Matt Mitchell: A Pouting Grimace

Avant Jazz / Free Improvisation / Avant-Garde
premiera polska: 07.08.2019
kontynent: Ameryka Północna
kraj: USA
opakowanie: digipackowe etui
opis:
multikulti.com - ocena * * * * 1/2:
Dwunastoosobowy zespół jazzowych osobowości, jakich zgromadził w studio Matt Mitchell robi wrażenie - Jon Irabagon, Anna Webber, Dan Weiss, Ches Smith, czy Tyshawn Sorey to rozchwytywani instrumentaliści. Sam lider i kompozytor całości jest podstawowym pianistą Tim Berne's Snakeoil i Dave Douglas Quintet. Jest muzycznym kameleonem. Jego żywioł, to operowanie poza konwencjami „jazzowymi” - i nie chodzi tylko o swobodną improwizację, ale o jej wypadkową i oryginalnych koncepcji na pograniczu jazzowej tradycji, muzyki klasycznej, współczesnej elektroniki, awangardy, użyźnionych jego własnymi pokręconymi i wybuchowymi pomysłami.
Spod skrzydeł Steve'a Colemana, Johna Hollenbecka i Mario Pavone trafił do Pi Recordings, jednej z najważniejszych jazzowych oficyn ostatniego ćwierćwiecza. Płyta "Vista Accumulation" (Pi Recordings, 2015) trafiła na listę najlepszych jazzowych albumów roku 2015 wielu opiniotwórczych gremiów na świecie.

"A Pouting Grimace" to pierwsze tak rozbudowane instrumentalnie dzieło Matta Mitchella. Dobrze zaplanowane dramaturgicznie i wyśmienicie rozegrane instrumentalnie zdumiewa błyskotliwością formalną i płynnością gatunkową. Zapierająca dech w piersiach wyobraźnia kompozytorska i smakowite aranżacje, stawiające często w pierwszym szeregu instrumenty perkusyjne (nie tylko tradycyjny zestaw perkusyjny, ale także indyjskie table, wibrafon, marimba, glockenspiel, timpani i tanbou), eksponujące wysokooktanowe środowisko brzmieniowe dęciaków, od fletów, saksofonu sopranino, oboju, rogu angielskiego, fagotu, saksofonu basowego po klarnet kontrabasowy. Każdy utwór jest przygodą, niezależnie funkcjonującym wielonurtowym organizmem. Jednak lider dba o spoistość dramaturgiczną całości, pokazał to już na "Vista Accumulation". "A Pouting Grimace" jest również budowany, jako fascynująca całość - z dziesięcioma kompozycjami ułożonymi w logicznym układzie. Muzyczna narracja płynie swobodnym nurtem, co rusz przyspiesza, gęstnieje by za chwilę wpaść w strumień dźwiękowego oniryzmu. To jest album, w którym każdy detal, szczegół wart jest naszej uwagi. Nie dziwią bardzo wysokie oceny w światowej prasie, płyta trafia na short listę najlepszych nagrań 2019!
autor: Witek Leśniak
Copyright © 1996-2019 Multikulti Project. All rights reserved

