Wadada Leo Smith, Douglas R. Ewart, Mike Reed: Sun Beans Of Shimmering Light
multikulti.com * * * * 1/2
... to bardzo poruszający album, wcale nie formalnym rozmachem, znanym chociażby z płyt "Lake Biwa" (Tzadik, 2004), "Ten Freedom Summers" (Cuneiform, 2012) lub "The Great Lakes Suites" (Tum Records, 2014). Ale wielostrumieniowością opowieści, płyta ukazuje alchemię tworzenia trzech wielkich artystów-konceptualistów, konsekwentnie kroczących nieudeptanymi ścieżkami. Efektem ich współpracy jest jazz grany z wielką pasją, ale też ogromną wrażliwością i odpowiedzialnością za każdy dźwięk, każdy akcent, frazę, rytm... Którego nie da się wymazać, tylko mistrzowie potrafią wybrać ten jeden, który powinien się tu i teraz pojawić!
freejazzblog.org * * * * 1/2
...Long notes, full-bodied, resonant, unadorned. Such cerebral and spiritual players.
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multikulti.com * * * * 1/2:
Amerykański Astral Spirit prezentuje triowe nagranie z samego jądra chicagowskiego AACM. "Sun Beans of Shimmering Light" ma trzech bohaterów, mistrz jazzowej trąbki Wadada Leo Smith, członek AACM od 1967 roku, jeden z filarów improwizowanego jazzu. Urodzony na Jamajce Douglas R. Ewart, od 1963 roku mieszka w Chicago, był uczniem Josepha Jarmana i Roscoe Mitchella. Trzecim jest najmłodszy w stawce drummer Mike Reed, członek zespołu Davida Boykina, Rob Mazurek Exploding Star Orchestra, Josh Berman Quartet. Z sukcesem prowadzi kwintet Loose Assembly kwartet People, Places & Things.
Historia albumu sięga 2010 roku, kiedy to kwartet People, Places & Things wystąpił na nowojorskim Vision Festival, tego samego wieczoru, co Wadada Leo Smith. Po koncertach trębacz podszedł do Mike'a Reeda z propozycją współpracy. W wywiadzie udzielonym Howardowi Reichowi, Mike Reed powiedział, że sądził, że to tylko uprzejmość trębacza, nie myślał o tym więcej. Ale podczas spotkania z Douglasem Ewartem, usłyszał ponowienie zaproszenia. Tak trójka wytrawnych jazzmanów, wyznających zasadę prymatu muzyki improwizowanej nad zapisaną połączyła siły i w 2012 roku zagrała po raz pierwszy na żywo. Potem wielokrotnie występowali wspólnie.
Teraz przedstawiają płytę, która jest swoistym podsumowaniem tego twórczego fermentu, którego byli twórcami. Pięć części o różnym ładunku energetycznym, różnym potencjale interakcyjnym, różnej charakterystyce brzmieniowej. Strumienie dźwiękowe trójki muzyków nieustannie meandrują, schodzą się by za chwilę się oddalić, w zdecydowanej większości tworzą bardzo zrelaksowaną, uduchowioną i melodyjną opowieść. Są oczywiście momenty, w których muzyka atakuje nas z dużym impetem, głównie za sprawą Smitha, jednak tak dzieje się zaledwie kilka razy. Płynność narracyjna jest tutaj utrzymana od początku do końca płyty. Ten stopień zespolenia w abstrakcyjnej formie jest możliwy tylko wtedy, gdy muzycy przystępują do współpracy mając ustalony katalog zasad podstawowych, jazzowe dziesięć przykazań, które tutaj znaczy alfabet AACM, zaproponowany przez Muhala Richarda Abramsa, twórczo rozbudowywany chociażby przez Wadadę Leo Smitha w wydanej w 1973 roku książeczce "On the AACM and creative music". Postulaty Abramsa, aby nie szukać brzmienia idealnego, tylko grać to, co w danej chwili dyktuje serce, aby nie zamykać się w gatunkowych podziałach, tylko próbować wszelkich form muzycznych, są solą ich pracy twórczej.
