Barry Altschul 3Dom Factor 'Long Tall Sunshine' – July 30, 2021 via Not Two

Pioneering drummer Barry Altschul returns with a thrilling new live performance by his exploratory trio 

The 3Dom Factor

 

Long Tall Sunshine, due out July 30, 2021 via Not Two, reconvenes Altschul’s adventurous group with bassist Joe Fonda and saxophonist Jon Irabagon

 

" The best way to hear this band is live and wild in the moment."

– Thomas Conrad, JazzTimes

 

“The 3Dom Factor… epitomizes the energy, exuberance and capriciousness of most great jazz… a small, highly intuitive combo that uses bop as a springboard into the great unknown of avant-garde.”

– Victor Aaron, Something Else Reviews

Three, as those of us who grew up on Schoolhouse Rock will remember, truly is a magic number. It’s enshrined in the name of The 3Dom Factor, the astounding trio led by legendary drummer/improviser Barry Altschul for the last decade or so. That sobriquet reflects the vital importance of all three voices in the band: not only Altschul’s powerful, ever-inquisitive drumming, but the tirelessly venturesome saxophone playing of Jon Irabagon and the acrobatic muscularity of bass great Joe Fonda.

 

So naturally, the release of the 3dom Factor’s third album, Live in Kraków, in 2017 felt like a natural conclusion of sorts for the project. It summed up a neat trilogy that began with the band’s self-titled 2012 debut, which concentrated on Altschul’s original tunes; followed by the 2015 follow-up, Tales of the Unforeseen, a second studio date that was almost wholly improvised save for a pair of intriguing covers; and finally, Live in Kraków, a dazzling showcase of the trio’s onstage inventiveness.

 

Fortunately for lovers of exploratory jazz at its finest, Altschul decided against letting that trilogy stand alone. After four years of recorded silence, The 3dom Factor makes its welcome return with Long Tall Sunshine, an exhilarating concert performance captured somewhere in Europe during the trio’s spring 2019 tour. (Unfortunately the band’s record-keeping isn’t quite as skillful as its interplay, leaving the specifics as something of a mystery.) Due out July 30, 2021 via Not Two, Long Tall Sunshine finds The 3dom Factor at the top of its form, navigating five of Altschul’s expansive compositions with a staggering display of in-the-moment inspiration and tightrope-walking audacity.

 

“This album is kind of a bonus,” Altschul says. “The third album felt like a nice way to end the series, but I read several reviews that said they hoped this wasn't the last release. The audience wanted more.” As did Altschul’s triomates, who strongly encouraged him to release this particular concert after hearing the dauntless imagination of the performance.

 

“More” is precisely what Long Tall Sunshine has to offer. Four of the five tracks will be familiar to longtime fans of the drummer, having made up the repertoire not only of the previous 3dom Factor outings but of Altschul’s early-80s trio with Ray Anderson and Mark Helias and his FAB Trio with Fonda and the late violinist Billy Bang. The exception is the title track, a previously unrecorded composition dedicated to a former paramour who Altschul describes as “long and tall, with this sunny disposition.”

 

Anchored by Fonda’s pulsating bassline, the tune’s sinuous theme is an alluring mix of the sleek and the sunny, an ideal launching point for Irabagon’s inexhaustible array of melodic variations. Altschul prods the saxophonist onward with an invigorating barrage of combustible percussion, laying back only to make room for Fonda’s eloquent bass solo, which the drummer parries with conversational expertise, reflecting the pair’s long history together.

Irabagon, Altschul & Fonda

The remaining four pieces all appeared on The 3dom Factor, with three of them reprised on Live in Kraków. The multiple versions of each make for enlightening comparison, shining a spotlight on the trio’s unceasing creativity and gift for completely reinventing each tune from one performance to the next. It’s also reflective of Altschul’s philosophy of improvised music.

 

“I don't really believe that anything is really new,” he emphasizes. “I'm a believer in ‘fresh.’ I listen to Miles Davis when he said that Louis Armstrong played everything that could be played. So it's just a matter of being fresh. So using the same compositions just provides a springboard to let us get into some fresh improvisational spaces.

 

“Plus,” he adds, a wry smile creeping into his voice, “I'm lazy.”