Editor's info:
A Pouting Grimace is the audacious new release from pianist/composer Matt Mitchell, whose prior release Vista Accumulation (Pi 2015) The New York Times calls “a bold signature” that “simmers with deep intensity.” Not only is he one of the most in-demand pianists in jazz – Mitchell plays in bands such as Tim Berne’s Snakeoil, Steve Coleman’s Natal Eclipse, the Dave Douglas Quintet, John Hollenbeck’s Large Ensemble, Jonathan Finlayson’s Sicilian Defense, Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Birdcalls, and David Binney’s Quartet — he has established himself as a composer of bold distinction. Substantial in scope, the album, which features twelve musicians: five woodwinds, four percussionists, harp, bass, and the leader on piano, Prophet 6, and electronics, weaves an intricate web of off-kilter rhythms and logical frenzy. Produced by the acclaimed guitarist/composer David Torn, the work is completely beyond genre, a daring tour de force that headily mines the interstice between precision-plotted compositions and the thrill of improvisation.
Highly regarded among the jazz cognoscenti, Mitchell is a first-call for musicians seeking a pianist able to deal with the most demandingly complex material. He is a charter member of saxophonist Tim Berne’s Snakeoil, who just released their fourth album, Incidentals, and Mitchell also interpreted Berne’s compositions on FØRAGE, released earlier in 2017. He also appears on Morphogenesis (Pi 2017), the latest from saxophonist Steve Coleman, who said of Mitchell: “Matt possesses a technical command of his instrument and ear for tonal resources that only a few keyboardists in New York have. I appreciate his open and creative attitude towards music, which he never approaches in terms of categories or styles. He’s a great example of the 21st-Century musician: versed in the musical lessons of the past, present, and poised to help move the development of this music forward.” Percussionist Dan Weiss, who played on Vista Accumulation and has worked extensively with Mitchell said: “He is a rare breed of musician in that he has no leaks. His improvising is true and creative, his composing is innovative, his technique is astounding.”
The intrepid new release takes Mitchell’s music to a whole other level, featuring ensemble pieces that burst with intricate detail interwoven with solo electronic interludes. The idea was borne out of his desire to try composing music with a fresh instrumental palette, one heavy on the convoluted interlocution between the various woodwinds and percussion. Each of the group compositions is derived from a kernel of an idea – listen carefully and you can probably figure it out. While entirely plotted out, the compositions leaves room for frequent and varied layers of improvisation, all in service of the overall arrangements. Dan Weiss says of the project: “This music is very important to the lineage of composed/improvised music. The orchestral palette, harmonic nuance, rhythmic precision and complexity, and hauntingly beautiful textured melodies make this recording highly innovative and unlike anything we’ve have heard before.”
Producer Torn describes his experience: “As the project proceeded, there grew out of all-that an increasingly strong undercurrent and vivid sense of wonder, dread and simple excitement in me, even, eventually… awe: awe, in light of both Matt’s clear vision actually getting birthed into this world and our real adventure with its passage. What a remarkably rich piece of work this is, from a truly remarkable man, bending music, sound and time — so gorgeously and so necessarily idiosyncratically — in order to speak and feel true and affect thusly, as he must certainly gotta do.”

freejazzblog.org - ocena * * * * 1/2:
It’s fitting that Matt Mitchell’s other release this year, the excellent FØRAGE, is a collection of Tim Berne tunes. Like Berne, Mitchell deals in the subterranean and the serpentine - any given piece is bound to have layers upon layers for the listener to work through, and there’s a dizzying intricacy to all the twists-and-turns that pop up. But here’s the thing: it never feels like a chore. Mitchell is a master of fusing the accessible and the arcane, and his music never lacks a sense of unbridled (if disoriented) joy. Matt Mitchell’s last album of original recordings, in 2015, was the brilliant and expansive Vista Accumulation. That release, with its lengthy run-times and winding, exploratory compositions, could potentially be a forbidding entry-point into Mitchell’s complex sound-world, but A Pouting Grimace, his latest for Pi Recordings, condenses and refines the elements that made that previous album such a delight. Despite a significant trimming-down of track lengths, there are no compromises made with regards to either the compositions or the personnel performing them. The pieces here are just as heady and labrynthine as ever, and Mitchell has pulled together some of the best names in contemporary jazz to help breathe life into the project - people like Ches Smith, Tyshawn Sorey, and Anna Webber, to name but a few.

