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Joe Maneri + Tyson Rogers + Jacob Braverman
In The Shadow, First Visit
ezz-thetics 116
For a self-trained musician who didn’t gain much recognition until he was in his sixties, reed player Joe Maneri left an immense musical impact. A leading force in the “Third Stream” department at New England Conservatory for close to 40 years starting in the early 1970s, Maneri focused his deep knowledge of music theory on honing a personal approach to 72-pitch microtonality in both improvisation and composition. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that Maneri began to find a wider audience, releasing recordings with his son Mat in quartet and a variety of trio formats on ECM, Leo Records, and hatOLOGY, most of which are now out of print. His career slowed down substantially in his final years with only a few posthumous discoveries released after his death in 2009.
Which brings us to In The Shadow, First Visit, a newly unearthed session Maneri recorded in 2002 with pianist Tyson Rodgers and drummer Jacob Braverman. From the opening of “I Love the World,” with Maneri’s crying tenor pairing with his incantatory vocal, the group carves out a strategy of independent, circuitous lines. The three musicians eschew a conversational approach to interaction, instead developing parallel trajectories which shape the collective arc of the improvisations. In the liner notes, Art Lange perceptively describes the approach as “asymmetrical, asynchronous constructs that develop from simultaneous, complimentary but peripheral gestures of the mind and heart.” Maneri’s unique approach to microtonality with supple glisses, burred, crying vocalizations, barbed intonation and lithe, mutable phrasing are immediately recognizable. He relishes the open format of the trio, parsing out his lines with a distinctive sense of tension and release.
While his playing is an anchoring force throughout, Rodgers and Braverman each carve out individual courses in the fluidly evolving pieces. Rodgers deploys a malleable sense of harmonics and atonality with craggy, angular phrasing that intersects with the reed player’s choice of notes rather than serving as any source of chordal foundation. Notes, clusters, and plucked strings are assiduously placed with a keen ear toward the balance of density and silence providing an effective foil to the sinuous reed lines. Braverman is an astute choice for this setting. Circumventing any sense of propulsion, even at its freest, his playing is based around timbral choices and a pointillistic approach. He constructs his parts from spare snare rolls, metallic cymbal slashes, and tuned toms and bass drum punctuations, moving in concert with the tracks of his partners.
The eight pieces are each concise studies. They each quickly develop their own approaches toward collective investigation, probing at the edges of the spontaneous structures and finding succinct ways of bringing them to a close. The trio mates never rush, developing an organic ebb and flow throughout. The trio pieces are augmented by the piano/drums duos of “Interlude 1 – In The Shadow” and “Interlude 2 – Of the Mountain,” the second of which is particularly striking, building to fleet, angular cascades of piano flurries and fractured percussion salvos. “At Waterfall’s Edge,” the longest piece at just over 10 minutes, is a clarinet/piano duo which incisively mines Maneri’s approach toward free lyricism. ezz-thetics label head Werner Uehlinger was a strong proponent of Joe Maneri’s music while he was alive. With In The Shadow, First Visit, he continues that support, bringing to light a significant addition to the reed player’s relatively scant discography.
–Michael Rosenstein
Myra Melford
Splash
Intakt CD 436
Splash is a new trio led by pianist and composer Myra Melford, featuring bassist Michael Formanek and drummer/vibraphonist Ches Smith. The project is the latest installment of Melford’s work inspired by post-abstract expressionist painter Cy Twombly. The sudden action implied by the trio’s name reflects the kinetic energy in Twombly’s paintings, making Splash a truly exciting debut; one can easily hear that without having seen Twombly’s art – although the painting from the Lepanto cycle on the album cover certainly suggests the vibrant abstractions within.
Melford has studied Twombly’s work since witnessing a major retrospective of his at the Museum of Modern Art three decades ago. Over the last several years, Melford has explored this interest with her quintet Fire and Water (named after a series of Twombly paintings); composed a set of Twombly-related music for MZM (a trio with harpist Zeena Parkins and koto player Miya Masaoka); and plans to investigate similar ideas with bassist Joëlle Léandre. Splash is Melford’s latest response to this artistic legacy, starting a new chapter in her august career as a bandleader.
