#tao forms

Kim vocalizes, with considerable intensity, on “Walking in the Dream.” This encompasses chanting, spoken word, and singing. After a microtonal turn by Maneri, “Sun Shower” picks up speed and Kim keens a powerful melody. “Walking In the Dream,” has a slow buildup, with vocals beginning delicately and moving to a full-throated cry amid terse harmonies played by the gayageum. Maneri joins Kim, spicing up the melodic material with sliding tone interjections. “Whispers Among Dawn” features a duet between Kim and Fraser, dovetailing in imitative fashion. “Diffraction” contains an impressive gayageum solo, followed by Sorey and Kim playing a rambunctious duet of their own.

At nearly sixteen minutes, “Linear System” is the longest piece on the album. It begins softly, with harmonics and repeated notes. A slow build ensues, and by a third of a way into the piece the group plays at full tilt, with multi-stops from Maneri, angular attacks from Kim, and a roaring rhythm section. A brief oasis occurs, only to have more rapid playing, emphasizing the upper register, ensue. A denouement with a general decrescendo leads to a final vocal turn by Kim, whose melismatic singing provides an eloquent close to a fascinating long form piece. “Calculus of Our Souls” is the album’s final piece, and here Kim’s singing and spoken word performance eventually is double-tracked, with a duet chanting in full cry. Maneri follows with a pizzicato solo. Kim returns, building her voice from singing to chanting to a scream. A bracing conclusion, to be sure.

Thomas is a UK-based pianist maybe best known as part of [Ahmed], an edgy jazz quartet that’s released a handful of records over the last few years and played a few dates Stateside earlier this year. But outside that group he’s been carving out a niche for himself: The Truth captured a live duo performance with Matana Roberts on saxophone, while The Elephant Clock of Al Jazari was drawn from a 2015 solo performance at Cafe OTO in London, England.

His latest record wasn’t from a live performance, but from a single day in the studio last year. Some of them are improvisations, some aren’t, but they all have a sense of walking a tightrope, where the slightest mistake can be fatal. For example, when the record is at its most straightforward it still feels a little angular, like he’s not going to rest on standards or more traditional, swinging playing. The title track starts with sparse notes that never quite come together: there’s always this little silence between them where you can hear them hanging. There’s a sense of tension in how Thomas plays here and it’s not far away from Cecil Taylor on his solo records like For Olim or Ian Underwood’s opening solo on “Little House I Used to Live In.”

It’s a style Thomas uses elsewhere on the record. “For Toumani Diabaté” has him playing slow, reflective lines but without the little angular phrasing of the title track. He opens this one like a ballad, drawing out the notes in a deliberate fashion, but about halfway through there’s a pause where he changes tack and begins playing faster lines of shorter notes.

He mixes up his pace here and there.“For Joe Gallivan” has him playing jagged and sharp chords, little bursts that punch out between him banging on the same note two or three times. It’s a percussive and rapid style that feels like he’s taking quick jabs, darting and weaving before trying to land a solid blow. And on “For Caroline L. Karcher” his playing has a fast moving style that’s not too far from the piano rumbles of Cecil Taylor’s Live At Fat Tuesdays, February 9, 1980. When he plays in this style, he’s like Derek Bailey in how the lines explode into sweeping bursts of color. His playing’s at its most accessible and effective here: it grabs your attention and holds it. You want to see where he’s taking you.

But he’s less effective when he pushes at what a piano sounds like. “Luqman the Wise” has muted, almost dead sounding strings getting plucked and hammered before he moves to what sounds like him rubbing the strings. It’s a quiet piece where one has to really focus to hear the minute sounds.

He stretches out this style on “The McCoy Tyler” for almost ten minutes. Between the dull thuds, the sharp sounds from him strumming the piano strings, and the shrill tones he gets from playing the strings with his hands, this piece takes solo piano out into the stratosphere. It’s abstract and hard to listen to unless you’re already a fan of experimental playing: there isn’t a melody or even really a repeated phrase here to return to or use as a handrail. It’s him at his most uncompromising, a piece that plays with silence and esoteric piano sounds.