 

It’s difficult to put much stock into that claim given the longevity of Altschul’s career, which now stretches out over more than five decades and includes collaborations with many of the music’s most towering figures, including Chick Corea, Paul Bley, Lee Konitz, Anthony Braxton, Sam Rivers and Andrew Hill. Another deciding factor in releasing Long Tall Sunshine (though the breathtaking quality of the music is reason enough) was Altschul’s encroaching 80th birthday, which will arrive in January 2023. With the pandemic taking live performance out of the equation at a moment when the drummer was contemplating the winding down of his touring schedule, it felt all the more important to remind the world of the continuing vitality of this major voice in free music.

 

The cover portrait of Long Tall Sunshine, by Altschul’s friend and NYC neighbor Nora Howard, captures its subject’s energy as well as his forward-looking attitude. “Nora's a very dear friend, and when she showed me this painting I said, ‘It looks like it's not finished.’ And she said, ‘Well’ neither are you!’ That worked for me.”

01 Long Tall Sunshine

02 The 3Dom Factor

03 Irina

04 Be Out S'Cool

05 Martin's Stew

Barry Altschul - drums & cymbals

Jon Irabagon - tenor & soprillo saxophones and alto clarinet

Joe Fonda - bass

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Wandering The Sound Quintet - What Is...? (2021 Not Two)

The first Wandering The Sound album in 2018 was the trio of Argentinian reedist Guillermo Gregorio, Spanish drummer Ramón López and Polish bassist Rafał Mazur, here extended to a quintet with pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura for a 2019 concert at Alchemia in Poland, a masterful example of free improv based on a poem by Ikkyu Sojun, a Zen master from the 15th century.

"The joint project of Argentinian clarinetist, saxophonist and composer Guillermo Gregorio, Spanish drummer and composer Ramón López and Polish bassist Rafał Mazur resulted in the album Wandering The Sound in 2018. The LP, released by Fundacja Słuchaj!, was recorded in the B&B Records studio in Niepołomice. Piotr Wojdat writes about the album on the Jazzarium website: "Wandering The Sound will surely disappoint those who want to hear motifs, melodies or artistic stylizations tailored to their needs. Rafał Mazur on acoustic bass guitar, Guillermo Gregorio on clarinet and Ramon Lopez on drums take us into the unknown and do they do not pretend otherwise. They improvise, interact, but do not plan their next steps. They listen to each other and wander through sounds together, get to know them in a spontaneous creative act and bring the listener closer to what's playing in their souls." Considering that the album was a record of the first meeting of these three brilliant improvisers, it will probably not be that difficult for them to expand their line-up with new bold personalities. On stage at Alchemia they will be joined by the extraordinary Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura.

Satoko Fujii is one of the most renowned and recognized figures in contemporary jazz. She graduated from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston and the New England Conservatory of Music. Fujii leads many ensembles in Japan, Europe and the United States. Her collaborators include Tatsuya Yoshida, Joe Fonda, Carla Kihlstedt, Myra Melford, Christian Pruvost and Peter Orins. Together with her husband, Natsuki Tamura, she has recorded a series of duets. The two also collaborated on numerous other projects, including big bands and orchestras. Tamura was probably best summed up by François Couture at Allmusic: "Now we can officially say there are two Natsuki Tamuras: The one playing angular jazz-rock or ferocious free improv and the one writing simple melodies of stunning beauty. How the two of them live in the same body and breathe through the same trumpet might remain a mystery."

"The quintet perform[ed] a comprovisation (composition for improvisers) by Rafał Mazur based on a poem by Ikkyu Sojun, a Zen master from the 15th century." -Krakow Jazz Autumn listing

1. ...Sound 44:11

2. ...Wind 11:57

3. ...Mind 8:45

Satoko Fujii - piano

Guillermo Gregorio - clarinet

Natsuki Tamura - trumpet, voice

Rafal Mazur - acoustic bass guitar

Ramon Lopez - drums

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Michael Marcus - Stone Jump (July 2021 Not Two)

Michael Marcus composed these lyrical jazz works to create a message about "New York City realities", recorded in two studio sessions with Marcus on soprano & tenor sax, octavin, A clarinet & tarogato, along with Denton Darien on piano, John Austria on Fender Rhodes, Tyler Mitchell on bass, Warren Smith on drums & percussion, and Lawrence Feldman on alto flute.

