Logan Strosahl with the Charles Rosen Ensemble - Book II of Arthur: Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (September 3, 2021 Sunnyside Records)

Arthurian tales have captured the imaginations of artists for centuries. In the late 12th-century, the floodgates of Medieval Arthurian literature burst open, and across Western Europe, works about the fictional deeds of individual knights of the Round Table were written. These were tales of mistaken identity, switched births, giants, ceremonial duels, and forbidden love, that portrayed the different knights as flawed upholders of what came to be known as the Chivalric Code.

Saxophonist and composer Logan Strosahl has reanimated one of the most influential of those works through his own idiosyncratic music. Like the protagonist, Sir Gawain, Logan Strosahl took his own musical quest and learned much along the way. The amazing work the young composer created with his Book II of Arthur: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shows a commanding new level of artistry.

Book II of Arthur: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight moves on from Strosahl’s Book I of Arthur, a musical retelling of Arthur’s ascendancy, to focus on the alliterative Middle English poem from the late 14th century. In the poem, Gawain attempts to fulfill an impossible oath made with a spectral foe—The Green Knight. Somewhere between man and specter, the Green Knight seems to blaze out of the pagan past to remind the Christian knights that the ancient power of that old world is still capable of gripping the new one. Ambiguity pervades the work: games, theatre, illusion, and cycles structure the plot, and characters have different sides that co-exist. Christian morality, pagan figures and symbolism, magic, romance, horror, and adventure are all synthesized in a story that in 2021 is still difficult to categorize.

“Difficult to categorize” could with equal justice describe Strosahl’s music. Informed by many channels but dominated by none, influences operate as elements in a fully integrated, personal language rather than pastiche. While the music in Book II obviously contains a good deal of “classical” craft ranging from the Wagnerian to polyphonic fantasias and to 21st-century composition; it also contains the Blues, various grooves, improvisation, and common-language materials.

Book II is a three-movement work. Act I begins with daydreaming among the Knights of the Round Table, gathered for a Christmas meal, when an incendiary figure clad head-to-toe in green bursts in, goading the Knights to behead him on the condition that, in one year’s time, he can return the dare. After being harangued, Sir Gawain agrees to the wager and lops off the Green Knight’s head…but is shocked when the Knight collects his head and reminds him of his oath. Strosahl’s musical language for the Green Knight is satirical, semi-baroque, distorted by huge gestures and asymmetrical phrases and underpinned by a Courante rhythmic pattern.

Act II begins with the description of the crest on Sir Gawain’s shield, “The Endless Knot”. The knot is a five point star drawn with one continuous line…representing the five points of perfection of Gawain’s character, which is musically explored through a contrapuntal fantasia that recalls the music of the English renaissance. “Pared from Paper” describes the castle that Gawain encounters on his journey to meet the Green Knight. There he meets Lord Bertilak, the enticing Lady Bertilak, and a mysterious older woman. At the castle, Gawain is invited to enter another wager. Bertilak promises to trade the spoils of his hunt to Gawain for whatever the knight might gain during the day while the Lord is hunting. While the Lord is away, Lady Bertilak tries to seduce Gawain—torn between two tenets of the Chivalric code (not refusing a lady and not betraying trust), he accepts only a kiss as a courtesy. This he awards to the blustery lord of the house on his return. In exchange, he receives the dressed carcass of the lord’s prey. This cycle happens three times.

“The Deer”, “The Boar”, and “the Fox” are sections of the piece based around Strosahl’s improvisations, that put him inside Gawain’s head and allude to the animals (probably symbolic representations of Gawain). “The Final Boon” refers to the Lady’s final offer of a magic girdle that will protect Gawain from harm, which he takes and lies to the Lord about receiving when he is offered the dismembered carcass of the fox.

Having broken his chivalric oath by lying, Gawain goes on to confront the Green Knight and accept his fate. “He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down” looks into the forlorn feelings of Sir Gawain as he goes to accept his likely death (“The Doleful Charge”). To aurally illustrate the fatalistic resolution, Strosahl writes the last Act with a modified Blues form—a music that has helped the oppressed gain agency and dignity within their fate through song.

