Myra Melford's Be Bread - The Whole Tree Gone

Styles: Piano Jazz
Year: 2010
Time: 65:25
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Size: 149,8 MB
Art: Front

( 6:27) 1. Through The Same Gate
(11:01) 2. Moon Bird
( 8:41) 3. Night
( 8:39) 4. The Whole Tree Gone
( 8:34) 5. A Generation Comes And Another
( 6:13) 6. I See A Horizon
( 7:28) 7. On The Lip Of Insanity
( 8:20) 8. Knocking From The Inside

It's been too long since pianist Myra Melford's last release as bandleader, especially as we can now hear what we've been missing. For the second outing by her Be Bread ensemble, the pianist has assembled an all star cast of frequent collaborators. Bassist Stomu Takeishi, guitarist Brandon Ross and trumpeter Cuong Vu are holdovers from the debut disc, here joined by clarinetist Ben Goldberg and Matt Wilson at the traps. Melford herself concentrates solely on piano. Electronics are set aside for an all-acoustic palette, resulting in a high level of cohesiveness across the 65-minute program.

Most of the eight original pieces were written as part of a suite in the fall of 2004, with support of a Chamber Music America grant. All have been performed many times over the last five years in a variety of settings. Such familiarity makes for a committed and potent ensemble performance of music which satisfies both the head and the heart with its switchback arrangements, well integrated solo space and emotionally ambiguous themes. Melford's rhythmic acumen and barreling blues inflections together with Wilson's crisply propulsive drive and resourceful percussive textures banish any thought of the salon: this is chamber music with attitude.

Melford is well served by her band. Goldberg's poised mellifluous clarinet and Vu's casually expressive trumpet make for an engaging pairing, combining well in unison, but shining apart, with Goldberg's popping percolating contra-alto clarinet introduction to "Knocking from the Inside" and Vu's spluttering breathy excursion on "Moon Bird" which is especially noteworthy. Not to be outdone, the leader contributes a dazzling opening cadenza to the same track, almost Taylor-esque in its fragmentation and percussive attack. Ross' spiky picking, particularly on soprano guitar, adds a voice incisive in phrasing but unconventional in timbre, meshing attractively with Takeishi's pliant acoustic bass guitar for a kinetic rhythmic latticework.

Whether breaking out of the soaring klezmer waltz of "Through the Same Gate" with an unfettered piano solo, navigating the knotty staccato title track only to frame duets for first bass and guitar, then rippling piano and clarinet or pressing the get-up-an- go urgency of "I See a Horizon" into a swirling ensemble mash up, Melford's taut arrangements blur the distinction between front line and support, group and solo. Each richly voiced cut is different in construction and mood, drawing on a wide range of world music influences, yet the outcome remains distinctive and unclassifiable. The Whole Tree Gone is yet another outstanding release from Firehouse 12, and a triumph for Melford.
By John Sharpe https://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-whole-tree-gone-myra-melford-firehouse-12-records-review-by-john-sharpe

Personnel: Myra Melford: piano; Cuong Vu: trumpet; Ben Goldberg: clarinet and contra-alto clarinet; Brandon Ross: guitar and soprano guitar; Stomu Takeishi: acoustic bass guitar; Matt Wilson: drums.

The Whole Tree Gone

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Ben Goldberg - Everything Happens to Be

Styles: Clarinet Jazz
Year: 2021
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 57:50
Size: 133,6 MB
Art: Front

(5:41) 1. What About
(6:14) 2. 21
(4:48) 3. Fred Hampton
(7:04) 4. Everything Happens To Be
(6:23) 5. Cold Weather
(9:53) 6. Chorale Type
(5:51) 7. Tomas Plays the Drums
(5:10) 8. Long Last Moment
(5:32) 9. To-Ron-To
(1:10) 10. Abide With Me

The music of Ben Goldberg seems to come from a place outside of time—or maybe it comes from several times simultaneously. Maybe it's the instruments he chooses; while the clarinet family has been on the comeback trail in jazz for a quarter century, it's a sound that invariably invokes the New Orleans of a century ago. That's especially true when Goldberg picks up the mellow, woody, Albert-system E-flat instrument on "Cold Weather." That tune's sweet melancholy wobbles perilously close to Hoagy Carmichael, but by way of "Pannonica" by Thelonious Monk, another composer who had a soft spot for sentimental old tunes.

If you're interested in a nostalgia trip, you don't choose guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Tomas Fujiwara to be your traveling companions, and the tension they create between the retrogressive and the transgressive gives Everything Happens To Be. a low-key charge. On paper, Goldberg is following in the great tradition of hiring the All-Star rhythm section of the moment. They are certainly that and as the cooperative Thumbscrew, also one of the formidable bands of the last decade. But Everything Happens To Be. isn't a Thumbscrew+horns date.

Goldberg has worked with Halvorson and Fujiwara as The Out Louds, and with Formanek in a variety of settings. Tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin is a long-time Goldberg collaborator who shares the leader's affection for putting new wine in old bottles. His big tenor sound, slippery but warm, hearkens back to players such as Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Gene Ammons and fits right in on the almost-vaudevillian bounce of tunes such as "21" and "To-Ron-To." If you've always wanted to hear Halvorson strum four-to-the-bar, Freddie Green-style, cue the latter, which seems to be based loosely on "Sweet Georgia Brown." It ends in a collective, New-Orleanean tangle that resolves into something like a 21st-century updating of the Benny Goodman Sextet with Charlie Christian and Georgie Auld. It takes iron control to play this loose.

But then there are knottier compositions such as "Fred Hampton," a lilting, 6/4 tune where Halvorson spins a songful line only to smudge it with a pedal effect, as if to say let's not make this too pretty. Yet beauty is never far away on Everything Happens To Be., though it seldom arrives in conventional fashion. Take "Chorale Type," which starts in church and detours to a middle-school gym where Goldberg and Halvorson circle each other warily like seventh graders at their first dance. The almost 10-minute cut ends in the mosh pit with Goldberg getting his metal on via a stomping bass line on contra-alto clarinet over Fujiwara's slamming 4/4. The exception is another chorale, "Abide With Me" which, inspired by Monk's 1957 septet version, is played straight in a single reverent chorus.

Though this session was recorded at New Haven's Firehouse 12 in 2018, that hymn tune is a perfect way to and a session that feels old and sounds fresh, that is joyful and melancholy. Just like life. By John Chacona
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/everything-happens-to-be-ben-goldberg-bag-production

Personnel: Ben Goldberg: clarinet; Mary Halvorson: guitar; Ellery Eskelin: saxophone; Michael Formanek: bass, acoustic; Tomas Fujiwara: drums.

Everything Happens to Be

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