01. Stone Jump

02. The World Street

03. Dawn at Qumran

04. Fusion Anatomy

05. Baja

06. Involution

07. Flowering Optics

08. The T Man

09. Foreverness

10. Where Flamingos Dance

Michael Marcus - soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, octavin, "A" clarinet, tarogato

Denton Darien - piano

John Austria - Fender Rhodes piano

Tyler Mitchell - acoustic bass

Warren Smith - drums, percussion

Lawrence Feldman - alto flute

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Frode Gjerstad feat. Hamid Drake and William Parker - Frode Gjerstad with Hamid Drake and William Parker (4-CD box-set) NOT TWO RECORDS 2018

Featuring Frode Gjerstad on alto sax & clarinet, William Parker on contrabass and Hamid Drake on drums & percussion. Norwegian saxist Frode Gjerstad is one of the most prolific and hard working of all European saxists, a career that stretches back some forty plus years, with upwards of 100 releases during his long tenure. Mr. Gjerstad is forever juggling several bands simultaneously: Detail (with John Stevens & Johnny Dyani), Calling Signals (with Nick Stephens), Ultralyd (Scandinavian noise/rock) and his current trio with Jon Rune Strom & Paal Nilssen-Love. Gjerstad always chooses master musicians from around the world to collaborate with: Bobby Bradford, Louis Moholo, Derek Bailey and Peter Brotzmann. One of the best groups that Mr. Gjerstad has organized is with the amazing rhythm team of William Parker and Hamid Drake. 

CD A:Ultima

1. Ultima part1:  15:29

2. Ultima part 2:  12:22

3. Ultima part 3:  18:48

4. Ultima part 4:  11:48

CD B: Remember to Forget

1. Remember: 38:11

part 1: 12:52

part 2: 11:35

part 3: 13:44

2. Forget:  29:26

part 1: 10:54

part 2: 11:10

part 3: 7:22

CD C: The Other Side

1. First cut: 17:42

2. The duo:  9:46

3. This side:  15:38

4. Williams bass:  6:48

5. The other duo:  5:58

CD D:On Reade Street

1. The street:  21:40

2. The houses:  11:17

3. The people:  23:58

​Frode Gjerstad - reeds

Hamid Drake - drums

William Parker - bass

Hiby / Bardon / Hession – Roots (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017)

1. Riff-Raff

2. Roots

3. Timeless

4. Ding An Sich

5. P.J.

6. The Worm

7. King Falafel

8. Noumenon

Hans Peter Hiby – tenor & alto-sax

Michael Bardon - bass

Paul Hession – drums

Samo Salamon / Szilárd Mezei / Achille Succi - Free Sessions Vol. 1: Planets of Kei (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017)

1. Trio I 4.10

2. Duo Achille & Samo 2.46

3. Trio II 4.00

4. Duo Samo & Szilard 4.24

5. Trio III 6.12

6. Trio IV 3.30

7. Trio V 5.32

8. Duo Samo & Szilard II 2.50

9. Trio VI 7.12

10. Duo Achille & Szilard 4.28

11. Trio VII 10.08

12. Trio Suite 13.52

Samo Salamon – acoustic guitar

Szilard Mezei – viola

Achille Succi – bass clarinet, alto sax

All tunes by Salamon, Mezei & Succi, except no. 2 by Succi & Salamon, no. 10 by Succi & Mezei and no. 4 and 8 by Salamon & Mezei.

Recorded in Maribor in September 2016. Recorded and mixed by Darko Kukovič. Mastered by Samo Salamon

DKV Trio (Hamid Drake / Kent Kessler / Ken Vandermark) - Latitutde 41.88 (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017)

The DKV Trio is one of the most exciting ensembles working in contemporary improvised music. Featuring Hamid Drake (drums), Kent Kessler (bass), and Ken Vandermark, the band has been active since the mid 1990s and has released eleven recordings, including their most recent album, which came out in the autumn of 2016: Collider (that features the trio paired with the Scandinavian group, The Thing).