Recalling her 1990s work with the collective Trio M (with bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Matt Wilson), Formanek and Smith are also renowned improvisers, composers, and bandleaders. Together with Melford, they evoke the dynamic volatility of Twombly’s work, but as alert listeners and adept accompanists their versatile range also facilitates chamberlike options, especially when Formanek plays arco and Smith switches to vibraphone. These occasional diversions yield a delicate beauty, flush with impressionistic filigrees and pointillist asides. Beyond such relief, Melford’s expansive compositions for this trio strike a balance between formal design and vivacious spontaneity.
Jagged lyricism contrasts with steady grooves on the opener, “Drift,” where Melford’s flinty cadences careen over the rhythm section’s driving momentum before a pneumatic unaccompanied bass interlude is complemented by luminous vibraphone and piano, followed by fervent improvisations on vibes and then drums over a mesmerizing piano vamp. The more experimental “The Wayward Line” follows with frenzied collective abstraction passing through reflective tonalities, culminating in a probing piano passage at a frantic tempo. “Freewheeler” similarly surges with unflagging force, before suddenly downshifting to highlight Smith’s dulcet vibraphone, which contrasts with the leader’s propulsive determination. “Streaming” kicks off with more rambunctious drumming and funky bass, while pirouetting piano melodies dance above, eventually joined by bowed bass and scintillating vibraphone.
Working in tandem, “A Line with a Mind of Its Own” finds bass and piano performing in parallel, while Smith plays drums with lock-step precision until a pliant piano solo unifies with a melodic line. Conversely, Formanek alternates between Melford and Smith on “Dryprint,” partnering with one then the other to contrast with the odd trio-mate out – it’s as striking an approach as Twombly’s brushwork. Likewise, three untitled “Interludes” scattered about the program each feature a different soloist, while the other two musicians work from a score. Providing final respite, “Chalk” closes the album with shimmering, neo-classical modality. Melford loops repeated pitch sets in repetitive patterns that change speeds, emulating a specific painting – “Untitled, 1970” – that features three coiled lines scrawled across a canvas.
As part of Melford’s continued investigation of Twombly’s work, her sonic interpretations of his visual art come not out of literal transposition, but through implied action. The relationship between Melford’s current music and Twombly’s oeuvre doesn’t need to be fully understood to appreciate it, but it wouldn’t exist in its current form without it. Melford gives her trio-mates ample interpretive freedom on Splash, and together they demonstrate expansive sonic palettes that are as searching and expressive as Twombly’s art.
–Troy Collins
Charles Mingus
Mingus in Argentina: The Buenos Aires Concerts
Resonance HCD-2077
On the second and third nights of June, 1977, Charles Mingus and his quintet (Ricky Ford, tenor; Jack Walrath, trumpet; Robert Neloms, piano; and Dannie Richmond, drums) played to enthusiastic audiences in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The live performances captured on this two-disc set differ drastically from Mingus’ studio work from the time. Upon landing in Buenos Aires, Mingus had only recently finished recording Three or Four Shades of Blues and Cumbia & Jazz Fusion, both of which enlisted larger ensembles. The former included, among many guest musicians, guitar gunslingers Larry Coryell and John Scofield. Although it was a commercial success, it is the Mingus sound as lobotomized by Atlantic Records. The latter album was written for a film and features large ensembles. While each of these albums include members of Mingus’ working group from the period, neither of them represents what Mingus and his mates were doing on the bandstand. Mingus in Argentina is the only recording of this iteration of the Mingus quintet. Resonance Records gave this release its typical deluxe treatment, with liner notes by Mingus biographer Brian Priestly, remembrances by Ford and Walrath, musician photographs, facsimile reproductions of the concert programs, and an excerpt from a book by Argentine journalist Claudio Parisi that explains Mingus’ reception in the country.
