#emanem

Taped between 1979 and 2007, we are given two solos, one duet and one trio, all previously unreleased. The earliest of the solos, “Duet for One” from 1979, is of particular interest, as it documents a brief but fascinating period in which the maverick musician used electronics and a voice mike. As the title suggests, there is a palpable sense of dialogue as the music unfolds along its circuitous and quasi-repetitive paths.  Beats from trombone and vocal interplay clash and writhe, creating their own constantly varied rhythmic patterns over the multifarious melodic disjunction.  Add in the electronics’ wildly oscillating frequencies, sometimes at a fixed pitch interval but often ambiguous, and you have a soloist in counterpoint with himself, anticipating the experiments with later members of the Iskra family.  It’s all miles removed from, for example, tha way Tony Oxley used electronics with Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton a decade ago.  There, they complemented the acoustic music in free-flowing monologue, while Rutherford controls each gesture to fit each moment’s new context.  It all happens at lightning speed, commensurate with the varied shower of disparately shaped tone-kernels he unleashes.

The better — if only marginally — of the two chamber pieces is a 2007 trio with cellist Marcio Mattos and pianist Veryan Weston, and it’s given extra poignance by being Rutherford’s last public appearance.  To call the music “lyrical” would be to wrap it up in an ill-fitting package, though there are certainly many lyrical moments, such as the gorgeously synergistic repose beginning at 5:18.  That said, it is only necessary to hear a few moments of the split-second call-and-response with which this ten-minute fireworks display is riddled to know what veteran improvisers do best.  Humor abounds in the slow descent Rutherford and Mattos execute around the 3:30 mark, as Weston dots the fertile landscape with single notes and dyads.  Mattos alone often sounds like an orchestra, imbuing the latter half of the excursion with tasteful electronics of his own. Rutherford’s light-and-shade motives and melodies are studies in subtle contrast, nuanced airflow and virtuoso microtone.  The sudden ending makes plain, as does much of the beginning, the wonderful acoustics of the much-missed Red Rose, where this valedictory trio was recorded.

Martin Davidson’s liner notes render Rutherford’s blatantly leftist politics and the opposing political backdrop against which he and his country struggled in stark relief.  Davidson’s further assertions that Rutherford was one of the best trombonists to grace improvised music, not to mention his dismay at how frequently he was misunderstood or under-recognized, resonate with this listener’s memories.  To hear the man’s tenor voice mispronouncing our then-president’s name to rhyme with “brush,” emphatic and oozing with cartoonish but all-too-real contempt, could elicit the same laughter brought on by his punning titles and sliding trombone antics.  I’m glad he didn’t live to see our current president, though there would have been a lot to talk about.  Hearing these four pieces as a legacy and in summation of a life spent delving to the bottom of each tone and silence is bittersweet but absolutely essential.