Their 2014 five CD box set, Sound in Motion in Sound, was reviewed by the Free Jazz Collective as follows, “They are tighter, more explosive, and ingenious than ever. Imagine every DKV Trio’s signature element coming together in a remarkably dazzling, fiery display of musical prowess. There’s an almost palpable quality to the way that the musicians meld their ideas and approaches together. There’s groove propelled by Drake’s funky, loose drumming, there’s melody in the bass lines, there’s dissonance and conflict in Vandermark’s fluid, mercurial playing.

This is a great recording by an unmistakable, intense group of musicians with a sound and feeling of their own. That much is clear now. I would even dare to call this album their best to date. Inspired, full of energy, harmonically, rhythmically, and even melodically rich, capable of wonderfully recreating the joy of listening to DKV Trio live.” 5 stars

2017 promises to be an exceptional year for the band: they will be releasing a new album on the label Not Two, have concerts scheduled in Canada during June, and will tour in Europe with Joe McPhee as a guest for the first time in their career.

01. Faster Than It Would Be (Hamid Drake, Kent Kessler, Ken Vandermark) 20:25

02. 20th Century Myth (Hamid Drake, Kent Kessler, Ken Vandermark) 17:33

03. Uncontrolled Writer (Hamid Drake, Kent Kessler, Ken Vandermark) 21:56

Ken Vandermark: reeds

Kent Kessler: bass

Hamid Drake: drums

Barry Altschul & The 3Dom Factor - Live in Krakow (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017)

Groundbreaking Drummer Barry Altschul Concludes a Trilogy by his Trio 

The 3Dom Factor with an Electrifying Concert Date

Live in Kraków, out now, reunites Altschul with bassist Joe Fonda and saxophonist Jon Irabagon 

on a freewheeling gig blurring the line between bop and free jazz

“Altschul - together with saxophonist Jon Irabagon and bassist Joe Fonda - kept the music sounding new with an animated blend of freethinking and hard-swinging.” – Mike Shanley, JazzTimes

 “Barry Altschul's 3Dom Factor is becoming one of the strongest jazz trios in recent times… an unusual joining of forces from different generations… three musicians who weave, through their high quality of play and consistency, improvisations that are stimulating and rewarding to the listener.” – Stefan Wood, The Free Jazz Collective

Drummer Barry Altschul wasn’t simply crafting a clever play on words when he christened his latest trio The 3Dom Factor. There’s a deeper meaning in that name, the implication of a particular kind of freedom to be found only in the interaction of three improvising musicians. It takes on an even greater significance when the musicians in question are Altschul, bassist Joe Fonda, and saxophonist Jon Irabagon – three artists who share a wide-ranging but piercingly focused vision, who are able to draw on the entire history of jazz and improvised music while pushing relentlessly forward into new areas of discovery.

The idea that good things come in threes is doubly true of Live in Kraków, out now on the Not Two label. The blistering date, recorded at the Alchemia Club in the waning days of 2016, on the last date of a European tour, is the trio’s third release and concludes a loose trilogy. The 3Dom Factor’s self-titled 2012 debut brought the three together to explore several of Altschul’s original tunes; their 2015 follow-up, Tales of the Unforeseen, was almost entirely improvised save for a pair of deftly chosen covers (one of which is reprised here). 

Completing the cycle, Live in Kraków moves out of the studio and onto the stage for a date that combines the best of those two approaches: it revisits several of the pieces the band had earlier attacked in the studio in freer, more expansive form, bringing to bear the full force of five years’ worth of collaboration. “Our music is built on trust,” Altschul says. “We’re all able to be in the same space at the moment musically – and even if we’re not, conflict can work too.”

Altschul and Fonda have been playing together for nearly a decade and a half. An accomplished and much respected bassist, Fonda has worked with a long list of jazz greats including Archie Shepp, Ken McIntyre, Lou Donaldson, Bill and Kenny Barron, Wadada Leo Smith, Dave Douglas, Curtis Fuller, Bill Dixon, Han Bennink, Randy Weston, and Carla Bley. Both he and Altschul had enjoyed fruitful tenures working with Anthony Braxton, albeit in different decades, before they joined the late violinist Billy Bang to form the FAB Trio in 2003. “We have a certain chemistry together,” Altschul says of Fonda. “We’ve played together so much that we can not just anticipate but really feel where we are. We’re pretty tight as a rhythm section; we move in the same direction, stimulated by what’s going on around us in a very close way.”

