Label: Pi Recordings, 2021

Personnel (disc one) - Anna Webber: tenor saxophone, flutes; Matt Mitchell: piano; John Hollenbeck: drums.
Personnel (disc two) - Anna Webber: tenor saxophone, flutes; Nathaniel Morgan: alto sax; Yuma Uesaka: tenor sax, clarinets; Adam O’Farrill: trumpet; David Byrd-Marrow: horn; Jacob Garchik: trombone; Erica Dicker: violin; Joanna Mattrey: viola; Maria Roberts: cello; Liz Kosack: synthesizer; Nick Dunston: bass; Satoshi Takeishi: drums; Eric Wubbels: conduction.

Idiom, the spectacular follow-up to Clockwise (a JazzTrail favorite of 2019), vouches that New York-based saxophonist and flutist Anna Webber ranks at the top of the list in the pantheon of modern creative music. Using tone and multiphonics as the central elements in this work, Webber merges heroic contemporary jazz with the classical music of the 20th and 21st centuries. This is a double album composed for different group formats, with the disc one comprising five pieces written for her Simple Trio (featuring Matt Mitchell on piano and John Hollenbeck on drums), and the disc two boasting an impressive lineup of 12 New York musicians that give the best sequence to the six spiffily arranged movements of “Idiom VI”.

The trio sets a vertiginous atmosphere for “Idiom I”, which concatenates patterned 'vented’ fingering flute and piano counterpoint. There’s a precise piano-driven rhythm that it’s so Mitchell’s, and a stately composite of percussion elaborated by Hollenbeck. The latter’s masterful drumming hits the spotlight on “Idiom IV”, a flawless triangular coordination enriched by Webber’s coiled tenor work.

More straightforward as a result of a reachable sense of harmony, the conversational “Forgotten Best” prepares the way to “Idiom V”, which, ascending the listener into a state of grace via air notes and flute extended techniques, is followed by “Idiom III”, a virtuosic dance-rock workout built with circular breathing and evincing pervasive musical influences from Iannis Xenakis and Morton Feldman.

Webber structures these conceptual ideas and musical complexities into a logic development that never ceases to amaze. I would describe Idiom VI, the biggest brain teaser on the album, as a twist of contemporary big band materialized from dyad multiphonics and attentively designed sonic undercurrents. “Movement I” has both the horn and string players generating buzzing sounds that alternate with resolute rhythmic accents. Wild saxophone and space-age synth statements ramp up the enlivening energy provided by the rhythm team of bassist Nick Dunston and drummer Satoshi Takeishi.

“Movement II” starts off with sculptural Threadgill-like forms, becoming deliberately warble through skittish bursts of strings, staccatos and noise, and polyrhythmic during a fine solo by trombonist Jacob Garchik. “Interlude 2 & Movement III” is cleanly and tenderly introduced before plunging into syncopated cadences and then calling out for Yumi Uesaka, who delivers an invigorating contra-alto clarinet solo. “Interlude 3 & Movement V” employs murmuring drones and long notes to build a wall of dazzling, slightly sinister ambient; it features unruffled trumpet melody by Adam O’Farrill, who later interacts with one of the sax players.

Boldly conceptual, Idiom is a hell of a record, whose meticulously blended sounds ricochet into eternity.