Most of the first concert does not have the spontaneity and organic energy that the best Mingus small groups exuded. The first three performances, “Goodbye Porkpie Hat,” “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love,” and “Noddin’ Ya Head Blues,” are ok, but tend toward flatness more than fireworks: head, solos with an occasional flash of heat, head, next tune. On “Porkpie,” Walrath demonstrates some wonderful liquid and slinky phrasing and Ford’s mix of lush subtone on the bottom end with bold power and bright tone up high make for a dynamic solo. “Sound of Love” is a showcase for Ford’s well-structured solo that Richmond expertly helps frame with well-timed accents, fills, and rumbling swells in volume. Mingus tells the band “let’s go” during Walrath’s solo, but it stays on its middle of the road course. The group has more bite on “Three or Four Shades of Blues” and goes on a speedy marauding romp through “Koko/Cherokee” – which the band repeats the next night. Richmond is the main catalyst for much of the set, as the most engaging moments come when he drives the soloists on. His big back beat on “Noddin’” draws a bluesy swagger out of Ford and his backing of the tenor, piano, and trumpet solos on “For Harry Carney” elevate the energy all around. “Cumbia & Jazz Fusion” highlights extended through-composed sections, swings in tempo, fiery solos, a rapturous Neloms feature that has a nineteenth-century late Romantic cadenza feel, and a comic medium-swing section in which a muted Walrath approximates a duck. Later in the piece Mingus steps to the mic and sings a variation on “Mama’s little baby like shortnin’ bread.” Baby, and later Aunt Jemima, don’t want any shortnin’ bread. They prefer caviar, truffles, African gold, diamond rings, and Rolls Royces instead. The lengthy nearly eighty-minute set closes with a brief improvised piano solo from Mingus that is at once elegant and pithy, yet ends with an unexpected teasing gesture.
The evening was not without further events, however. In his book, Parisi explains that Mingus suffered a “cardiac incident” in his dressing room after the concert and was taken to the hospital. Mingus was also suffering from extreme lower back pain that had immobilized one of his legs. It is a small wonder that he was able to perform the next night at the Teatro SHA (Sociedad Hebraica Argentina).
It is perhaps a bigger wonder, then, that this second night of music was more quintessentially Mingus. The recording, although just over a half hour in length, carries the trademark Mingus excitement of feeling like the wheels just might come off. Much of this comes from the horns and, as in the previous evening, Richmond. Disc two begins with a fade-in partway through an electric rendition of “Sue’s Changes” (the recording is incomplete), right as Ford is about to dig his heels into an extended escapade. Over the course of several minutes the twenty-three-year-old Ford overflows with youthful vigor, showing off moments from the swath of the history of jazz tenor playing. The band quickly realizes he’s onto something special and drops out. Ford moves from alluring subtone, to rampaging sheets of sound, to barwalking, to Ayleresque screams and chortles. All along the band shouts encouragement, which only drives Ford to further fury. When they return Neloms drops crunching block chords, Richmond bangs away, and Walrath comes in firing. Mingus appears to drop out for a while, and the band keeps blowing in a wayward direction, as if they are waiting for direction or might have gotten lost in the arrangement. Have the wheels finally come off? After another scamper through “Koko/Cherokee” the ecstatic loose togetherness of the best Mingus groups continues into “Fables of Faubus.” In this rendition – which could match that of about any other Mingus unit, Mingus and Richmond indict, among others, the KKK, Nazis, Jim Crow, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon (Richmond: “two, four, six, eight, he knew about Watergate”). Mingus’ choice to include it in the set was bold, given that in 1977 the Argentine government had a fond habit of disappearing people off the street. Imagine a foreign group today coming to the United States and including a song criticizing Israel? It’s not an exact parallel, as Mingus was not criticizing Argentina’s military dictatorship, but the song’s politics in that historical moment are tough to discount. As in the night before, Mingus closes proceedings with another improvised piano solo – two minutes of bittersweet, melodic, and wistful pathos. The second show might have been half as long, but it is the more musically exciting of the two.