Irabagon and Altschul were first introduced during a gig at John Zorn’s The Stone organized by bassist Moppa Elliott, whose band Mostly Other People Do the Killing has featured Irabagon since its founding. The winner of the 2008 Thelonious Monk Saxophone Competition, Irabagon has since garnered a reputation as one of the most inventive and versatile saxophonists of his generation, working with the Mary Halvorson Quintet and Dave Douglas Quintet as well as his own diverse bands. Though separated by more than 35 years in age, he and Altschul found common ground in their mutual enthusiasm for drawing on the vast tradition of jazz in their work. Altschul remembers, “When we first started to hang out together, Jon mentioned to me that he was very influenced by me and the era that I came up in. He really wanted to be able to play in a fairly traditional way as well as playing free, while addressing where bop is in this generation.” Altschul

Altschul has long championed a similar approach, one that he’s termed, borrowing drummer Beaver Harris’ phrase, “From ragtime to no time.” As he explains, “I feel that playing free is like writing books or having a discussion. The more vocabulary you have the freer you can be and the more choices you have. That to me is what freedom is - freedom of choice.”

The choices that the trio makes throughout Live in Kraków find them pushing each other into wildly disparate areas and feelings, making each piece, and even successive moments within a single piece, exhilaratingly different. The leader’s expressive percussion opens “Martin’s Stew,” which then bristles with propulsive power as Fonda’s muscular bass and Irabagon’s wildly veering tenor burst forth. The familiar melody of Monk’s “Ask Me Now” seems to drift in and out of the trio’s free interpretation, while “For Papa Joe, Klook, and Philly Too” pays explicit homage to three of Altschul’s formative influences in a vigorous round of 21st-century bebop. 

Irbagon and Fonda wring beautiful variations from the alluring, supple melody of “Irina,” lulled into an enticing trance by Altschul’s insinuating brushwork. The set closes with the taut but aggressive explosions of the band’s title tune, exemplifying the way that an unceasing flow of inspiration can pour forth from these three creative masterminds without slowing for more than 13 minutes.

Since forming the 3Dom Factor, Altschul, Fonda and Irabagon have formed a profoundly intuitive bond and a distinctive sound, one built on a unique convergence of personalities and voices. “All three of us share the same attitude towards playing the music,” Altschul sums up. “We’ve spent the last several years growing together and just having a good time playing.”

Barry Altschul

A renowned drummer whose tastes and abilities run the gamut from hard bop to free jazz and beyond, Barry Altschul gained fame in the late 1960s alongside such pioneering artists as Paul Bley and Chick Corea. In 1969 he joined Corea, bassist Dave Holland and saxophonist Anthony Braxton to form the group Circle, and went on to work extensively with Braxton as well as Sam Rivers throughout the 1970s. He also recorded with such greats as Sam Rivers, Andrew Hill, Dave Liebman and Julius Hemphill. Never one to stick to one style of playing, Altschul‘s groundbreaking work in the avant-garde was paralleled by his straight ahead work with the likes of Lee Konitz and Art Pepper. After spending much of the ‘80s and ‘90s in Europe, he returned to greater prominence in the early 2000s, forming the FAB Trio with Joe Fonda and Billy Bang, working with peers like Roswell Rudd and Steve Swell, collaborating with a new generation of forward-looking musicians including Jon Irabagon, both in the saxophonist’s explosive trio and The 3Dom Factor.

Joe Fonda 

The Boston Phoenix has called bassist, interdisciplinary performer, producer and educator Joe Fonda “a serious seeker of new musical horizons.” From 1984 to 1999, he was the bassist with composer-improviser and NEA Jazz Master Anthony Braxton and has been an integral member of several cooperative bands, including the Fonda-Stevens Group with Michael Jefry Stevens, Herb Robertson, and Harvey Sorgen; Conference Call, with Gebhard Ullmann, Stevens, and George Schuller; the FAB Trio with Barry Altschul and Billy Bang; and the Nu Band with Mark Whitecage, Roy Campbell, and Lou Grassi. He has also collaborated and performed with such artists as Archie Shepp, Ken McIntyre, Lou Donaldson, Bill and Kenny Barron, Wadada Leo Smith, Randy Weston, and Carla Bley. Fonda’s own ensembles have included From the Source, which features four instrumentalists, a tap dancer, and a body healer/vocalist; the Off Road Quartet, with musicians from four different countries; and Bottoms Out, a sextet with Gerry Hemingway, Joe Daley, Michael Rabinowitz, Claire Daly, and Gebhard Ullmann. 

