskel and pianist David Tudor. The tape was designed as the sequencing of independent “Moments” with varying densities and dynamics and the challenge of realizing the piece is to meld the acoustic actions of piano and percussion with the electronics.
Wegmann, Ruland, and Torche fully embraces those challenges, steadfastly charting the trajectory of the piece as the sounds constantly shift across the stereo plane. The interaction of flurried and hammered piano motifs, refracted patterns of struck percussion, and the darting electronics are woven together with striking exactitude, and sterling stamina. Their keen attention to their respective parts and the mercurially shifting electronics is in evidence throughout. The three fully immerse themselves in the kaleidoscopic, engulfing 35-minute soundscape which the recording captures with masterful clarity, demanding repeated listens to absorb the structural depth of the piece.
Chessex’s “Geschichten der Gewalt” closes the album, providing an effective pairing with the other two pieces. The composer specifies that the pianist play the repeated figures of their part as fast as possible while the percussionist is asked to slow or accelerate the agitated simmer of their part played on three large ride cymbals whose resonances are each matched to specific “frequency zones.” Electronic frequency glissandos are played through two speakers placed behind the piano and cymbals, “gluing the instruments together.” While the piano and percussion parts are in constant motion, the respective slowly transforming ebb and flow of velocity creates a unifying thread to the massing of the three sound sources, developing a unifying flow to the piece. The resolute trajectory of the piece, from intersecting discrete piano and percussion to enveloping cumulative orchestration is performed with rapt confidence. Programmed together, the release is a notable introduction to this project while also providing an incisive reading of “Kontakte.”
–Michael Rosenstein