#jonas westergaard

Grammar II is, as you might suppose from the title, concerned with essential structures. It’s also a sequel to an earlier effort. Unlike Open Form for Society, it’s a live recording by a vibes-bass-drums trio, and at a sonic level, it’s recognizably derived from jazz. But while it’s not so ambitious a cultural statement, it still uses music as a platform to address meta-musical concerns. The trio is collectively credited with the compositions and the concepts, and it fell to vibraphonist Christopher Dell to pen the album’s liner notes. In them, he argues that the trio’s seven years of playing together constitute epistemological research. Their work together constitutes a study into the relationship between what is, what can be known, and what is simply believed.

Thus, each trio performance is part of an ongoing investigation into the principals that organize the music, and an enactment of those principals. Exactly how that works can only be known to the three musicians, but the process definitely yields something other than freely improvised music that sounds like it was made by three people who identify as free improvisers. “Duration — Structure I” sounds like a sonic representation of a sculpture, or maybe just an articulation of three-way counterpoint in which bassist Jonas Westergaard’s bowed, broken lines, Dell’s creeping melodies, and Lillinger’s restrained cymbal strikes seem to hover and turn as one.

By contrast, “Duration — Structure II” is much more propulsive, with Lillinger’s drums releasing carefully modulated bursts of energy that represent time as a passing thing without resorting to statements of metered time while bass and vibes rip and wheel overhead. That might sound like a mixed metaphor, but since the idea that this music combines unalike elements is built into the name, we’ll let it stand. At any rate, it’s a gas to hear them let it rip. There are two more “Duration—Structures,” each of which is a sound event unto itself which is as complex and cohesive as the first two. Put them together, and you have a set of music that makes a strong non-linguistic argument for the thoughts that have gone into its creation.