Bennie Maupin / Adam Rudolph - Symphonic Tone Poem for Brother Yusef

Label: Strut Records, 2022

Personnel - Bennie Maupin: reeds, flute; Adam Rudolph: percussion, piano, electronics.

Multireedist Bennie Maupin and percussionist Adam Rudolph, two veterans of the eclectic jazz cosmos, recorded this five-movement album to celebrate the 100th birthday of the great late saxophonist/flutist Yusef Lateef, author of indispensable exotic gems like Eastern Sounds (Prestige, 1961) and Jazz Mood (Savoy Jazz, 1957). Rudolph worked with Lateef for two decades and has been very active lately with his Go Organic Orchestra and trio outfits with saxophonists Dave Liebman and Ralph M. Jones, and drummers Hamid Drake and Tatsuya Nakatani. Not as busy as his musical partner, Maupin is associated with the work of a few jazz giants such as Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner, among others. Both have distinctive work under their own names, and Symphonic Tone Poem for Brother Yusef serves us a flavorful sonic plate of avant-garde values and ambient jazz sensibilities.

“First Movement” adds serene electronics in the background in a refined ambience that includes thumb piano, hand drumming, voice, and other percussive elements that contribute to a triple time flow. Maupin’s sketchy lines are laid atop with an easygoing resolution. “Second Movement”, gracefully executed as a cyclic Zen meditation, resonates with warm, glowing gongs before installing a ritualistic pattern with cymbal splashes and vibing adornments. The flute makes it easier for us to imagine a magical place full of harmony, where our hearts fill up with positive energy.

Despite the quiet avant-garde setting of “Movement Three”, Maupin becomes more impulsive and restless with the time, oscillating between tearful, mysterious and searching. The following track, “Movement Four”, boasts some agitation in the fancy beat but doesn’t discard a few raw elements that consolidate the bridge between the modern and the ancient worlds. A well-outlined bass clarinet spreads duskiness, mystification and some opacity too, in contrast with the sparse sakuhachi flute that soars at a higher height. The enchanted atmosphere ceases when the transfixing rhythm returns, making for a vibrant conclusion. The free spirit of the duo continues on “Movement Five”, whose expert instrumentation - with mesmerizing piano intervals, understated percussion, and palpable clarinet lines - has a lock on the magical spells, but with considerable more darker intonations. 

This gifted duo never overcooks, finding the perfect formula to shine, with no need of frills and shocks to provide a wonderful experience for the listener. This is a gracefully executed work where their purity of vision and sense of modernity are going strong.

Favorite Tracks:
02 - Second Movement ► 04 - Fourth Movement ► 05 - Fifth Movement

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Adam Rudolph's Go: Organic Guitar Orchestra - Resonant Bodies

Label: Meta Records, 2021

Personnel - Adam Rudolph: conduction, composition, arrangements, handrumset (#9); Liberty Ellman: electric guitar; Nels Cline: electric guitar; Miles Okazaki: electric guitar; David Gilmore: electric guitar; Kenny Wessel: electric guitar; Joel Harrison: electric guitar, national steel guitar; Marco Cappelli: acoustic guitar; Jerome Harris: electric guitar, bass guitar, lap steel guitar; Damon Banks: bass guitar.

This music composed and spontaneously conducted by the acclaimed American percussionist Adam Rudolph for his Go: Organic Guitar Orchestra is atypically enchanting. The high-wire interplay between nine widely different but compelling New York-based guitarists gets to an unconventional sonic escapism that’s equally beguiling and provocative. Resonant Bodies is the 12th installment in Rudolph’s Go: Organic Orchestra series, launched in 2001, and uses his prototypical approach with interval matrices, cosmograms and ostinatos of circularity. The titles of the tracks are the names of stars in the Cygnus cluster.

“Parallax” begins this journey with jagged guitar specks and electronic effects before a rhythmic motion becomes noticeable. The bass follows the idea creating a 10-beat cycle figure that gradually spreads among the crew of musicians. This one is immediately followed by “Albireo”, in which a two-way guitar conversation give the music an abstract shape before rock-infused solos take place over a trance-dancing Eastern pulsation.

The virtuosity of the guitarists involved are occasionally hidden behind the discreet, minimal and spacious foundations. “Mira” serves as an example, where airy chordal elongations support foreboding distorted sounds. Resonant, full-bellied bass notes are added both near the beginning and before the end.

Despite the feast of ostinatos engraved on “Dolidze”, there’s this guitar plasticity that avoids rigidness. Actually, the latter piece is deliciously polyrhythmic, an electro-acoustic psychedelic outfit with occasional parallel trajectories between bass and acoustic guitar, funky wah-wah sounds, samba groove and wild, simultaneous soloing, before ending in pure ecstasy.

Including vibrating drones and scintillating fluxes, “Cygnus” embraces a similar experimental electronic ambiance found in the music of some 20th-century avant-garde composers, like Stockhausen, Varèse and Xenakis. By contrast, “Fawaris” features animated jazz dialogues and contrapuntal figures liable to create atonal configurations of sound as they collide.

The closing piece, “Deneb”, is the only one featuring Rudolph’s percussion as he plays an Afro-centric rhythm on his handrumset, surrounded by a counterpoint of texture. 

Rudolph stands at the vanguard of his productive generation of music creators. His methods and impromptu ways managed to make guitars sounding like if they’re not, and there’s definitely something new here worth exploring. 

