Intense but meditative, this session performed and recorded at The Stone in NYC in Sept. 2013 brings together three remarkable improvisers in three cuts, for a concise but powerful listen, due to lots of density and meaty musical discourse, and plenty of chops.
The longest piece at nearly a half-hour, "Box of Memories" shows the trio's talents at building a compositional arc and weaving strands of ideas and sound textures together in a narrative that is unpredictable and sensitive, yet is also a brilliant display of a wide spectrum of moods and colors, all evolving in a satisfying organic collage.
The more vociferous and primal "And the Call of the Wild Beckoned Them'" gives plenty of space to the trio's individual voices, all barking, hooting, cooing, screeching, whispering together, a forest of sounds, evoking in this listener a wide range of images, from the cries of a wounded animal, to the urgent mating songs of moose, the whelp of a tree frog, and the intriguing inflections of bird calls.
The last piece, "Men of Distinction (Coda)," seems like a summary of some of what came before, with an added density and compression of the development time, making for a very concise conclusion at 5:31. Some of the throbbing urgency of the first track resurfaces, as do the ostinato figures and the multifarious textures, at times sounding like circular rock guitar riffs, or seagulls or the crazy babblings of an insane snake charmer.
These musicians are no strangers to improvisatory adventure. Nate Wooley is the youngest of the three, yet a trumpeter who has already made a solid reputation for himself at home and abroad, and is recognized as an important voice in the on-going evolution of trumpet playing, drawing from a few masters of his instrument 's extended techniques, but arriving at a sound and concept all his own. Evan Parker is of course one of the pillars of contemporary improvised music as it sprang from the head of Zeus that was London of the 1960s. The saxophonist brings to this session his driven arpeggiations and continuous flow of figures, stoking the rhythmic motion of the trio in vigorous ways. Clarinetist Jeremiah Cymerman, the man responsible for the recording and release of this CD, brings a meet aesthetic, via his horn and electronic processing of sounds which adds another dimension to the mainly acoustic/amplified offering of his confreres. Cymerman has opted to open his liner notes with a quote from T.S. Eliot which is apropos: "It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves," a statement that underscores the melding of very concrete and abstract ideas in a delightfully oxymoronic musical offering.
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