Indeed, HIKMAH is a record that can be difficult. It’s all but asking you to meet it halfway with pieces that feel like something out of a John Cage or Arnold Schoenberg record. Like Anthony Braxton’s For Alto - a record where the performances were also dedicated to influences - it rewards people with a sense of patience and an open mind. But that’s also not most listeners. There’s a kind of jazz or classical fan who gets a lot out of this, and they’re the kind of person who enjoys Taylor, Braxton, or Bailey. If you’re not already that kind of listener maybe dip a toe in here first. It’s all deep end here, but that only gives you more room to move around in.

It opens with “Life Is Funny That Way,” a song starting with Victor and sax player Michaël Attias together. When they get to the chorus the band joins in with a nicely swinging groove. Immediately you can hear the chemistry between Attias and Victor: they almost play in unison, his notes mirroring her singing. The other players (Anthony Coleman on piano, Ratzo Harris on bass, and Tom Rainey on drums) create a nice backing for Attias and Victor to branch out on.

Conversely, Coleman and Harris are all but absent on “The Bassist.” It opens with an understated drum solo by Rainey: light rolls, gentle cymbal taps. He builds up until Victor and Attias join in together, again acting as two leads that are mostly playing in sync. But when Victor starts scatting, her and Attias start trading riffs and playing off each other.

Occasionally, the band slows things down to a crawl, giving Victor a chance to stretch out and sing a slow ballad. “Bright Butterfly” has Harris bowing his lines, giving a thick and fuzzy background for Attias and Victor. “The Culprit Is You” has a similar approach, but with Coleman’s sparse piano and little pushes by Rainey’s drumming. It lends this performance a nice smoky, late-night vibe where you can almost see the spotlight closing tight onto Victor as she stretches her notes. And on “Lady Sings the Blues,” Victor’s voice has a bright, almost warm quality as she leans into Billie Holiday’s lyrics.

The band occasionally gets a chance to shine too. Late in the record, they play “Twelve Bars” as a slow mood piece, with Coleman bouncing around his piano as the rhythm section whips up a swirl of noise behind him. It’s one of the more angular pieces here, showing Nichols’ more outside style. He wasn’t just a straight ahead bop pianist.

Life Is Funny That Way offers a nice primer on Nichols: music that’s alternately challenging and straight ahead, close enough to the tradition to seem familiar with enough twists it can catch you off guard. It’s a good way to dive into his music. Let’s hope Victor’s project isn’t a one-off.

Lewis’ stock in the blending of scientific theory and music embodies a through line in his work. Last year’s Molecular, released on the Swiss Intakt imprint, sought to apply aspects of atomic biology to an improvised musical setting for quartet. This project draws on a different ensemble, dubbed the Red Lily Quintet and aims for what Lewis’ calls a “blues earthy vibe, a certain blues feeling not in theory.” Cornetist Kirk Knuffke, bassist William Parker, cellist Chris Hoffman and drummer Chad Taylor are definitely up to actualizing the assignation as each is versed in shared and divergent blues vernacular. Lewis leads and composes, but the music throughout is a unified undertaking that allows capacious space for individual articulation.

Essayist Robin D.G. Kelley contributes detailed commentary and annotation, examining each of the album’s seven interlocking pieces under a microscope of musical content and connection to Carver. It’s an impressive feat, but the music ultimately reveals itself independently just as well. Lewis’ disconsolate and soulful unaccompanied invocation on the opening title piece paints a picture upended by the forceful, swaggering entrance of the band led by Knuffke’s boisterous brass and Taylor’s tightly tumbling syncopations. Hoffman and Parker create an undulating pizzicato surface imbued with elasticity of a trampoline. After jousting forcefully with cornet, Lewis uncorks another righteous solo to ferry things out.

Subsequent pieces elucidate further mergers of biography and legacy. “Lowlands of Sorrow” is almost Aylerian in its incandescent repetition of vibrato-laced lachrymosity. “Arachis” borrows the Latinate prefix meaning “peanut” to commemorate another of Carver’s agronomical calling cards, blossoming from a somber march into a densely deployed collective improvisation indexed by solos. Parker’s guembri and Taylor’s mbira make qualified appearances in the program, but the bulk of music concerns conventional instruments often played in exceptional agreement. “Fallen Flowers” and “Seer” contain sections of almost telepathic convergence, the former and the closing “Chemurgy” culminating in Lewis’ spoken words inculcating the import of his subject. Carver’s preternatural proficiency with praxis, shaping theory into incisive and affecting application, has a natural heir apparent. 

