13 Miniatures for Albert Ayler: RogueArt: 2012

Paying tribute to an artist who is no longer around happens often in the creative improvised music world.  Albert Ayler is one of the most, if not, the most, revered improvisers in the history of the music.  Perhaps, because he vanished before he fully realized his destiny. Or so it is thought.  Or perhaps, he left this world because it was really the time and he had done everything he, alone, could do and it was time for others to develop his language and legacy.

13 Miniatures for Albert Ayler demonstrates how his influence took hold. Thirteen vignettes with distinctive cadence: cadence that would be dismissed without the Ayler context. This is especially notable: in the introductory text, “Albert Ayler à la Fondation Maeght,” read by composer Daniel Caux’s wife, Jacqueline Caux, lyrically, in French, painting an atmosphere for the upcoming testaments to the assimilation of the saxophone player’s music; and in the poetry reading by Steve Dalachinsky, who is well-known for his remarkable practice of translating improvisational music experience into both visual and verbal sonority. For this performance Dalachinsky created a “collage” of interviews with Albert and his brother, Donald Ayler, entitled “As in My Name IS.............”

Predominant in the recording is reed and brass player, Joe McPhee, who, without having heard Ayler’s sound, would never have picked up a saxophone. McPhee plays in four of these pieces.  The last entry of the record is a McPhee tenor solo, fraught with melancholic melody, wherein the notes hang in the air; are slurred and interspersed with vocal grunts through the reed; evolve into extraordinary squealing/screaming pitches to descend into elegant conclusive mid-range tones.

The liner notes contain not only transcriptions of Caux’s tribute, Dalachinsky’s poetry, but also a two part poem by Parisian native and poet, Zéno Bianu.

The instrumentalists on the record are numerous and in combination express a wide-ranging grasp of Ayler’s musical intensity, never imitating it, only re-investing it with personal structure and signature. This is the only way Ayler can be remembered: by the spawning and growth of contemporary creative improvisation.

copyright 2012 Lyn Horton

Track listing:

Jacqueline Caux; Raphaël Imbert, Urs Leimgruber, Joe McPhee, Evan Parker, John Tchicaї; Jean-Luc Cappozzo, Raphaël Imbert, Christian Rollet; Steve Salachinsky, Joëlle Léandre, Barre Phillips; Ramon Lopez; Ramon Lopez, Barre Phillips, Michel Portal; Jean-Jacques Avenal, Simon Goubert, Joe McPhee; Jean-Luc Capozzo, Joe McPhee; Evan Parker; Joëlle Léandre, Urs Leimgruber, John Tchicaї; Simon Goubert, Raphaël Imbert, Sylvain Kassap, Didier Levallet; Joëlle Léandre, Urs Leimgruber, Lucia Recio; Joe McPhee.

Personnel:

Jean-Jacques Avenal: bass; Jacqueline Caux: spoken words; Jean-Luc Capozzo: trumpet, flugelhorn; Steve Dalachinsky: spoken words; Simon Goubert: drums; Raphaël Imbert: saxophones; Sylain Kassap: clarinets; Joëlle Léandre: bass; Urs Leimgruber: soprano sax; Didier Levallet: bass; Ramon Lopez: drums; Joe McPhee: tenor saxophone, flugelhorn; Evan Parker: saxophones; Barre Phillips: bass; Michel Portal: bass clarinet; Lucia Recio: vocals; Christian Rollet: drums; John Tchicaї: alto saxophone.

Lyn Horton: Wall Drawings and Works on Paper

photo by Richard Laurie 

Lyn Horton: Wall Drawings and Works on Paper

Cross MacKenzie Gallery is pleased to present a solo show of wall installations and works on paper by Massachusetts based artist, Lyn Horton, following her well-received participation in the gallery's spring group show, "TWISTED". This exhibition presents a more complete picture of Horton's oeuvre from her individual small works on paper to her monumental site-specific wall drawings that employ velvet rope for the linear elements and are applied directly onto the painted wall.