„Sun Beans Of Shimmering Light” to bardzo poruszający album, wcale nie formalnym rozmachem, znanym chociażby z płyt "Lake Biwa" (Tzadik, 2004), "Ten Freedom Summers" (Cuneiform, 2012) lub "The Great Lakes Suites" (Tum Records, 2014). Ale wielostrumieniowością opowieści, płyta ukazuje alchemię tworzenia trzech wielkich artystów-konceptualistów, konsekwentnie kroczących nieudeptanymi ścieżkami. Efektem ich współpracy jest jazz grany z wielką pasją, ale też ogromną wrażliwością i odpowiedzialnością za każdy dźwięk, każdy akcent, frazę, rytm... Którego nie da się wymazać, tylko mistrzowie potrafią wybrać ten jeden, który powinien się tu i teraz pojawić!
autor: Mariusz Zawiślak
Copyright © 1996-2021 Multikulti Project. All rights reserved
Editor's Info
Astral Spirit presents Sun Beans of Shimmering Light by Wadada Leo Smith, Douglas R. Ewart, Mike Reed. Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Dave Zuchowski. Photos by Michael Jackson. All compositions by Smith, Ewart, and Reed (Kiom Music, ASCAP; Nikoranza Publishing Company BMI; Reedmicj Publishing, ASCAP). "Commercial Improvisation", Cover Art Image (c) 2020 Sonnenzimmer, Nick Butcher & Nadine Nakanishi. Layout by Nick LaRoche.
freejazzblog.org * * * * 1/2
A live recorded performance of spontaneous improvisation from 2015 at percussionist Mike Reed’s venue Constellations in Chicago, this musical meeting of trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, multi-instrumentalist Douglas Ewart and Reed is a small treasure trove full of delights. The recording here is from the second outing of this trio.
A musician’s musician, Douglas Ewart’s long musical and working relation with Wadada Leo Smith goes back to about 1967, the early days of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in Chicago. A next generation (is it the fourth?) AACM member since 2008, Mike Reed served as chairperson to the Chicago chapter from 2009 to 2011. In addition to Constellations he (with trumpeter Josh Berman) make music happen at Chicago’s The Hungry Brain.
Back in 1973, Leo Smith published a pamphlet (200 copies printed) on the AACM and creative music. He wrote: “technique for the improvisor is . . . a direct attunement with the mental, spiritual and mechanical energy necessary to express a full creative impulse. . . . it is the all-out goal to respond to the solo creative impulse from within which makes for the uniqueness of originality among all creative performers” (notes (8 pieces), source a new world music: creative music, p. 15). Smith’s sensibility lines up nicely with Ewart’s philosophy of music from earlier this year: “Improvisation is intrinsic to human life, survival, and THRIVAL. It must not be spoken of and dealt with like a thing apart, it rather must be encouraged, fostered, and wholeheartedly embraced if we are to take wings and soar in body, mind, and spirit. Improvisation is key to uncovering, discovery and invention” (Ewart, “Meditations for George Floyd & the Confluence of Covid, a New Paradigm,” by Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY, (accessed 2021/01/22)).
The proof their shared conviction in the spiritual and creative power of improvisation can be found in the Sun Beans of Shimming Light. This is a very affecting, moving album, though without the sweep or solemnity of, say, Smith’s Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform, 2012) or The Great Lakes Suites (Tum Records, 2014), and there are no live electronics as on Smith’s super-interesting Luminous Axis (Tzadik, 2002). A purely acoustic affair here. Douglas Ewert’s instruments are not listed, though at a guess, he is playing bassoon, English horn, bamboo flute, and sopranino saxophone. Ewart’s highly expressive didjeridu doesn’t show up; for that you’ll have to listen to his brilliant Songs of Sunlife: Inside the Didjeridu (Innova, 2004), or catch him with dancers here. On drum kit, percussionist Mike Reed’s basic modus operandus is to lay back and let the big guns do their thing. He lays down some attractive underflooring, but is most often a colorist to the horn players’ instant melodies and storytelling. The playing overall is mostly relaxed, soulful, and tuneful; they also rise occasionally into strident, statement mode on the power of Wadada Leo Smith’s horn.
“Constellations and Conjunctural Spaces” (track 1) is an almost 16 minute mini-suite, and the best example here of the trio at work. The next 3 tracks mostly feature shifting duos and solo work, with the trio concept taking a back seat. This track opens as a trumpet/bassoon duo with a semi-classical vibe. They seek and find common tones and work off of variations. All formality and patience. Reed enters about 4 minutes in, and the energy begins to turn. Snare rolls, snarls, dissonance, trilling, some intense parlay and note cycling in the vein of Roscoe Mitchell when Ewart changes instruments to what sounds like an English horn or a shenai.
Both horn players channel and communicate so much character! Mike Reed plays as a slightly more laid back Andrew Cyrille in his sensitivity and touch. As Reed gives percussive direction to the trio, the mood opens, and the horns experiment with pitch and timbre rather than matching intervals. An ordered cacophony, Smith throws down note clusters, Ewart works intensities of vibration or snaking lines from which emerge snippets of song, blaring outbursts, and then a retreat to classical phrasing. Ewart can do it all, it’s just a question of curating among his wide-array of tools. Smith’s playing is more singularly evocative, never quite departing from a tone which is his personal voice (to my mind is like him standing over a valley delivering a call to common prayer that says,“Hey, you, get with it”).