B+

Favorite Tracks:
 02 - Albireo ► 06 - Dolidze ► 09 - Deneb

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Dave Liebman, Adam Rudolph, Hamid Drake - Chi

Label: RareNoise, 2019

Personnel - Dave Liebman: tenor and soprano saxophones, piano, wooden recorder; Adam Rudolph: handrumset, piano, sinter, percussion, electronics; Hamid Drake: drumset, vocals, frame drum, percussion.

Combining the mysticism of ancient traditions and the sonic aesthetics of today’s music, Chi is an album of spontaneous music, matching saxophonist Dave Liebman with two top-class percussionists and kindred spirits, Adam Rudolph and Hamid Drake. The latter collaborates with the saxophonist for the very first time, giving precious help in the rhythmic layout of a record that shares the same conception as The Unknowable, another RareNoise release that featured Liebman, Rudolph and Japanese percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani.

The short-lived opener, “Becoming”, shapes slowly, creating a whispery electronic settlement that gains further mystery with the addition of Rudolph’s jolting intervals on the piano. Liebman infuses some spirituality at the last minute, making us wanting more.

The simpatico rhythmic tide of “Flux” upholds the alacritous, coiled phrases from tenor saxophone. This turbo-charged firepower settles down into a calm passage that, nonetheless, comes loaded with Liebman’s virtuosic language, which echoes on soprano sax with delay effect. Behind the drum kit, Drake responds accordingly, while Rudolph creates a densely propulsive flux through expeditious hand-drum bombardments.

If “Continuum” generates tension by departing from long howling cries and landing into pungently accented phrases, “Formless Form” mixes sweet piano delineations with chirping sounds, attaining a delicate equilibrium between nature and spirit. Liebman plays the piano with dexterity and unchained abandon, and, for an instant, Drake uses his voice, before diffusing an exhilarating percussion tapestry alongside Rudolph.

After the shifting, energetic, and expertly rendered “Emergence”, the longest piece on the record, “Whirl” brings the recording to a conclusion, proliferating a sort of groovy mantra implanted by Rudolph’s sintir and featuring Drake’s frame drum and vocals, as well as Liebman’s penetrating soprano exclamations.

The trio immerses us into their creative sonic bubble where fearless sounds may whether anchor you to Earth’s foundations or make you travel well above the clouds.

Grade B+

Favorite Tracks:
02 - Flux ► 04 - Formless Form ► 06 - Whirl

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Dave Liebman / Tatsuya Nakatani / Adam Rudolph - The Unknowable

Label: RareNoise Records, 2018

Personnel - Dave Liebman: tenor and soprano saxophones, flutes, piri, Fender Rhodes; Tatsuya Nakatani: drum kit, gongs, percussion; Adam Rudolph: handrumset, percussion, sintir, mbuti harp, overtone flutes, Fender Rhodes, electronics.

Prolific saxophonist/bandleader Dave Liebman, a living jazz legend and one of the most influential musicians and educators of our times, joins an imaginative duo of percussionists, Tatsuya Nakatani and Adam Rudolph. Together, they create a variety of spontaneous conversations where the reaction to stimulus is a must. Hence, communication plays an essential role throughout The Unknowable, the result of their experimental meeting.

The first and last tracks on the album are static and share the same title, “Benediction”. Both versions comprise uncanny electronics and a saxophone story recited over drones and additional atmospheric noises, yet, the opening variant adds far more percussive elements to the intriguing scenario. By the way, it was Rudolph who came up with the track titles in a post-recording phase.

“The Simple Truth” thrives with hand drumming forays, diverse metal collisions, and Liebman’s cartoonish sketches formed with brief stabs of notes on soprano. He often centers his playing in the rhythmic axis, but some melodic incursions are also discernible.

Echoing brisk phrases through a delay effect and resorting to heavy electronic manipulation, the title track is filled with tremors and high-pitched clamors let loose by Liebman’s spiraling soprano. While the posture is active here, it changes to passive on the following piece, “Skyway Dream”, where the rhythm is thoroughly marked and the flute notes hang in the air.
 
Hand drums and metal percussion become the dominant elements on “Transmutations”, which includes a panoply of grating sounds, clashes, and creaks. It ends up in a sort of African exultation that also can be felt on “Present Time”, although the pulse here almost touches the Brazilian samba. Commanding the tenor with an impressive sense of liberty, Liebman embarks on a more familiar language, inclining his sayings toward bebop zones. Yet, the crashingly noisy assaults in the background remain active until the end.

The saxophonist’s disposition shifts again on “Premonition”, which serves as a vehicle for his timbral explorations and extended techniques. This urgency of speech combined with fragmented rhythms takes us to free jazz territory.

Flirtations with non-Western music translate into a pair of nomadic pieces, “The Turning” and “Distant Twilight”. With self-restraint, the trio resorts to meditative phrases taken from exotic scales as well as simple yet catchy grooves meticulously designed by sintir or thumb piano.

Both Liebman and Rudolph play the Fender Rhodes in one tune each, searching for the enigmatic and the atmospheric. “Cosmogram”, unpleasantly piercing at first, is a good example of how a musical piece can sound simultaneously acrid and dulcet.

The record sounds quite distinctive from what Liebman has done before and defies any categorization beyond the experimental. Abstraction they fear not, and you’ll find the adventurous threesome attempting to squeeze their individual sounds into a compact, organic whole. In some ways, they succeed.

        Grade B

Favorite Tracks: 
07 - The Turning ► 08 - Present Time ► 12 – Premonition

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