Jon Irabagon

Winner of the 2008 Thelonious Monk Saxophone Competition, Jon Irabagon has become known as one of the most inventive and diverse saxophonists of his generation, called a “subverter of the jazz form” by the New York City Jazz Record. He’s been named a Rising Star in both the alto and tenor saxophone categories in DownBeat Magazine and was named one of New York City's Jazz Icons by Time Out New York.  He is currently an integral member of the Mary Halvorson Quintet and Septet, Barry Altschul's 3Dom Factor, Mike Pride's From Bacteria to Boys, the Dave Douglas Quintet and Perpetual Motion: The Music of Moondog ensemble. His imprint, Irabbagast Records, has now released five of his own recordings.  

Peter Evans / Agustí Fernández / Mats Gustafsson - A Quietness of Water (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017) - A Quietness of Water (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017)

On their first album as a trio, Korpos Lithos (Multikulti Project, 2009), and on their new album of free improvisations, A Quietness of Water, Peter Evans, Agustí Fernandez, and Mats Gustafsson borrow their song titles from the American poet Robert Creeley. Creeley makes an interesting, and apt, muse for these musicians. For some, Creeley’s poems, despite their direct and simple beauty, lack the traditional moves they presume a “good” poem ought to make. Once, after a poetry reading, a puzzled audience member asked Creeley, “Are those real poems, or did you just make them up?” A Quietness of Water also puzzles at first, and might make one to wonder: “Is this real jazz, or are they just making it up?” The answer to such a conundrum is: keep reading; keep listening. The answer is yes; yes.

On the album’s first cut, “Once in a Rented Room,” Evans’ trumpet sounds like an Egyptian mizmar, a euphonium, a wounded animal, warning sirens. When he emits a hellish growl, one fears it may be, in fact, a howl from one’s own unconscious primal depths. Evans, at once, sounds like an air raid siren and a dive bombing kamikaze. He hums into his trumpet like a kazoo. He tongues the mouthpiece. He plays the spit collecting in the tubes. He holds a note past normal human capacity while its microtonal changes mess with our desire for resolution. And that’s just Evans. Fernandez pounds the piano keys occasionally, but mostly he is inside the piano, rending it like an industrial combine at a metal recycling plant. Gustafsson puffs, grunts, and desperately inhales and exhales through his stops.

Next, on “Persistent Hope,” Fernandez’s eerie scrapings remind us a haunted house. Gustafsson woo-wooo-wooos like a ghost. Evans’s trumpet whirls like a Hammond organ with a Leslie speaker playing the soundtrack for an old silent movie. Then things really get weird. The sax and trumpet snarl at each other until an entire angry animal kingdom wakes: elephants roar, zebras whinny, monkeys whoop and screech. For a moment, things calm down, yet soon enough the whole haywire jungle machine goes nuts again. There’s an end-of-the-world bedlam in the guts of Fernandez’ piano. Gustafsson sobs and wails and moans. Evans feeds back like a guitar flung in front of an overdriven Marshall stack.

“I Speak to Hear,” the third track, puts us in the mind of a gentle rain, at first, then, after a bang like a gunshot, Gustafsson whoops and hollers, thwump-thwump-thwacking percussively. Together he and Fernandez beep-beep-flurp-squawk. Evans overblows his trumpet. It squeals like he’s letting air out of a pinched balloon. He plays long, lippy, rising notes, makes kissy noises, and plates saucy smorgasbords of sound. Gustafsson’s playing alternately sounds like an upright bass plucked pizzicato, or like his stops have transmuted into bongos. Evans veers from sounding like a Theremin to blowing through a mouthpieceless trumpet, pistoning the valves, whistling, and choo-chooing.