Six months after the Buenos Aires dates, Mingus was diagnosed with ALS and succumbed to the disease in January, 1979. Mingus in Argentina, then, is not only the sole recorded document of this quintet; it is one of the final small group recordings of his life. While it may not be essential for average Mingus fans, its strengths outweigh the weaknesses, and the liner notes and packaging add a great deal of context to help better understand this somewhat maligned or discounted period in Mingus’ career.
–Chris Robinson
Camila Nebbia + Kit Downes + Andrew Lisle
Exhaust
Relative Pitch RPR1225
Out of Berlin’s restless experimental ferment emerges Exhaust, an eponymous debut that impresses with fierce vitality and uncommon coherence. The trio – Argentinean saxophonist Camila Nebbia, British pianist Kit Downes, and drummer Andrew Lisle – brings divergent traditions and shared sensibilities into a setting of unscripted intimacy. Their collective endeavors, recorded early on in the unit’s existence at Morphine Raum in 2023, thrive on spontaneous architecture rather than thematic exposition, resulting in six fully improvised selections that reward close attention.
Downes is the best known of the three, thanks in part to his long-standing relationship with ECM Records, where his work with Norma Winstone, Tom Challenger, and Petter Eldh highlights an elegant lyricism and harmonic ingenuity. That melodic impulse endures here, though it’s fractured and recast in service of the moment. Downes balances the percussive and the poetic, frequently anchoring the music with unexpected tonal centers and reflexive counterpoint that both challenge and echo the horn.
Nebbia, who has steadily built a formidable international profile since relocating to Europe in 2020, matches Downes in responsiveness. Her tenor saxophone playing, which can be heard in the company of pianists, Angelica Sanchez and Marilyn Crispell, bassist Michael Formanek, and drummers Vinnie Sperrazza and Lesley Mok, draws more from texture than velocity. Like many in the free idiom, she revels in a fascination with pitch and timbre, but unlike many she broaches the upper reaches only sparingly but tellingly. Instead, she focuses on oblique trajectories in a throaty middle register, with special concern for expressive manipulation of overtones. The upshot is a voice of striking gravity and intentionality – an aesthetic of restraint that deepens the ensemble’s combined impact.
Lisle, a mainstay of the UK improv scene through his work with Colin Webster and Alex Ward, avoids the trap of foregrounded virtuosity. His crisply articulated clatter ensures that the set predominantly faces forwards, even in the more introverted passages. He often maneuvers in tandem with Downes, fashioning a constantly flexing rhythmic matrix that ranges from brittle propulsion to hushed ambiance. His cymbal work, in particular, frequently melds with Nebbia’s spectral overblowing, producing stretches of eerie suspension that seem to elongate time, in what becomes one of the outfit’s signature gambits.
What distinguishes Exhaust is the band’s allegiance to real-time dialogue without conventional solos. In such constellations, it is often the horn which drops out. Yet Nebbia rarely pauses, but never dominates. Instead, the threesome sustains a fluid triangulation – tension and resolution arriving not in climaxes, but in shifts of density, dynamics, and timbral blend.
The six cuts sketch a satisfying arc. The opening track, “Differential Spider,” establishes the outfit’s ethos with clangorous interior piano, terse drum rejoinders, and Nebbia’s guttural tenor. “Enervated” offers a near-whispered contrast, its murmurs and slow swells unfolding like a dream in chiaroscuro. The high drama of the concluding “Deadblow Hammer” completes the journey. It suggests a summation, spanning inward-turning chords and Websterish breathiness through to staggered staccato bursts and the high wails that punctuate a bristling crescendo.
