On Trio Tapestry, his first recording on ECM as a leader, tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano called on pianist Marilyn Crispell and drummer Carmen Castaldi—and his own long history with the likes of Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Gunther Schuller, and Hank Jones, among others—to create an album of expressive and intimate beauty. The trio will bring their atmospheric grace to the stage at the Outpost on March 12.
Lovano, whose career has been marked by both a high regard for the traditions of jazz and a willingness to expand its vocabulary, has always brought a special intimacy to any project with which he is associated. His new album, Trio Tapestry, may be his most intimate work to date.
The 11 compositions are based on a twelve-tone process that expands the improvisational possibilities. “All 12—and to vibrate inside all 12, and you realize that all notes are created equal,” says Lovano. Each tone can take on any role—the root, the sharp nine, the fifth, the seventh. That may sound like a prescription for harmonic chaos, but as Lovano points out, “When you harmonize with that approach, everything harmonizes.”
It’s an approach that Lovano says he has been developing for quite some time. He credits his collaborations with Schuller on the albums Rush Hour (1994) and Streams of Expression (2006), orchestrated by Schuller, and by a close study of the music of Jimmy Giufre as important milestones in this development.
In the hands of Lovano, Crispell, and Castaldi, this approach leads to a free and fluid improvisational stream. (Check out the subtle shifts of the harmonic center on “Seeds of Change.”) “I put all these compositions together for Carmen and Marilyn and myself to explore,” says Lovano, “and this approach of really following the sound and trying to play with a peaceful, beautiful attitude.”
They succeeded. The warm, woody tone of Lovano’s saxophone creates an immediate intimacy. The most intimate instrument has to be the voice, and Lovano’s playing has a distinctly vocal element to it. He credits his wife, vocalist Judy Silvano, as well as the many vocalists he’s played behind, as influences in his development of that quality. He remembers, in particular, one gig behind Nanci Wilson, whose performance taught him that “it’s all about how personal you get with each phrase.”
Crispell is quite at home in this twelve-tone setting, given her extensive background performing and recording the music of Anthony Braxton, John Cage, Reggie Workman, and other contemporary composers. Her exceptional touch, sensitive ears, and a wide sonic vocabulary clothe the music in a transparent lyricism.
Castaldi, a lifelong disciple of drummer Paul Motian, brings a similar lyricism and sensitivity to the proceedings. His association with Lovano goes back to their teenage years in Cleveland and their time together at Berklee. His sonic choices continually enrich the conversation.
Lovano adds another texture to the music with his use of gongs. With a mallet in his right hand, he can create different tonalities and different key centers from which to improvise by striking one or more of the instruments, whose distinctive resonances add to a sense of mystery in the music.
The seamless interplay among the three, which blurs the line between composed and improvised sections, testifies to their exceptional listening abilities. Lovano credits his work in a trio with Frisell and Motian as instrumental in developing this faculty. (That trio also was a lesson in playing without a bassist, he says, which gives him greater improvisational freedom while also requiring him to take on some of the duties of the absent bassist.) He also cites his work with pianist Hank Jones—“ one of the purest, most beautiful people”—as an important contributor to this ability: “The intimacy, the breathing together,” he says. “It’s about breathing together and listening and following the sound of the moment. Not to play preconceived things.”
Lovano, Crispell, and Castaldi breathe together throughout the album, playing “the music within the music,” as Lovano puts it. The songs were written out as standard lead sheets. Under the melodic line, some of the songs had chord symbols, but many of them had tonalities and voicings rather than chords. “You’re looking at notes, and you’re creating things with the tonalities and changing the inversions at will and very freely,” says Lovano.
Trio Tapestry sustains a deeply reflective atmosphere right from the opening invocation of the solo sax and gong on “One Time In,” but with wide variations of feeling. There’s the cat-and-mouse play between sax and piano on “Sparkle Lights,” and at the other end of the spectrum, you have the meditative “Mystic,” which evokes an eloquent silence. On that pianoless track, Lovano plays a tarogato, a wooden, single-reed Hungarian instrument with a tart and affecting quality. The saxless “Piano/Drum Episode” has the feel of a classical prelude, and Crispell’s subtle rhythmic sense carries the music forward—even in the slowest and sparest of lines. “Spirit Lake” somehow introduces the feel of the open air. There’s something transformative in Lovano’s playing here, and Crispell’s exquisite touch in her arpeggiation is like wind on the water. The album closes with a celebration of “The Smiling Dog,” a Cleveland saloon that hosted many jazz icons in what had once been a bowling alley at the rear of a bikers’ bar. The place offered a formative experience for Lovano both as a local player and as an audience member. (Weather Report played one of their first gigs there, which put the place on the jazz map.)
Altogether, Trio Tapestry carries the listener into a deeply introspective environment, where the everyday can be dispensed with and the spirit can be refreshed. Next Tuesday, we can get the treatment live and in person.
Joe Lovano
Trio Tapestry
with Marilyn Crispell and Carmen Castaldi
Tuesday, March 12, 7:30 p.m.
Weil Hall at the Outpost Performance Space
210 Yale SE, Albuquerque
Tickets: $25 (member/student); $30 (general)
For tickets or more information, click here, or call 505-268-0044.
Note: The concert is sold out, but call to get on the waiting list.
© 2019 Mel Minter
Hi Mel, See you there, hurray.
Great. This is one not to miss if you can avoid it.
Good stuff, Mel, as always.
Joe has such a staggering body of work, wow.
He has navigated his career in music purely on the true path, hasn’t he?
Wouldn’t it be cool if he’d play one number on drumset at the concert ?
He’s played some percussion on a few things recorded, his “Carol of the Bells” I play every Christmas on my radio show . . . . . . (I read somewhere that he keeps a drumkit)
Thanks, Mark. Amazing career. In our 30-minute conversation, he recalled countless gigs and aggregations. He’s played with a staggering number of equally astonishing musicians, and my sense of the man from that brief conversation is that he has collected, with humility, lasting lessons from every one of those affiliations. He gives credit to others freely. To hear him enthuse over a recording session with Abbey Lincoln—he’s in genuine, almost childlike awe of her talent. This from a man whose own talent is way up the chart.