In some cases, such as “Swing Low” and “Wade in the Water,” the source material is readily apparent while in others it is less so. The set begins appropriately and gently with Lewis’s adaptation of one of Jackson’s signature songs, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” which provided the name for a radio show that she hosted in the 1950s and with which she wowed the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Lewis’s phrasing well captures Jackson’s meditation on a tune that, like the rest of those here, is beautiful in its simplicity rather than showy.

The quintet was rock-solid on its first outing, Jesup Wagon (2021), and is even more together this time around. Parker is, predictably, outstanding here, delving deep into the music whether soloing, as on “Go Down Moses” and the first minute of “Elijah Rock,” or providing bedrock support throughout. Hoffman’s cello often blends with Parker’s bass, somewhat like the dynamic between the two bassists in some of Coltrane’s bands. Knuffke once more serves as the perfect foil for Lewis as they alternately trade leads and blend their voices. His solo on “Deep River” well exemplifies his approach, building on the foundation established by Lewis before him, he ranges from flutters to searching cries consistent with the funereal theme of the song. Taylor, along with Parker, holds everything together, being equally effective in delivering frantic rolls, as on “Were You There,” and hand percussion, as on “Calvary,” and there are numerous satisfying moments when he and Parker lock in, such as the last couple minutes of “Elijah Rock”

Lewis’s ever-deepening mastery of the tenor is naturally on full display here. His playing, like this recording, delves into the history of jazz without ever sounding formulaic with a tone that is simultaneously ancient and cutting-edge. Here, his horn transforms into the voice of the great gospel singer, channeling as well the voices that she was influenced by and that influenced her.

Those who purchase the CD or vinyl versions can hear Lewis’s playing in a different context on a live recording of his composition for sax and strings with the Lutoslawski Quartet. Titled These Are Soulful Days, the piece interweaves themes from the spirituals and thus serves as a companion to the Red Lily Quartet recording. This fresh context for Lewis’s vision unfolds through the tranquil and plaintive “Prologue – Humility” and four movements to “Epilogue – Resilience.” The movements interweave more and less recognizable phrases from the gospel songs, particularly the dramatic eruption of “Wade in the Water” in Movement III, while “Epilogue” gets fairly noisy and atonal. An encore concludes the set in the form of a lyrical solo sax performance of “Take Me to the Water.”

For Mahalia, with Love, like Jesup Wagon and Lewis’s “Molecular” releases, is fairly high-concept, but the music is spunky and easy to enjoy, with plenty of groove and intensity. The bare nature of the source melodies is well-suited to jazz exploration (as successive generations of musicians have discovered). Lewis is still too young to be considered a jazz elder statesman (and national treasure), but he is steadily building a body of work and a perspective commensurate with that status.

This session draws together several dyadic relationships. Knuffke has recorded and toured in a duo with bassist Michael Bisio, who in turn has maintained a duo as part of his long-standing, multi-faceted relationship with pianist Matthew Shipp. A betting person would probably not go broke guessing that he had that duo in mind when he plotted the brooding introduction to “June Stretched.” The cornetist also has a duo with Whit Dickey, who runs Tao Forms and coproduced this record. Dickey is also a drummer, which adds a bit of substance to the absence of his instrument. 

The fact that Dickey composed eight of the tracks on Gravity Without Airs underscores that it is the product of forethought; Knuffke had some ideas about what he wanted going into the studio, and he prepared well. But he didn’t show the music to the other players ahead of time, a choice that maximized the spontaneity of their responses. It paid off, for not only does the recording have a graceful, uninterrupted flow, but six more pieces, totally improvised but sympathetic to the composed material’s vibes, arose from the trio’s spontaneous interactions. 

The absence of drums makes it easy to hear how the musicians play off of each other; Knuffke might not have wanted to put on airs, but he certainly understands the merits of letting the music breath. Bisio and Shipp bring some of the same propulsiveness they achieve on their own projects. The pianist also supplies a solid, but uncluttered harmonic platform, one that makes sense of any tangents that either Bisio or Knuffke pursue. And both accompanists tune into the lyricism that courses through Knuffke’s tunes. Someone really ought to write a love song to go with his melody on “Today For Today,” but if that never happens, the contrapuntal hug supplied by his accompanists may be warmth enough.