For a first statement, Exhaust is notably self-assured. Its commitment to group interplay over individual display, its disciplined use of sonic space, and its tonal richness all point to a trio already operating at a high level of communal intuition. This is music that compels, and promises much more to come.
–John Sharpe
Adam O’Farrill
For These Streets
Out Of Your Head OOYH034
Brooklyn-born trumpeter and composer Adam O’Farrill reaches new creative heights with his latest album, For These Streets, an ode to the literature, film, and music of the 1930s. The recording features an all-star octet playing music inspired by numerous artists of the era, including writers Henry Miller and Virginia Woolf; composers Maurice Ravel and Kurt Weill; and the Mexican writer Octavio Paz and composer Carlos Chavez.
The genesis of For These Streets was a dream O’Farrill had of someone on a boat amid a foggy ocean, destination unknown. O’Farrill had been reading Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer at the time and this image recalls the author’s time in Paris. While reading the novel, O’Farrill also watched Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights, which expresses a contrasting viewpoint. This led to a deeper investigation into the music, literature, and film of that period; much of the album evokes the music of this time, which parallels our own despite the passage of nearly a century.
The date is comprised of ten intricate compositions loosely inspired by such masterworks as Chavez’s “Preludios for Piano,” Messiaen’s “Diptyque,” Ravel’s “Piano Concerto in G Major,” and Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks.” The multiple viewpoint narrative structure of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves influenced the orchestral dynamics of O’Farrill’s octet, yet the ensemble is used sparingly, often reduced to intimate duos or trios, with everyone getting a solo feature.
O’Farrill chose close friends to interpret these opulent chamber arrangements, including saxophonists Kevin Sun and David Leon, trombonist Kalun Leung, guitarist Mary Halvorson, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, bassist Tyrone Allen, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara. The ensemble is conducted by Eli Greenhoe, a longtime friend of O’Farrill’s who gracefully guides sections of harmonically rich counterpoint against odd-metered rhythms.
The episodic opener, “Swimmers,” introduces the leader’s agile, vocalized trumpet accompanied by sparse guitar chords and rubato bass, slowly building to anthemic, contrapuntal fanfares and a roiling drum solo – invoking Whitney Balliett’s “sound of surprise” for the remainder of this unpredictable set. The melancholy “Nocturno, 1932” follows, unfolding as a slow waltz spotlighting Leon’s diaphanous flute, before O’Farrill and the horns interpret lush charts, and the composition drifts to a languid, cinematic close. Equally evocative, complex tunes like “Migration” emphasize neo-baroque arrangements juxtaposed against sublime chamber-like passages. Also imbued with punchy counterpoint is “Speeding Blots of Ink,” where a subtle funk rhythm underpins Halvorson as she unleashes labyrinthine cadences awash in phantasmagoric effects.
Emphasizing balladic lyricism, “Streets” is a spare duet setting O’Farrill’s plangent trumpet against Halvorson’s warped guitar. Upping the modernist angle, vibraphone, strummed guitar, and bowed bass weave a tender post-rock lullaby on “The Break Had Not Come,” while “Rose” ascends eloquently through a controlled collective climax before a brief, stomping rock and roll coda. The album ends exquisitely with “Late June” as the ensemble locks into a groove with rising key changes and nuanced textures.
For These Streets is a tribute to Adam’s legendary grandfather Chico O’Farrill, another artist who followed his own path. The album also serves as a love letter to O’Farrill’s hometown of Brooklyn – once an “old shithole” according to Henry Miller. O’Farrill still lives in the borough and the album was recorded at the Bunker Studio, a few blocks from where Miller spent his early years.
Writing contrapuntal charts for a large ensemble with the interweaving complexity of baroque music, O’Farrill demonstrates that he is at the peak of his compositional prowess, yet his proclivity for dense harmony never forsakes melody, making his music both adventurous and accessible. Stepping outside the shadow of his influences, For These Streets is an ambitious undertaking and a strikingly original effort that reveals a promising young artist carving out a unique place among his peers.
–Troy Collins