Once meeting the Knight, and after an initial sally, Gawain presents his neck and the Knight swipes once, coming close and causing Gawain to flinch, prompting mockery from his verdant foe. The Knight strikes again, swerving at the last second. This is the last straw for Gawain, who, in a fury, tells the Green Knight he better make good on his word or prepare for a fight. The final, third strike ends with a paltry nick to Gawain’s neck, at which Gawain leaps back in a rush of adrenaline and relief, his oath fulfilled and his head still attached to his shoulders.

It is then revealed that the Green Knight and Lord Bertilak are the same person/specter. He informs Gawain that it had all been a ruse conjured by Morgan, the sorceress—an important figure in Arthurian lore and Arthur’s half-sister—disguised as the old woman at the castle. The Green Knight lets Gawain know that he handled himself well, except for two things: He should have trusted God, and he shouldn’t have lied to his host. At this point, the mood of the piece changes to jubilation, with a motoric Blues and plaintive alto solo. A grateful Gawain (he’s alive, after all) returns to the Round Table where the rest of the knights poke fun at him.

Strosahl’s suite is intricately woven, with abundant leitmotifs that characterize many symbols and themes from the story. These, and other aspects of the piece, will be discussed in his forthcoming liner notes. 

1. Act I: The Wager

2. Act II: The Endless Knot

3. Act II: Pared from Paper

4. Act II: The Deer

5. Act II: The Boar

6. Act II: "of love, its grief and grace"

7. Act II: The Final Boon

8. Act II: The Fox

9. Act II: The Wager (reprise)

10. Act III: "he cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down"

11. Act III: The Doleful Charge

Logan Strosahl - alto saxophone, flute, clarinet

The Charles Rosen Ensemble:

Julija Bojarinaite - 1st flute

Aliya Vodovozova - 2nd flute

Sarah Young - oboe

Constance Morvan - clarinet

Laura Lorx - bassoon

Gil Barak - horn

Manuel Abreu - trumpet

Yezu Woo - 1st violin

Daniel Cho - 2nd violin

Julia Palecka - viola

Nina Behrends - cello

Francisca Sá Machado - bass

Leo Gerstner - drum set

Khadim Ndome - glockenspiel

Michael Cohen-Weissert - conductor

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Nick Sanders & Logan Strosahl - Janus (2016) SUNNYSIDE RECORDS

Pianist Nick Sanders and saxophonist Logan Strosahl find inspiration in music spanning centuries on new duo recording

Janus, out October 14 on Sunnyside Records, features inventive interpretations of medieval, Baroque and contemporary classical, bebop and modern jazz

"Nick Sanders is a mad genius—hauntingly melodic and utterly unpredictable. Just when you think you’ve mapped his trajectory, he’s gone in a new direction, spinning off fresh, unconventional phrases." – Brian Zimmerman, DownBeat

"Logan Strosahl proves there is no Inside/Outside divide, dismantling all dialectics: he’s melodic and free, reverent and irreverent, methodical and spontaneous, swinging and angular, raw and beautiful." – Aaron Goldberg

In ancient Roman mythology, Janus was the god of time, passageways, beginnings and endings. With his two diametrically opposed faces, he looked simultaneously backwards and forwards in time. Janus is thus an ideal title for the new duo recording by pianist Nick Sanders and saxophonist Logan Strosahl, which mines centuries of compositions to create music entirely of the present moment. The pair also share a unique chemistry, honed over nearly a decade of working together, that echoes Janus in its suggestion of two voices sharing one mind.

Janus will be released on October 14, 2016 via Sunnyside Records, almost ten years after Sanders and Strosahl began playing duo in the basement of the dorms at Boston’s New England Conservatory, where both were students. The album features an intriguing mix of material, from medieval, Baroque and 20th-century French composers through bebop and Songbook standards to witty and inventive original pieces. 