On the fourth song, “Thoughts,” named after a tiny Robert Creeley poem — “Am I dying? / I am beautiful. / Either way.” — the trumpet and the piano sound, surprisingly, like a trumpet and a piano until the song begins to have too many simultaneous disquieting thoughts. They race and zoom. Gustafsson is a fog horn; Evans, an ocean liner sounding an alarm, which turns into thick static. Fernandez flogs the piano, which refuses to give up the ghost, even when it sounds like a downed powerline wildly jetting and sparking in the icy street. Gustafsson’s rather lovely, breathy solo transforms into thwumping and yelling as if he’s frightened by a nightmare. Evans blows through the trumpet which discovers it is a flute, whale song, a flock of ducks being mass murdered, and the suction tool at the dentist’s.

The final song, “A Quietness of Water,” finds Gustafsson sounding almost like a cello section. Fernandez’s piano plinks like an autoharp or a hammered dulcimer or sprung springs. Evans’s breath through the trumpet is white noise, which for a moment pierces like an oboe, then turns into a pervert’s heavy breathing into the phone, a suitcase dragged across Berber carpet, a NASA radio signal fizzling before the crew is lost, a fire alarm, a Tour de France ambulance, a teakettle at the boil . . .

As I listened again and again to A Quietness of Water, I noticed how often Evans reminded me of the flute section in the second movement of Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, and how the trio, with all its manic bravura, suggests the entirety of an orchestra. There are emotional swarms that leave the imagination reeling, dark dramatic swells, trilling notes that float above the rest, hectic conflicts as if a violin section were bowing tremolo, and rumbles from bass drums like a dark night of the soul descending. There is vigor and joy; anguish and ambition. There are rude, blatting raspberries, terrifying explosions of sound, and an epic sweep.

Which is to say, A Quietness of Water is, finally, beautiful.

Part of what makes music enjoyable are the pleasures of what Peter Kivy calls its “plot without content.” Thinking of the genre and structure of jazz, we enjoy the statement of the theme. We desire its return but feel titillated by its delay. We love the entanglements of the grammar of the song’s unfolding. We crave the riddles the interplay creates and the pointed variations of the theme. Our ravenous conjectures hunger for what happens next. The “better” the song, the more often it mystifies our anticipations, toys with our expectations, tricks us in alluring ways. A “great” song generates an ever-increasing adoration for the unexpected. Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue demonstrates this: modal jazz seemed strange and unwelcome at first, yet the album fulfilled expectations about jazz tunes while teaching us to listen closer and to appreciate what had seemed unpredictable. It was so skillful it became the most popular jazz album of all time and what many consider the very definition of “good jazz.”

A Quietness of Water tantalizes us with its strangeness and its teasing refusals to satisfy what we thought we were supposed to expect—or even want. Evans, Fernandez, and Gustafsson wield a variety of extended techniques, playing their instruments in untraditional, unconventional ways. It isn’t so much that they are playing jazz as they play the trumpet, the saxophone, and the piano for all they’re worth. They ignore, or transcend, the expected uses not only of their instruments but of their breath and bodies. They smash the iconic twists and turns of the jazz tune. They are not producing “special effects”; this is just the way they play. It is how they say what they must say. Their songs exist outside plot structures. Their music develops circuitously, like thinking does, and when these three think together, things get too complicated for even a battalion of critics and therapists to unravel. This is pugnacious music. It affects its listener physically, physiologically. The song is an arena; the playing an event. Like all great music, it rewards a listener who listens carefully and often. It is a new translation of the language of “jazz” that requires immersion to develop fluency.

Robert Creeley wondered, on a rainy day, “What am I to myself / that must be remembered, / insisted upon / so often?” A Quietness of Water asks equally existential questions. It poses problems about the nature of our desire for jazz and the ways we define it. It joins a profound improvisatory conversation that is unceasing. This is not music to “enjoy.” It defies usual satisfactions. It provides no rest for our perturbed spirits. This is jazz as experience—as pathos. I don’t know if there are aesthetic categories to judge whether the music or the playing are “good” or “bad,” but Evans, Fernandez, and Gustafsson leave me thinking that the music they make is beautiful because of the sublime ways they just make it up.

