Clarinetist Ben Goldberg composes slippery, well-structured music that invites wide improvisation, with a modern sound that subsumes a variety of influences drawn from the well of the past. He describes his latest album, Everything Happens to Be, as an exploration of the facets conjured by the word chorale, touching on a range of influences from J. S. Bach to Louis Armstrong, Ornette Coleman to Paul Motian.
Ben Goldberg
Everything Happens to Be (BAG Production Records)
A review
On Everything Happens to Be, Ben Goldberg (Bb clarinet, Eb Albert system clarinet, contra alto clarinet) composes specifically for his hand-picked colleagues, master improvisers one and all—Ellery Eskelin (tenor sax), Mary Halvorson (guitar), Michael Formanek (bass), and Tomas Fujiwara (drums)—and offers up an ensemble recording that glories in the distinctive voices of its participants and in their extraordinary capacity to let the music speak through them. Speak it does in a variety of dialects, across nine original tracks and one cover, with Goldberg’s unique and playful musical vocabulary that is at once accessible and surprising.
The clarinet leads the way on the reflective and sublimely loopy first track, “What About,” with a dramatically updated trad jazz feel. The darting line of the militantly positive “21,” a funky toe-tapper, has the musicians balancing their parts like those Italian acrobats who perform routines while spinning dinner plates atop long, thin poles. “Fred Hampton” rides a soothing seven-note wave, lit up with outer space echoes from Halvorson. The title track produces a profuse array of musical fronds from a four-note seed, featuring terrific solos from Goldberg, Halvorson, and Eskelin, with a nice push from Formanek and Fujiwara. “Cold Weather” opens with a slinky clarinet solo, enters into a ballad section, then a shuffle, then back to ballad—all enhanced with Halvorson’s canny textures, before settling into shaped chaos. “Chorale Type” moves through several sections, opening with a conversational ensemble in an almost conventional chorale-type setting, giving way to a clarinet/guitar duet and an articulate bass solo, before floating the ensemble lyrically over a familiar musical chassis. A tenor-led section finds a groove that moves to a gentle conclusion. “Tomas Plays the Drums,” which evolves into a rock-hard freakout, could have been titled “If Dinosaurs Made Music.” A somewhat ominous bass line is the foundation for “Long Last Moment,” with horns and guitar moving in anxious, angular lines over it. “To-Ron-To” offers playful, funky Americana on mushrooms with fine ensemble work. The one cover, “Abide with Me,” delivers a lovely, straightforward arrangement of William Monk’s hymn.
Everything Happens to Be offers disciplined and adventurous ensemble work with the potential to stretch your ears, exercise your heart, and lift the corners of your mouth. The digital album is available on Bandcamp on June 18.
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