Joe Lovano: Paramount Quartet
Long one of my favourite saxophonists, over the years Lovano has led or appeared on many a terrific session for, e.g., Blue Note, Soul Note and, latterly, ECM. Regrettably – to my ears, at least – the unfortunately titled Paramount Quartet is often some way off that level.
I assume this is a brand new quartet. While the players gell well enough, there is a curiously static, even academic quality to a fair portion of the music, such as in Amsterdam. Following an (almost intriguing) somewhat abstract theme, the piece essays some free-touched group interplay with fleet pizzicato from Debriano and Lage striking a (very) few power chords to offset his overall (and overly) studied linearity of meticulous phrase. And Calhoun stretches out some before the thematic reprise. But for all the activity, nothing really takes off. And elsewhere at times, as on The Call, a spare tenderness of touch and dynamics can seem almost pallid in effect.
Fortunately, Fanfare For Unity strikes and maintains a bustling jaunty note while the concluding Congregation offers some rare and most welcome swing-sprung, even funky grooves. A curate’s egg of an album is rounded out by fine versions of Charlie Haden’s First Song and Wayne Shorter’s Lady Day.
It’s a shame that either Joe or ECM (or both) forgot that the title of the rubato Haden ballad is actually First Song (For Ruth). It’s perhaps also a shame that anyone who knows the surpassing March 1991 Copenhagen concert recording of this piece by Stan Getz and Kenny Barron (on their People Time release, Getz’s final recording) will find it hard to set aside the memory of the majesty of Getz’s work there while attending to Lovano’s less diversely inflected lines here.
Lovano’s floating and fluttering, beautifully developed tenor reading of Wayne Shorter’s Lady Day provides the deepest and most sustained moments here, with Lage contributing his best touches of the session. Trouble comes when you go back to Shorter’s version, from the 1965 Soothsayer on Blue Note, and recall how this pensive ballad was presented between the burning title track and a fluidly balanced take on Sibelius’s Valse Triste. For there is simply so much more creative energy, swing and imagination – call it life-force, if you will – in this music from over 60 years ago than is evident in a good deal of Paramount Quartet.
Discography
First Song; Amsterdam; The Call; Fanfare For Unity; Lady Day; The Great Outdoors; Congregation (44.06)
Lovano (ts, ss, tarogato); Julian Lage (elg); Asante Santi Debriano (b); Will Calhoun (d). Studios La Buissonne, February 2025.
ECM 785 1791
Bill Connors: Of Mist And Melting
This is the third time that this excellent album from the late 1970s has been issued by ECM. When the original LP version was supplanted by a CD reissue, the cover design changed, featuring an abstracted “ice landscape” design by Sascha Kleis. But when the album came out later in ECM’ s relatively recent Touchstones CD series the original artwork came back, featuring striking photos by Daniel Lienhard and design by Barbara Wojirsch.
And so it is here in this high-grade vinyl issue in ECM’s Luminessence release project. I hadn’t known all that much about guitarist Connors’ background. Friedrich Kunzmann’s extensive sleeve-note does an excellent job in tracing Connors’ career overall, including, of course, his early years with Chick Corea, and investigating Connors’ reflections about the value of electric or acoustic music: one of the special values of Kunzmann’s essay is the way he lets the guitarist speak for himself.
Here Connors concentrates exclusively on the classical guitar. All six characterful compositions are his and they elicit a memorable range of contributions from Garbarek, Peacock and Jack DeJohnette. The combination of the leader’s tendency to phrase behind the beat with Peacock’s astutely spaced yet rooted figures and DeJohnette’s dynamic sensitivity and polyrhythmic power makes for a superb, rolling launching pad for Garbarek’s diversely projected and modulated contributions: hear especially the tenor-fired Melting and Cafe Vue and the soprano-led Face In The Water and Unending. A classic album from first note to last.
Discography
Melting; Not Forgetting; Face In The Water (24.26) – Aubade; Cafe Vue; Unending (22.36)
Connors (g); Jan Garbarek (ts, ss); Gary Peacock (b) Jack DeJohnette (d). Oslo, December 1977.
ECM 674 3064
