Bomb Cyclone: Within and After
for Eric Plaks …
Music to step to / made by
this trio right here / and now;
they did the do for joyful time
the time we’re in / they’re in.
The lyrical slides
into percussive swing
led by ivory keys, double bass,
percussive everything.
Each measure finds the time
to cast aside the news, the rumors
that brush the cheeks of babes
and oldsters too.
Conjure up heroes of Free Jazz /
the New Music
honed from the flesh of Monsters:
The Tradition that sends in this music.
A trio, a transport away
from all the gossip
that scrapes along the chalkboard,
where instead this music prefers to glide.
- Barry Wallenstein
About the Music
1. Theme 31 – So-Called Bomb Cyclone (for Jorge Sylvester) – On a January day last year (2018), the New York area forecast called for an extreme weather event which never quite transpired – the piece is an E-flat minor groove with a more serene B-section about 4 minutes in (there is a return to the A section at the very end).
2. Theme 26 – Simplicity (for Barry Wallenstein) – Trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and I wrote this one when we appeared with Barry to accompany his poem of the same name at one of his always-packed gigs at Cornelia Street Café (of blessed memory). The form is an ever-increasing chain of notes selected from the 12 tones without repeating.
3. Theme 28 – H.R. 40 (for William Parker) – This is a march. H.R. 40 is the U.S. House Resolution to study the question of slavery reparations.
4. Theme 29 – Throw Your Boxes In The River - This piece represents a voyage down a river (maybe the Amazon as in the movie that inspired it, The Embrace of The Serpent) after one has jettisoned the trappings of “society”. It has written material at the start but then a deliberate decision not to return but rather to let the waters carry you where they will.
5. Theme 27 - For Anthony Braxton – I should really dedicate this one to outstanding bassist Sean Conly who played this through with me when I thought it was a mess that needed cutting and he told me to keep it all. The whole complex A section repeats once and then the improvisation expands upon the snippets that make the piece.
6. Petal Tune (Trio Improv) – Breathe, inhale, enjoy the trio opening out with no pre-set form.
7. Strolling With Tcheser (Duo Improv) – It’s been four years of playing with Tcheser on his returns to NY from various world tours with Irreversible Entanglements, but it was like this from the very first time! What an honor and a pleasure.
8. Theme 32 – For Horace Tapscott – This piece is dedicated to a pianist who doesn’t get enough recognition in the jazz world, the LA legend Horace Tapscott, a truly unique piano stylist, composer, and bandleader. The piece is an AABA in homage.
9. This Nearly Was Mine – For Cecil Taylor – A Rogers and Hamerstein hit from the musical South Pacific, this piece is soupy enough in its original version that you might think Taylor was being ironic or provocative when he chose to make it one of the few standards he ever recorded in 1960 on The World of Cecil Taylor (Candid Records), but he insisted that he simply loved the tune that’s all. I was lucky enough to meet and interview The Maestro several times when I was 20 and have benefited greatly from that period of direct interaction with him, as well as collecting and listening to all the music through the decades. Taylor passed on April 5, 2018 and this one’s for him.
Tracks 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 by Eric Plaks
Track 4 by Eric Plaks and Tcheser Holmes
Track 6 by Eric Plaks and Aquiles Navarro
Track 9 by Rogers and Hamerstein
Recorded August 16, 2018 at Tedesco Studios, Paramus, NJ
Recorded and Mixed by Tom Tedesco
Mastered by Jonathan Goldberger