“Bulb Terminus” is a brief preamble of sorts, led entirely by Mitchell. In the span of a minute, it gently dips the listener into an inert pool of electronics; when “Plate Shapes” comes in, however, that pool is better likened to a vortex. Performed by a septet, the piece is immediately striking for its rather unusual instrumentation, not to mention the idiosyncratic compositional elements. Along with Mitchell’s cascading piano-work, Ches Smith (on vibraphone) and Patricia Brennan (on marimba) help to create a playful sense of urgency; twinkling cataracts fall from every direction, and even Mitchell’s Prophet 6 synthesizer joins in at one point. Jon Irabagon and Sara Schoenbeck keep the piece suspended in a surreal, carnivalesque atmosphere - Schoenbeck’s nasally bassoon flits and flutters about in the left channel, while Irabagon takes on an exciting, incendiary sopranino sax solo that is a sight (or sound?) to behold. Kim Cass supplies the next piece, “Mini Alternate,” with a strutting bass-line that would be rather funky if not for Scott Robinson’s rubbery bass sax figures sprawling themselves out overtop, all while Kate Gentile (on drums) and Dan Weiss (on tabla) keep the track locked into a relentless groove that meshes perfectly (if not predictably) with Mitchell’s manic repetitions. Mitchell’s strengths as a player are on full display here: while his left hand conjures up dense tonal clusters, his right zigs-and-zags, looping away from and back into the central melody with aplomb. “Brim” is cut from similar compositional cloth, but features a wider array of instrumentation and a greater number of players - twelve, all in all. It’s not surprising that the famed Tyshawn Sorey has been handed conducting duties here. The piece is a veritable maelstrom, with each player engaged in their own hectic, contrapuntal dance; to be sure, though, it’s not complete chaos. If anything, it resembles the stop-and-go flow of city traffic. On the ground, in the midst of it, things can be overwhelming and incomprehensible. Hang out for a bit above the surface, however, and you can see the underlying order. Likewise, “Brim” operates within its own internal logic, and each listen offer up new layers of rhythm, flow, and flux. On the Pi Recordings webpage for the album, it’s noted that “Brim” is “the primordial genetic broth of the whole record,” with all of the other tracks being derived from it. In some ways, then, it’s a skeleton key, with compositional notches and protrusions that you’re likely to spot elsewhere on the record. “Deal Sweeteners,” another Mitchell-led electronic excursion, closes out the first half of the album with soft, cyborgian swathes.

Compared to the sonic density of some of the prior tracks, the opening of “Gluts” comes across as laconic. Mitchell and bassist Cass engage in a dizzying dance with one another, with Gentile echoing Mitchell’s complex shapes on the drums. Midway through, Anna Webber (alto flute) and bassoonist Schoenbeck step in, unleashing abstractions that are as gentle as they are circuitous. Not soon after, though, “Heft” parts with any semblance of tenderness, thunderous drums and rumbling bass sax working together to cast the piece in an uneasy, apocalyptic glow. In the second half, Irabagon screeches out yet another wild solo, notes raining down like fire-and-brimstone. After such an explosive track, it’s perhaps fortunate that “Sick Fields” is so sparse; despite being performed by a dectet, the piece moves about in splintered segments, individual instruments rising up from the ashen muck only to disintegrate again. If “Brim” represents ceaseless flux, then “Sick Fields” denotes the ruptures, the breaks and hesitations. Final piece “Ooze Interim” is once again led entirely by Mitchell; compared to the unremitting movements that make up much of the rest of the record, this last track might as well be a slab of granite: it pushes forward slowly, the distended tones only occasionally broken up by electronic drip-drops of sound - very much like beads of water falling from a stalactite. As a closing track, you couldn’t ask for much more. It counteracts the frenetic flow of the other pieces with its own dilated sense of time and, while it doesn’t offer up any definite sense of closure, it produces a quieting effect that helps the listener to contemplate all that they’ve just heard.