Horton's work is visual jazz - rhythmic, layered, sensuous and adheres to her own sensibilities. It is no surprise Lyn Horton writes about jazz - her passion. Her reviews have been regulars in Jazz Times, The New York Jazz Messenger, her own music blog - "The Paradigm for Beauty" and other publications, and her drawings have graced CD covers, most recently Wadada Leo Smith's "Ten Freedom Summers". Her jazz musings could describe her own art. Though reviewing a musical artist, Horton said; "The music Is thematic, tends to be quiet, slightly explosive, adheres to (the musician's) sense of humor, lyricism and even romantic melody" - an apt expression of the Lyn Horton exhibition in our gallery September.

As Mark Jenkins noted in his review in the Post of her recent work, " the drawings are still minimalist but with a sensuous ease" and "her "Loop" series twirls further away from Euclidean geometry".Many of the works in this exhibition are made of hypnotic twists of interwoven lines starting with circles and swoops that build to a crescendo - one layer over the other, line after line (or note by note and phrase by phrase) - in a repetitive, rhythmic, musical pattern.

Horton's MFA degree show at Cal Arts focused on the line and its place in minimalism and she has continued mining that vein ever since. Her experience executing wall drawings for minimalist Sol Lewitt informs her practice; she is a master of controlling her small pencil - mark by mark - with quiet, obsessive, painstaking, repetition - until a large and powerful work of art emerges.

The opening reception for the artists is September 7, 6-8.  The show is on view thru Sept 29th.

For digital images and more information contact: Rebecca Cross 202.333.7970 

cross  mackenzie  gallery 2026 R st nw washington dc 20009 202.333.7970 www.crossmackenzie.com

Jamie Saft: New Zion Trio: Fighting Against Babylon: Veal Records, 2011

As a musician, Jamie Saft is not easy to pin down. Each of his ventures can and no doubt should be considered without comparison to any previous recording, composition, or performance for that matter.  Saft’s consistent inconsistency characterizes the breadth of his musicianship on keyboards, acoustic piano and electric guitar. Exposing unexpected contexts for well-known songs, compositions, and his own music puts him in that label-less zone that frustrates clear perceptions of him, but which also keeps him out of sedentary, stale ruts that are so often carved out by other musicians.

New Zion Trio is described on Saft’s Veal Records website as “bringing together three masters of Reggae and Jazz musics for the first time in a unique piano trio setting straight from Kingston [NY] Yard.” With Saft on piano and Fender Rhodes, Larry Grenadier on acoustic bass and Craig Santiago on drums are created a laid back, totally listenable set of tracks. Each track title has a metaphorical twist in keeping with the record’s title, Fight Against Babylon.

Nothing less than rhythmic, the music is fluid and comfortable. It varies from the serious and pensive to the most airy and pleasurable. The music is essentially timeless. Yet, swinging from one character to another, it is still one line. As keyboard artist, with great flair, Saft exercises superb fingering techniques to fill out his melodic constructions with trills, arpeggios, scalar runs or progressions. The left and right hands balance each other: there is more treble tone than bass, whether or not he plays piano, Fender Rhodes or both simultaneously, inside and out. His stellar phrasing has as much to do with his innate, acute sense of time as with the solid sonic backbone provided by the pizz phrasing and lines from bassist Grenadier or hi-hat, cymbal, stick to snare edge to skin and occasionally to tom combinations from drummer Santiago.

   

Fight Against Babylon invites and proves true the notion that Saft is a straight-forward, no bullshit musician. He can do anything he wants to and he does.

Track listing:
Slow Down Furry Dub; Niceness; The Red Dies; Gates; I hear Jah; IShense; Lost Dub; Fire Blaze.

