#aum fidelity

While those sensibilities likewise nurture Painters Winter (no apostrophes, thank you), which follows its predecessor by twenty-one years, the group does not precisely duplicate its vibe. The first time, Parker and Drake got down to rhythm section fundamentals. Now, they join Carter, who routinely defies the conventional wisdom that says mixing woodwinds and brass will wreck your chops. Carter once more savors the pleasures of multi-instrumentalism, waxing lyrical on alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet, flute, and trumpet. Drake plays hand drums as well as a kit, and Parker plays shakuhachi and trombonium (a compact brass instrument that was invented to give marching bands access to a trombone’s sonorities) as well as double bass. Whenever Parker picks up a wind instrument, Drake throttles back, accentuating details with cymbal washes or blazing paths of spare, winding beats that wander away from his partners’ breath exchanges, but always complement them. If you’re used to being carried away by his joyous grooves, you might find it necessary to listen a little closer this time in order to catch his endless rhythmic permutations. But maybe you’ll just focus on the laconic exchanges between contrasting winds. 

With bass in hand, Parker revels in the space that the trio provides. The long developmental arcs of his ideas are matched by his tonal bulk. On the opener, “Groove 77,” Carter balances Parker’s heft with slender, economical lines played on a muted trumpet, and balancing Parker’s unstoppable drive on “A Curly Russell” with short, cork-screwing lines. His knack for contrast extends to emotional content, as well, best exemplified by the dolorous cast to his tenor on “Happiness.” While it’s possible to just kick back and enjoy Painters Winter as easily as its predecessor, these dynamic shifts yield an endless bounty of discoveries. Settle in; winter’s a time for listening.

This trio is an aggregate of opposing forces, and could it be anything else with Parker at the helm of a trickster composition like “Domingo”? Imbibing Parker’s mind-stomping time-and-mode-scrambling groove might put Classical music enthusiasts in mind of those Haydn minuets that constantly skew the beat. It’s a take on the walking bass-line trope shoved way down deep into oceans of association, each tone obliterating the last, and even Mendoza and Cleaver’s timbrally disparate entrances only scatter allusion while sweetening the pot. If Parker is the Shiva of musical foundations, Cleaver brings the fire. Is there a Clave buried in the titular piece’s incendiary brick-and-mortar multipulse? How does he manage brushes and whatever else he’s got going in that transparent mix of loose hipness and rhythmic intricacy as Parker slaps and pops back? Shaker, wire and skin coalesce in ebullient camaraderie over Parker’s ostinato until Mendoza ups the ante. She is a guitarist thriving on texture. This is not to diminish her melodic and harmonic acumen, evident in everything she plays, but her greatest gift resides in the layering of timbral delicacy, sometimes in microtone, as when she decenters “Mayan Space Station”’s fourth chord, presenting worlds of possibility through a peephole. Later in the track, she fabricates canon via delay, but the second voice is distorted and veiled, mysterious, a backlit ghost among ghosts manifesting in what Cooper-Moore has called the neighborhood of history and influence, channeling Sonny Sharrock via Roger Trigaux.

Then, ineluctably, relegating the poor writer to deer-in-headlights status, come the final two pieces, points both on and defining the curve, the place of combinatorial elements that doesn’t so much warp time and space as shatter them. “Canyons of Light” begins with all in melody mode, Parker’s arco beautifully complementing the sheen of Cleaver’s cymbals, Mendoza treating distortion with virtuosic skill. All builds, coasting in and out of time and rhythm just on the edge of perception until the sudden stop and silence ushering in the appropriately titled “The Wall Tumbles Down.” A blues workout in context rips notions of chronology to shreds before the topic shifts, suddenly, radically and completely, readmitting pliant sinews and sensual curves similar to those with which “Canyons” opened. The ensuing arc, awash in clarified scronk and transparently rarified clatter, is a marvel of construction and engineering. The three are one, and the one is integrated in division in the way only music can manage. It’s difficult to say just where the power resides. It could be in Cleaver’s anchoring of the slow build, or maybe in the high-voltage gongs and myriad glissandi at 11:00, or is it actually in those final and darkly delicate no-time intervals hanging in space and ushering the sounds away? The discs second half puts its first’s felicities in perspective and shows what this trio really is and might become. They should record more; the sooner the better!

Altoist Rob Brown is an old and dependable friend of Dickey’s, making his appearance on the project unsurprising. Bassist Brandon Lopez is a generation younger, but similarly plugged into the scene. Six pieces are credited to Dickey “in collaboration with Trio” and are very much in line with the energy-fueled, improvisation emphasizing vocabulary that all three musicians speak fluently. “The Outer Edge” initiates on a tersely tumbling roll from Dickey as Brown’s piquant alto alights and hovers with vertical bursts. Lopez’s fingers remain motionless for the opening minutes before busying themselves with a rich, anchoring line that accelerates the leader’s eddying and crashing beats. Intervals of tension and release follow around a drum solo that feels at once organized and pinion-averse. 

“Desert Flower” blooms out of incremental sounds made by dampened bass strings and brushes. This time it’s Brown’s turn to wait in the wings, leaving his colleagues to a conversation comprised of rubberized strums and swishing cymbal accents. Alto entry comes gradual with purring legato shapes threading through the resulting rhythmic thicket. Once again, there’s a palpable tensity to the interplay that carries over into the arco-driven threnody of “Plateau” where Dickey’s mallets and high-hat accompany a downcast dance of querulous alto. The sprawling title piece returns things to fertile freebop territory. Weighed against Dickey’s earlier work there isn’t anything here that strays far afield. Instead, it’s high caliber business as usual, and all the better for the consistency.

The original Quartet reveled in the massiveness of its sound. When you subtract Matthew Shipp’s piano and add Joe Morris’s electric guitar, you open up a lot of space. Morris, a guy with a finely-honed skill for making his own mark without getting in the way of his fellow musicians, was an inspired choice to cast light upon the details of line and timbre in Ware’s playing. For while his playing never lacked nuance, it had always been a lot easier to linger on its tonal bulk and emotional force with such a piledriver band behind it. William Parker’s bass playing doesn’t command as much attention here as it often did in the original quartet. That’s not because he’s playing less, but because he’s pretty much singlehandedly establishing the music’s foundation with insistent, fundamental lines. By articulating the rhythms so solidly, he makes it possible for drummer Warren Smith to fly free of the groove and ascend alongside Ware, who sounds positively airborne on the intro to “Durga,” wheeling and dipping while Smith scatters flourishes that decorate his melody.  

The New Quartet only made one studio record, Shakti, which it recorded the same month as it played this concert. While there’s a lot overlap in the thematic material, the live recording feels looser and more exciting, making Théâtre Garonne, 2008 a very welcome addition to Ware’s discography.