In A Pouting Grimace, several experiments are being carried on: experiments in composition, in tone, texture, and technique, and even experiments in just how one should construct an album. For the most part, Mitchell’s latest work is a roaring success - the record feels complete, and there’s a sense of narrative heft here that many similar-sounding projects lack. Not to mention, the pieces themselves are incredibly listenable; sure, there might be multiple melodies vying for your attention at any given moment, but it can’t be denied that each one of those melodic threads is worth following. With A Pouting Grimace, Mitchell has taken the best elements of his previous work and, as if by alchemy, melted them down into gold. Don’t let the title fool you - you won’t be grimacing when you finish this one.
By Derek Stone

popMATTERS - 9/10:
A Pouting Grimace is the latest and most complete statement yet from pianist and composer Matt Mitchell. Mitchell is, to my ears, one of the most fascinating, versatile, and brilliant players in the New Jazz. He plays with intelligent originality when he is functioning as a relatively conventional post-bop jazz pianist. But Mitchell is more truly in his element when he creates beyond "jazz" conventions — not merely improvising freely but more particularly improvising and inventing across a landscape unbound by jazz traditions, drawing on classical music, new music, jazz, the avant-garde, and mainly his own quirky, explosive ideas.

Previously, Mitchell has produced an album of crackling duets with percussionist Ches Smith, Fiction (2013) and Vista Accumulation (2015), on which he used a quartet featuring saxophonist Chris Speed to interpret complex compositions. He also recorded a stellar solo piano recital of Tim Berne tunes. All three of these efforts were daring, breaking past conventions but doing so through both detailed composition and collective improvisation.

Mitchell's latest is — by some distance — his most brilliant and varied work to date. It is animated by breathtaking compositional imagination and startling arrangements that draw on multiple percussive instruments (not just the drum set but also Indian tablas, vibes, marimba, glockenspiel, timpani, and tanbou) and an unusual range of horns: flutes, sopranino saxophone, oboe, English horn, bassoon, bass saxophone, and contrabass clarinet. Each track is an adventure, but the album is also built as a fascinating whole — with ten compositions arranged into two sections or suites that are set off by equally tasty electronic performances by the composer, alone.

The core of the band is a rhythm section featuring Mitchell, Kate Gentile on drums, and bassist Kim Cass. This group can negotiate the most complex set of shifting or overlapping time signatures and rhythmic patterns while always retaining the feeling of flow or swing. Many of the tunes add the attack of vibes, marimba, or glockenspiel, shimmering waves of percussion that lock into or work in tense contrast to the rhythm section. "Plate Shapes" finds Ches Smith and Patricia Brennan in constant rattling conversation, which overlaps with Mitchell's similarly rhythmic piano — and with his gorgeously integrated work on Prophet 6 synthesizer. For these webs of conversation alone, Grimace is a must-hear recording. On the same track, however, Mitchell orchestrates Sara Schoenbeck's flowing bassoon and blues-bent sopranino saxophone lines by Jon Irabagon. All of these waves of cross-conversation are mediated by carefully planned shifts in time signature, hooky figures that emerge from the ensemble, and jigsawed melodies that come together and veer apart....

muzycy:
Matt Mitchell - piano, Prophet 6, electronics
Kim Cass - upright bass
Kate Gentile - drums, gongs, percussion
Ches Smith - vibraphone, glockenspiel, bongos, timpani, gongs, Haitian tanbou, percussion
Dan Weiss - tabla
Patricia Brennan - vibraphone, marimba
Katie Andrews - harp
Anna Webber - flute, alto flute, bass flute
Jon Irabagon - sopranino sax, soprano sax
Ben Kono - oboe, English horn
Sara Schoenbeck - bassoon
Scott Robinson - bass sax, contrabass clarinet
Tyshawn Sorey - conductor

utwory:
1. bulb terminus 01:10
2. plate shapes 08:12
3. mini alternate 05:32
4. brim 06:49
5. deal sweeteners 01:38
6. squalid ink 00:15
7. gluts 04:28
8. heft 04:16
9. sick fields 09:10
10. ooze interim 05:07

wydano: 2017-09
nagrano: Recorded March 1 - 3, 2017 at Systems Two Recording Studios, Brooklyn, NY
Mixed and mastered at Cell Labs East, Bearsville, NY
Mixed and mastered by David Torn

more info: www.pirecordings.com