Personnel:
Jamie Saft: piano, Fender Rhodes; Larry Grenadier: bass; Craig Santiago: drums.

copyright 2012 Lyn Horton

Lyn Horton: Solo Exhibition: September 7-29, 2012

Cross Mackenzie Gallery, Washington, DC

Baba Andrew Lamb: Rhapsody in Black: NoBusiness, 2012

The music of Rhapsody in Black has a distinctive character: it speaks of gentleness, humility, artfulness and dignified cultural embrace.  Sax and flute player, Baba Andrew Lamb wastes no time in manifesting the aforementioned qualities in the opening page of the liner notes. The title of the album addresses a celebration of Black Heritage.

The first percussion sounds heard are unavoidably spare and soft, but “initiate” (cf. the title of the first track,“Initiation”) a series of beautifully executed discrete strokes on the bass strings by Lamb's decade long collaborator Tom Abbs. The atmosphere built is environmental, say of the jungle, bearing some kind of tribal significance, haunting yells as testimony. Lambs’ clarinet induces an unique sound aura of calling forth spiritual power that pervades the entire album.

The bass creates strong arco and pizzicato voices within the group throughout the recording and seems just as prominent instrumentally as the reeds are. Abbs also sputters and rips short glissandos through the tuba to change up the bass colors. But Lamb sings the most intricate songs; he repeats a phrase, rarely arpeggiates and sculpts sturdy and erect melodies, most often in the same gesture on any instrument he plays whether it is the clarinet, the tenor, metal or wooden flute.

The percussionists, Michael Wimberly and Guillermo E. Brown, are integral to the group’s musical process. Lamb describes the percussionists' interaction: "They play together at the same time or accompany each other taking turns." The drummers commit to holding up the rhythmic content with undying and varying persistence: with light-handedness on cymbals, snare, woodblocks or bells. The pair keeps the music tight, manages its direction and seals its reverence.

copyright 2012 Lyn Horton

Track listing: 
Initiation; Rhapsody in Black; To Love in the Rain; Song of the Miracle Lives.


Personnel:
Baba Andrew Lamb: clarinet, tenor sax, flute; Tom Abbs; bass, tuba; Michael Wimberly, Guillermo E. Brown: drums.

Narada Burton Greene, Live At Kerrytown House: NoBusiness Records, 2012

The maturity of an artist is built on how far and how well the artist pursues an idea. For Narada Burton Greene, the musical idea is the one that he is playing at the moment. Although he may have something in mind before he starts a solo concert, like the one at Kerrytown Concert House, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he begins is where he begins and where he ends has a simple resonant conclusion, the seventy-eight minutes in between equivalent of a short evolution.

On Live at Kerrytown House, the music is thematic, tends to be quiet, slightly explosive, adhering to Greene’s sense of humor, lyricism and even romantic melody. He does not play without minor improvisational discords and cantankerous fingerings. For it is with these juxtapositions that Greene maintains the utmost integrity and musicianship. He has collaborated with and arranged compositions by associates, including longtime colleague Silke Röllig. With Röllig, he has created some of the most evocative contemporary piano music that there is.  

The miracle of Greene’s music is its never-ending luster. Not one piece in this performance eludes its brightness or demonstrates lack of respect for the instrument he plays.

“Freebop” for Greene implies as much grace as going off an edge; the three versions here are all different yet in some ways very much the same. The intermittent sounds of a couple of the small percussive instruments he carries with him to every performance are a joy to hear: they are brief  hiatuses in the currency of the pianistic flow. “Prevailence” and “Greene Mansions” exemplify compositions where the main musical subject acts as an armature off which filigreed vagaries can weave and return, like vines on a trellis.

It is not difficult to detect the language that governs Greene’s playing: the ascending and descending chordal runs or marches; the two-handed chord systems that move up the keyboard from which stream tuneful treble explorations; or the stopping and starting of his process so that he can reassess and re-commence with  a possible repetition of ideas.