Track 2 (“Sun Beans of Shimmering Light”) opens with hard-hits on a prayer bell lingering and Smith’s characteristic long lines. Resonant crashing pangi shells and clutter, then cymbals and brushwork on snare. Ewart enters 3 and half minutes in for a very expressive bamboo flute over Reed’s brushes. Both horn players are such masters of producing their own melodies on the fly. Smith re-enters and a romantic dance between flute and muted trumpet takes the tune to its ending.
Track 3 (“Super Moon Rising”) begins with African thumb piano played probably by Smith, who put the mbira to such good use on his version of Love Supreme (on his virtually peerless record, Kulture Jazz (ECM, 1992)). He soon moves to an extended trumpet-percussion duo with Reed playing mallets on toms and cymbals, and then a tempo forward snare. From patient calm to anxious and bold. Ewart enters, at first with a throbbing undertow as Smith continues to make his statements over busy drumming. Things subside, and with some lilting phrases of Ewart’s sopranino sax, Smith bows out and Reed offers up a swinging rhythm over which Ewart’s ringing, intervallic cycles take the tune out.
Track 4 (“Unknown Forces”) opens with solo trumpet traveling from elegiac to guttural and back again, one musical thought after another patiently, thoughtfully delivered. With a hint of reverb, Smith’s personal, distinctive sound. Legato ruminations; then splat, splat, spitting. Five minutes in, Reed enters with ride cymbal hits, signaling a change. Ewart’s turn to solo. Ewart fills his English horn to capacity, you can feel the vibrations. Long notes, full-bodied, resonant, unadorned. Such cerebral and spiritual players.
By Gregg Miller
allaboutjazz.com * * * * 1/2
Three significant forces spanning two generations of the forward-thinking Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians meet in a poised recital on Sun Beans Of Shimmering Light. Although recorded in 2015 at drummer Mike Reed's Constellation arts space in Chicago, the concert's genesis lies some five years earlier and 700 miles to the east.
When Reed's band People, Places & Things played the 2010 Vision Festival in NYC on the same evening as Wadada Leo Smith, the trumpeter said that they must get together. As Reed told writer Howard Reich, he thought Smith was being polite and thought no more of it. But during a subsequent encounter with multi-instrumentalist Douglas Ewart, the elder man reiterated Smith's desire. All three finally united in 2012, an occasion so successful that further meetings occurred in the following years, the last of which furnished this live recording.
While none of the pieces is credited on the sleeve, Smith and Ewart both brought charts to earlier dates, and it's easy to imagine preconception at work in the ordered but spacious interplay which makes up the five selections on the 45-minute program. The presence of three form-seeking improvisers means that where notation ends and individual expression begins is deliciously unclear. Such ambiguity and unpredictability hallmarks some of the finest music, and it's stamped all over this session.
Smith's ethos that the silence around a note is as important as the note itself is evidently shared. His trumpet mingles in measured counterpoint with Ewart's bassoon in a chamber sensibility at the start of "Constellations And Conjunctional Spaces," not disturbed by Reed's small percussion grounding. Reed buoys up further elegant interaction as Ewart's sopranino saxophone ululations threads through Smith's declamatory brass as the track proceeds. The beautiful plaintive air of the title cut constitutes another of the high points in a consistently rewarding performance.
Smith's sound exudes gravitas and a blues feeling, even though the structure is never invoked. He filters the lyricism of Miles Davis through an abstract prism. Ewart matches him with lines which variously recall hymns and folk music, while also using an array of horns and small instruments to vary the colors and balance. Reed shows himself to be a wonderfully crisp and precise drummer, evidencing an almost orchestral conception in his placement of rhythmic elements, although none of the pieces displays a steady pulse.
Setting aside the question of whether the title is a typo (it appears often enough on the sleeve to imply intent), its suggestion of an organic entity growing out of something ineffable is an apt metaphor for the consummate artistry contained within. While the repeatability of this threesome remains unknown, this set provides an account to treasure.
BY JOHN SHARPE
muzycy:
Wadada Leo Smith: trumpet
Douglas R. Ewart: woodwinds
Mike Reed: drums
utwory:
1. Constellations And Conjunctional Spaces 15:48
2. Sun Beans Of Shimmering Light 7:52
3. Super Moon Rising 10:25
4. Unknown Forces 9:47
5. Dark Tango 1:46
Opis
- Wydawca
- Astral Spirits (USA)
- Artysta
- Wadada Leo Smith, Douglas R. Ewart, Mike Reed
- Zawiera
- CD
- Data premiery
- 2021-11-02