The Nu Band - In Memory of Mark Whitecage

Label: Not Two Records, 2022

Personnel - Mark Whitecage: alto saxophone, clarinet, flute; Thomas Heberer: quarter-tone trumpet; Joe Fonda: double bass, flute; Lou Grassi: drums, percussion.

The Nu Band, an explorative quartet within the avant-garde jazz movement for more than two decades, released a live album that serves as a tribute to its singular saxophonist, Mark Whitecage, who passed away in March last year. This live recording, captured in 2018 at The BopShop in Rochester, New York, features compositions by all four members of the ensemble. 

The session opens with two different Whitecage numbers, the flute-infused “Prayer for the Water Protectors” and the animated “Five O’clock Follies”, a spectacular freebop blowout whose frantic short theme immediately takes us to a bass solo solely supported by hi-hat drops. Unison sax-trumpet motifs disintegrate and reshape into autonomous improvisatory rants. The indefatigable swinging drive created by the rhythm section stimulates the horn players who display their attractive language with unlimited confidence. The drummer Lou Grassi also gets a solo taste, vibrantly measuring and articulating before the theme returns to its bones.

One For Roy” is Thomas Heberer’s tribute to the late trumpeter Roy Campbell, a former member of this quartet whom he replaced in 2014. The group reveals maturity in the interplay as they go from a rubato abstraction disrupted by bursts of tension to a swaggering motion. The second piece brought by the trumpeter, “The Closer You Are, the Further it Gets” is a highlight. Clocking in at 14 minutes, this piece begins with a fantastic solo bass statement in which Joe Fonda shows off his pure intuition, incredible rhythmic control, and great ears for sound. He even rocks at some point, before a 15-note figure takes over. Afterwards, Heberer works on the lower registers before expanding his sound, and Whitecage steps up the game by employing trilling circularity and growling sounds. The group finishes it off in rollicking mode.

After admitting a free, shapeless exploration with clarinet, flute, trumpet and percussion, Fonda’s “Christophe and Ornette” establishes a groove in six over which the horns spill wonderful angularity. The album draws to a close with Grassi’s “Dark Dawn in Aurora”, a mournful piece marked by a patterned marching strut and revealing folk-blues connotations, which had been previously recorded in 2015 to be included on the Nu Band’s album The Cosmological Constant.

The under-recognized Whitecage will be missed; his fans have here another document that brings his soloing capacities to the fore as well as The Nu Band’s sense of shared space and cohesive interplay.

Favorite Tracks:
02 - Five O’clock Follies ► 04 - The Closer You Are, the Further it Gets ► 07 - Dark Dawn in Aurora