Greene is no longer interested in smashing things across the piano sounding board as he once was in order to prove that free expression is admissible. Rather, as he knows deeply  now, he makes a statement no matter how he portrays the richness of his life, from Chicago to New York to Amsterdam, where he has spent most of his adulthood. His concentration is unswerving; his dedication to his art unabashed.

The sage that he is, as his Yogic name Narada indicates, Burton Greene embraces an essential cultural core in his music. He never flounders and always is pondering the next step, whether that be for a solo or group context. Coming out of a meditative state of solitude or the conviviality of others, Greene is giving us his truth of self.

copyright 2012 Lyn Horton

Track Listing:  

Freebop the 4^th; Tree; Freebop the 1^st; Prevailence; Greene Mansions; Little Song; Elevation; Freebop the 6^th; Don't Forget the Poet; Get Through It; Space Is Still The Place.

Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers: Cuneiform Records, 2012

Wadada Leo Smith’s Ten Freedom Summers is not simply a four disc boxed set of recorded music. It is a historical document written throughout a single period of the African-American trumpeter’s conscious lifetime about the never-ending saga of the African-American people. Smith’s concept for the relation of particularly contentious stories within the entangled context of American life not only addresses landmark events but also the underpinnings of those events in the detail that becomes as abstract as his music can make them.

These recordings diverge from the program of the live premiere in Los Angeles in October, 2011, over three nights. The recordings have more music than was performed then and the sequence of pieces has been altered.  The power of the juxtaposition of one piece to the next, however, remains the same. Absent also is the final speech of Martin Luther King, Jr., “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” which concluded the original performance. Notable is Smith’s sensitivity to the extent to which temporal constraints can be stretched. Whereas time was a factor in what could be performed, time is not a factor in listening to the records. 

The language of the music is meant for conveying and directing feeling, much of which is so deeply imbedded in Smith that it takes no effort for him to express it when he blows into his trumpet alone or its sound is integral to the improvisations of his Golden Quintet/Quartet and the elegantly constructed, carefully sculpted measures played by an ensemble derived from Southwest Chamber Music. The colors of the classical components of this music create unarguably indispensable tensions in stark relation to Golden Quintet/Quartet’s inexorably unique based-in-the-blues sonic lushness.

Even though the trumpet falls into silence more than once, it returns valiantly. Smith does not fool around. His tone is unmistakably certain, demonstrating no influence from the past, only the strength of his commitment to the delivery of his own notes.  The musicians in Golden Quartet/Quintet (including bassist John Lindberg; pianist Anthony Davis; drummers Pheeroan akLaff and Susie Ibarra) know Smith’s sensibilities so well that the players behave as one organic whole. akLaff’s drumming is much larger in gesture than Ibarra’s whose stick technique tends towards elegant diversified cymbal strikes and sibilance rather than towards large booming uproarious tom/bass drum resonance.

All artists want to have something to sink their teeth into, something to explore, to shape, to know so well that it is automatic to be active in a certain frame of mind. The density of the ingredients of Ten Freedom Summers warrants absorption and digestion. The Southwest Chamber Music players are cast in the role of playing some of the most gripping lines in the entire piece, suitable for evoking a sense of loving, true sadness and tragedy. But Smith has composed recurrent contrasting patterns within the combination of Golden Quartet/Quintet and classical music ensemble.  

For instance, Lindberg’s extraordinary solo and a repeated two notes segues into the main body of “Emmett Till” when the Southwest Chamber Music string players and harpist take over; or the trumpet ushers in the hugeness of the tympani sound, violin sustenuto and piano/tympani unison in “Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society;” or the music falls apart and somehow pulls back together in a three-note trumpet ostinato in “Democracy;” or in “Thurgood Marshall and Brown vs. Board of Education,” Golden Quintet opens up into an exhilarating blues essay: Davis hits just the right treble notes; Lindberg plays a bass line that has just the right retard; or akLaff strikes the snare at offbeat moments; all of which disintegrates into a raucous sound tug that remarkably evolves into Smith's muted trumpet solo to end with a reprise of the initial theme on bass.

