Reviews Of Albums by Travis Reuter And The Ornette Coleman Trio Re-Visited

Travis Reuter is a new name for me; he is a guitarist born in Texas, studied in New York with fellow guitarist Ben Monder, and played with all the top players in New York, notably Arturo O’Farrill before re-locating to Switzerland where he now lives and plays. This album, Quintet Music, his second, features a quintet with the very interesting line up of guitar, tenor saxophone (Mark Shim), vibes (Peter Schlamb), bass (Harish Raghavan) and drums (Tyshawn Sorey), an instrumentation which creates the opportunity for a range of colours and textures in the music. A particular feature of Reuter’s approach is that the various soloists are accompanied on each track by a complex, but composed backing that is rhythmically quite dense and varied. This idea came from attending concerts of groups led by Tyshawn Sorey, and it is Sorey’s ever inventive and rhythmically complex drumming that is the key to the success of this approach. It is an approach that gives the music an almost restless energy and a sense of drama.

All this is apparent on the first track, Same Song; it features Reuter’s guitar improvising over a constantly changing but structured backing from the vibes, bass and drums before moving into an excellent solo from saxophonist Mark Shim. Shim is a much underrated player whose excellent contributions are a key feature of the album.

The track with the unusual title of #8D@z introduces another key feature of Reuter’s approach, a focus on interaction between two of the members of the quintet. On this track it is between Shim’s saxophone and Schlamb’s vibes, and they create a very stimulating dialogue, again over the complex backing from the rest of the band that I have described. This approach based on interplay between two players is also a feature of #15 where the interaction is between Reuter’s guitar and Shim’s saxophone.

#9 Low/High 1 varies the approach with what Reuter describes as ‘temporal deception’, which is based on creating an element of surprise through the use of short phrases with pauses between them, thereby building up tension. Tyshawn Sorey’s dynamic drumming also makes a major contribution to the drama of this track.

Three short tracks, Interludes 1, 2 and 3, all just under 2 minutes in length, feature a particular soloist, Reuter, Shim and Schlamb respectively

It strikes me that most contemporary jazz players are looking to develop methods that bring together composition and improvisation in ways that give each equal standing and importance, and break away from the dominance of the composition. Reuter has developed in this album an innovative and arguably unique approach that departs from the standard theme plus solos approach, and provides variety arising from the way in which the accompanying rhythmic patterns under the improvising soloist are structured.

As a result of the recent short tour of Mike Fletcher’s Silent Form band which played Birmingham earlier this month and also of the very stimulating seminar hosted by the Jazz Research Group at Birmingham City University which was associated with the tour, I have been re-visiting and adding to my collection of Ornette Coleman albums. I am particularly enjoying Ornette’s trio with bass player David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffett on the Live At The Golden Circle, Stockholm Volumes 1 and 2 on the Blue Note label recorded in 1965. The playing on these two albums is really inspiring, and I think this is my favourite Ornette group. The approach is similar to Ornette’s ground breaking albums of the late 1950s and early 1960s (The Shape Of Jazz To Come and Change Of The Century) in that the music is based on tunes followed by freely improvised solos, but in the live situation Ornette develops much longer and more expansive solos, and Izenzon and Moffett are much free-er in their accompaniment. Moffett’s drumming is particularly energetic and creates a similar sense of drama that I have described in Tyshawn Sorey’s playing. On Volume 2 on certain tracks Ornette plays violin and trumpet in his own idiosyncratic way.

As Mike Fletcher explained in his introduction to the Silent Form concert, Ornette was seeking to break away from the constraints of more traditional modern jazz and bebop. The Silent Form project was seeking to find answers to the same questions about the music that Ornette had raised and was doing this through the spontaneous transitions from composition to improvisation. I would suggest that Travis Reuter is in the album reviewed above also addressing those questions and coming up with his own answers.

Thoughts Arising From May’s Gigs in Birmingham and Cheltenham

Forj

The approach taken by Forj and the Improvising String Quartet to last night’s amazing gig in the Hexagon Theatre at mac has got me thinking, particularly about the different ways bands and individuals approach free improvisation. For the first set the two quartets had worked out in advance an approach that involved the use of a number of composed themes which would form the basis of the improvisation. Certain themes were tackled by the string quartet, others were developed by the Forj group (two tenor saxophones, double bass and drums) while yet others involved all eight players. Each theme was developed with no time restriction, and the decision to move onto the next theme was taken spontaneously and in the moment. It was fascinating to watch the players as they anticipated the right moment to move on to the next theme.

The second shorter set involved totally free unplanned improvisation with each individual deciding when to come in and when to step back. Again, it was fascinating to see how the whole set evolved, how the members of the two groups made their decisions about entering or leaving the collective improvisation. It is also always fascinating to observe how the improvisations develop their own logic and coherence.

The approach of the first set to collective improvisation that involves a certain amount of structure is now an important part of free jazz and improvised music. Soultime Again (Stoney Lane Records) features the Paul Dunmall Quintet playing with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Big Band conducted by Ed Puddick, who had arranged a number of Dunmall’s compositions to be played at certain points during the free improvisation of the Dunmall Quintet. The key point here is that Puddick as conductor would bring in the band to play the arrangements at unspecified points which he would decide upon in the moment based on what was happening in the improvisations of the Dunmall Quintet. The Let Spin quartet follow a similar pattern of moving in and out their compositions at any given point decided on by the band members spontaeously. Likewise, at this year’s Cheltenham Festival Sam Eastmond, in conducting the four of John Zorn’s Bagatelles he has arranged (there are 300 of them and Eastmond has arranged most, if not all of them), allowed each improvisation to reach its natural end before cueing in the next theme.

At the Fizzle session at Centrala on Sunday 26th May the first set with Bruce Coates, Barry Edwards, Trevor Lines and Jim Bashford followed what might be thought of as the traditional approach to free improvisation; the set was totally improvised with excellent interaction betwen the four players. They listened intently to each other and reacted to what they were hearing. In second set, however, the Friends trio led by Alicia Gardener-Trejo and featuring Andy Woodhead on piano and John Pope on double bass adopted a different approach. The overall theme of the set was Horror Films of which all three members of the group are great enthusiasts. Alicia had devised a series of suggestions for the improvisation based on the narrative of an imaginary or real film; these were given to the trio and they were free to interpret them as they wished. It was a fascinating experiment that generated some very good music.

At the wonderful Bill Frisell Trio gig in the Bradshaw Hall at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire there was no question of free improvisation, but the way the trio moved seamlessly from one tune to the next without a break, but based on the musicians familiarity with the material and with each other’s playing had a strong improvisatory feel to it.

The next TDE Promotions gig will probably see yet another approach. It features Mike Fletcher’s Silent Form project (see details here) which has Mike and Petter Fadnes Frost on saxophones, Olie Brice on bass and Dag Magnus Narvesen on drums. Mike Fletcher has been carrying out extensive into the music of free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman, and has come up with a number of ideas which he wishes to put into practice at the June 13th gig. I don’t know yet what exactly they are, but we will find out on the 13th.