Label: Out of Your Head Records, 2021

Personnel - Mario Pavone: double bass; Matt Mitchell: piano; Tyshawn Sorey: drums + Dave Ballou: trumpet.

The incredible bassist, composer and bandleader Mario Pavone passed away last month after a 17-year battle with cancer. With a fruitful career that spanned nearly 60 years, he will be ever seen as a true example of love and dedication to creative music. Inspired albums such as Remembering Thomas (1999), Dancers Tales (1997) and Ancestors (2008) still have impact today.

For this record, the bassist and his Dialect Trio mates - pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Tyshawn Sorey - are joined by a constructive fourth member, the trumpeter Dave Ballou, who was in charge of the arrangements. The quartet manages to give the sense of what the musical connections with Pavone were: serious business but also a great deal of fun.

“Twardzik”, a tribute to the pianist/composer Dick Twardzick, is immediately launched with a rhythmic mesh that shows the bassist’s knack for grooving mightily in odd tempos. There’s a beautiful dissonance affixed to a dissimulated swing, and it feels good to hear Pavone’s sculptural robustness allied to Sorey’s temperamental sophistication.

Boasting an accented figure at the center, “OKWA” pulsates resolutely as the group contributes rhythmic punchiness and melodic openness. Mitchell and Ballou eschew obvious routes in their solos, which come laden with fresh ideas. The trumpeter brings his clever ostinatos and rapid proliferation of post-bop sounds into the four-way conversation that characterizes “Legacy Stories”. His resolute moves are closely followed by invigorating swinging bass lines unaligned by crumbliness, colorful piano playing and effervescent drumming for crispness.

“Philosophy Series” is a tension-inducer with a well-crafted theme statement. It thrives with grooving pedal-pointed vistas, elaborate interplay and elastic behaviors, sharing some of its dynamism with the playful “Good Treble”, which relies on fragmentation and cyclic activity to make a splash.

“Isabella” and “Face Music” incorporate considerable reflective qualities. The former is dedicated to Mario’s late granddaughter who died tragically in June 2020, while the latter embraces calm abstraction in the line of Paul Bley and Paul Motian before reaching a delirious pinnacle through a crescendo.

The music of Pavone - complex, lyrical and lively- will be sorely missed. Blue Vertical is here to attenuate that pain and be discovered.