Golden Quartet/Quintet’s clarity and purpose is never lost, nor is the formalism of Southwest Chamber Music, because Smith’s music is aimed in a certain direction. The musical statements in Ten Freedom Summers are nothing short of arresting, a reason to shed tears often, and are so much about exposing ideas so frequently brushed under the rug and trampled upon that it is not enough just to wonder why the latter is so. Every round of pieces culminates with a striking, unfettered conclusion: the first with “John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier and The Space Age, 1960;” the second, with “Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and The Civil Rights Act of 1964;” the third, with “The Little Rock Nine: A Force for Desegregation in Education, 1957;” and the fourth, with “Martin Luther King, Jr.: Memphis, The Prophecy.”

Wadada Leo Smith is proud to live in America and be an American. If there were any doubts, due to his rebellious nature, more thought might go into the reasons why he is rebellious. To listen to the nearly fifteen minute section, “Democracy,” paints Smith’s questioning perception of how disturbingly confused the country is about the principles on which the country is built. But to listen to “America, Part 1” is to hear a description of the magnificence of living in a free country. Without being free, Smith would have little room for collaborating on his work, much less actualizing it.

Art is intended to provide inspiration to move forward and change. Ten Freedom Summers is a work of art that is seldom available to experience. Not many artists have the gumption to speak so straightforwardly and, at the same time, so beautifully and with such excellence, that, on the receiving end, the reluctance to change is cast aside; the incentive to change is inculcated into a thought and learning process and might actually be achievable.

©2012 Lyn Horton

The Players

Golden Quartet: Anthony Davis, piano; Susie Ibarra, Pheeroan Aklaff, drums; John Lindberg, bass; Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet.

Southwest Chamber Music: Alison Bjorkedal, harp; Jim Foschia, clarinet; Lorenz Gamma, violin; Peter Jacobson, cello; Larry Kaplan, flute; Jan Karlin, viola; Tom Peters, bass; Lynn Vartan, percussion; Shalini Vijayan, violin; Jeff von der Schmidt, conductor.

  

  

Disc One:

Dred Scott: 1857 [Golden Quintet];

Malik Al Shabazz and the People of Shahada [Golden Quintet];

Emmett Till: Defiant, Fearless [Golden Quartet w/ Susie Ibarra & Southwest Chamber Music];

Thurgood Marshall and Brown vs. Board of Education: A Dream of Equal Education, 1954 [Golden Quintet];

John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier and the Space Age, 1960 [Southwest Chamber Music].

Disc Two:

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 381 Days [Golden Quartet w/ Pheeroan akLaff];

Black Church [Southwest Chamber Music];

Freedom Summer: Voter Registration, Acts of Compassion and Empowerment, 1964 [Golden Quintet];

Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [Southwest Chamber Music; Wadada Leo Smith and Shalini Vijayan, soloists].

Disc Three:

The Freedom Riders Ride [Golden Quartet w/ Susie Ibarra];

Medgar Evers: A Love-Voice of a Thousand Years Journey For Liberty and Justice [Southwest Chamber Music];

The D.C. Wall: A War Memorial for All Times [Golden Quartet w/ Susie Ibarra];

Buzzsaw: The Myth of a Free Press [Golden Quartet w/ Pheeroan akLaff]

The Little Rock Nine: A Force for Desegregation In Education, 1957 [Golden Quartet w/ Susie Ibarra & Southwest Chamber Music].

Disc Four:

America Parts 1, 2 & 3 [Golden Quartet w/ Pheeroan akLaff];

September 11^th,  2001: A Memorial [Golden Quintet];

Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964 [Golden Quintet];

Democracy [Golden Quintet];

Martin Luther King, Jr.: Memphis, The Prophecy [Golden Quartet w/ Susie Ibarra & Southwest Chamber Music].