(review courtesy of Rick Joines and freejazzblog.org)

1. Once In A Rented Room (11:40)

2. Persistent Hope (10:28)

3. I speak To Hear (10:10)

4. Thoughts (12:19)

5. A Quietness Of Water (12:00)

Peter Evans – trumpet

Agustí Fernández – piano

Mats Gustafsson – sax

​

Recorded September 17, 2012 at Garnison7 Studio, Vienna, Austria

Mixed July 21, 2013 at FCM Studio, Barcelona

Titles inspired by Robert Creeley

Cene Resnik Watch for Dogs Trio - Shades of Colors (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017)

01. Shades of colors

02. Kraljeva slika

03. Kosovelovo domotožje

04. Zemlja (Suite of Crngrob)

05. Volcano — The Steamer

06. Thieves came quietly

07. Agitación natural

08. Satellites

09. Articulation complete

10. Conversations that never stop

Cene Resnik – tenor saxophone

Giovanni Maier – double   bass

Zlatko Kaučič – drums, cymbals

Brötzmann / Swell / Nilssen-Love - Live in Tel Aviv (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017)

1. The Greasy Grind

2. Ticklish Pickle

Steve Swell – trombone

Paal Nilssen-Love – drums, percussion

Peter Brötzmann – saxophone, clarinet

The Nu Band - Live in Geneva (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017)

1. Lunch for the Pharaoh

2. One for Roy

3. Little Piece

4. 5 O’Clock Follies

5. Read This

Thomas Heberer - trumpet

Mark Whitecage - alto sax & half-horn

Joe Fonda - bass & flute    

Lou Grassi - drums & percussion

Liudas Mockunas / Rafal Mazur / Raymond Strid - Live in Divadlo 29 (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017)

1. Prologue (expositio) 8:59

2. Act I (peripety) 5:21

3. Act II (climax) 11:18

4. Act III (entr’acte) 2:08

5. Finale 10:42

Photos: Krzysztof Penarski / photofreejazz

Liudas Mockunas –  soprano, tenor & bass saxophones

Rafał Mazur – acoustic bass guitar

Raymond Strid – drums, percussion

Daniele D'Agaro, Giovanni Maier, Zlatko Kaućić - Disorder at the Border Plays Ornette (NOT TWO RECORDS 2016)

Taking the group name from a venerable Coleman Hawkins recording, Disorder at the Border is also a sly reference to the two countries involved. Considering that these areas share a similar history, and pre-First World War were both part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, means that there’s more arrangement than disorder in these performances. Attacking the tunes with the sort of vigor the Austrian army should have shown in 1914, the three pile colors and textures onto Coleman’s basic structures. Consistent throughout are D’Agaro’s sharp reed bites and Kaučič’s rhythmic strokes.

Meanwhile Maier, who has played with everyone from trombonist Sebi Tramontana to tenor saxophonist Daniele Cavallanti, varies his bass line according to the situation. His sleight-of-hand moves from harsh string-stropping to cubist-like resonating whorls and patterns elsewhere.  With the cumulative strength of a tank battalion rolling towards a fortress, the usual intersection of rugged saxophone honks, bump-and-grind percussion whacks and tremolo string pulsing perfectly defines Coleman’s speedier numbers, while the performance also dusts them with unique Italo-Slovenian colors.

But the linked mind-set and cumulative interpretative sensitivity works just as well if the trio recreates a ballad such as “Faithful”. As D’Agaro emotionally outlines that wistful theme on clarinet, it’s dissected with equal seriousness by the bassist’s well-shaped note interpolations. Like a mediator bringing together two opposing sides in a dispute, Kaučič’s dynamic patterning pushes the sides into a consistent narrative. In contrast, the subsequent astringent “The Garden of Souls” is given added resonance from the tenor saxophonist’s high-pitched slurs and shakes, surmounting double bass string rubs and cymbal snaps. “Comme Il Faut” perfectly defines both the bluster and blues-base of Coleman’s background. 

D’Agaro’s a capella introduction manages to reference spirituals as well as spirituality. And its conclusion is a distinctive blues snort. The piece’s basic ambulatory shape is then satisfactorily embellished with Maier’s bass shuffles, culminating in a resonating thump, and a march beat from the drummer, martial enough to reference a military campaign.

(Ken Waxman, Jazzword.com, November 21, 2016)