That stunning range of repertoire is not intended to show off the pair’s musical knowledge, encyclopedic though it may be. It’s simply a collection of songs, both insist, that they found appealing and that sparked imaginative improvisation. “Genre isn’t crucial,” Strosahl says. “What’s crucial is improvisation. Even though we’re working with music that represents different styles, they’re really all from the same canon. They’re all Western music and we’re filtering all of it through ourselves. Genres have been artificially broken up, so we’re just trying to take a larger, simpler and clearer view.”

That broadened perspective allowed Strosahl and Sanders to find just as much territory to explore in a romantic 14th-century rondeau by Guillaume de Machaut as in the acute modernist corners of Monk’s “Thelonious” or in their own playful, co-composed “Be-Bop Tune,” which distorts the revered jazz language as through a funhouse mirror. The moods and colors shift over the course of these dozen tunes, but the duo’s approach stays the same whether a composition began life as an elegant chamber piece or a swinging nightclub burner. All are translated into the same language, one that the pianist and saxophonist have developed from college basements to bandstands but that was nearly intact the moment they first joined forces.

“From the beginning, we both approached the jazz tradition not in identical ways, but like two sides of the same coin,” Strosahl says. Sanders adds, “We always played really well together. It was always fun and didn’t take any work. It was already there, right away.”

Since meeting in 2007, both have recorded with their own projects. Sanders has released two albums with his trio featuring bassist Henry Fraser and drummer Connor Baker, both produced by his mentor, Fred Hersch. In 2015 Strosahl made his debut with Up Go We, featuring his septet – or as he calls it, his “team” – that includes Sanders and the pianist’s trio mates within its ranks. But they’ve continually returned to the duo configuration and continued to find fresh inspiration in the partnership.

The album begins with Sanders’ vertiginous “Sigma,” an original piece that is alternately dizzying and jagged and which was inspired by a character from the “Mega Man” video game series. Gaming is also the surprising inspiration behind the melancholy “R.P.D.,” which achingly captures a mood of forlorn nostalgia for a bygone era – only in this case it’s a yearning for the days prior to the zombie apocalypse of “Resident Evil.”

The passing of time is also central to Strosahl’s contributions to the album, in keeping with the Janus theme. The title track is split into two halves, eventually encapsulating a sensation of frozen time, or peering back or forward from one time into another. In both “Allemande” and “Mazurka,” the saxophonist builds upon well-established dance forms, continuing the engagement with early musical forms that runs through much of his music. “I like the formality and clearness of just naming something after a dance,” he explains. “You let the piece speak for itself and just listen to the music.”

While improvising on standards like “Old Folks” and “Stardust,” and especially on a classic jazz tune like “Thelonious,” improvising is a well-established tradition. That approach has become antithetical to modern classical performance, but Sanders and Strosahl point out that hasn’t always been the case, offering precedent for their renditions of pieces by de Machaut, Baroque composer François Couperin, and influential 20th-century composer Olivier Messiaen. 

“Mozart left blank spaces in concertos for cadenzas to be improvised,” Sanders points out, before Strosahl picks up on his point. “It was par for the course because it works,” the saxophonist says. “It’s amazing hearing people spontaneously create music. We’re not trying to give everything a ‘jazz interpretation.’ We’re just going into music from multiple times and places and playing it with what we know about music and improvising.”

In fact, the one common trait that all of the music on Janus shares is the sense of possibility that exists in each. Janus was, after all, also the god of doorways, and each of the twelve near-miniatures on the album finds Sanders and Strosahl venturing into some previously unopened portal leading off from each song. “Maybe subconsciously, we look for music that has an air of mystery,” Strosahl says. “Spiritually, when you play it, you feel like there’s a world that you can tap into and uncover.”

Sigma - 3:32

Allemande - 1:16

Thelonious - 4:25

R.P.D. - 1:46

Mazurka - 2:30

Old Folks - 3:45

Be-Bop Tune - 3:11

Rose, liz, printemps, verdure - 3:46

Selections from vingt regards sur l'enfant - Jesus - 5:49

Janus - 3:38

Stardust - 5:14

Les amusemens - 2:56

Nick Sanders - piano

Logan Strosahl - alto & tenor sax

www.nicksandersmusic.com

www.loganstrosahl.com

 www.sunnysiderecords.com

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Sigma