Anna Webber with Matt Mitchell and John Hollenbeck - simpletrio2000

November 7, 2024

Label: Intakt Records, 2024

Personnel - Anna Webber: tenor saxophone, flutes; Matt Mitchell: piano; John Hollenbeck: drums.

Saxophonist, flutist, and composer Anna Webber—a meticulous conceptualist in improvised music—draws from the depths of polyrhythmic inspiration for her latest album, Simpletrio2000. Over the past decade, Webber has earned well-deserved acclaim for her rhythmic inventiveness and distinct stylistic twists across several albums. This new release marks ten years since the debut of her long-running band Simple Trio, featuring pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer John Hollenbeck. Across nearly an hour, they absolutely marvel with complex, intriguing soundscapes and rhythmic mastery.

Each piece is one-of-a-kind. “Slingsh0t” opens with overlapping jabs of cerebral saxophone pulses, loose piano build-ups, and unflappable rock-solid drumming. These elements converge into a driving electro-rock-inspired synthesis delivered at a complex, exhilarating tempo. Webber delivers a solo of poignant beauty, with Mitchell underpinning the pulse. “Idiom VII” was written with extended techniques in mind, in the case slap-tonguing saxophone staccatos with spiky intervals. The flux created, matched by Hollenbeck’s precise movements, is reinforced with Mitchell’s layer in a bewildering rhythmic exercise infused with rock and avant-garde muscularity.

Webber puts down her tenor for flute on “Foray”, casting fluid notes over a slow, menacing piano sequence of minor thirds as Hollenbeck keeps filling the space with an exquisite blend of toms and cymbals. There’s a blatant sense of mystery and suspense that comes and goes according to the motions and pulsations created. In “Miiire”, her buoyant flute melodies intertwine with dancing piano lines, weaving electronic music textures, rock, and hints of modern classical fugues. The track’s rhythmic shifts are handled with impressive finesse, and we even sense music from other parts of the world.

“8va” brings saxophone multiphonics over a calm, ambient backdrop, crescendoing to a powerful tenor solo from Webber. “Five Eateries (in New England)” explores various moods with provocative gestures, including alternative rock progressions, tension-filled chromatic shifts, and avant-garde outcries. Webber confesses being thrilled to compose for her talented triomates, and each member is featured solo on one track.

Simpletrio2000 reveals fresh dimensions in the trio’s musical partnership, balancing disciplined control with boundless improvisational spirit. This album stands as another giant step forward in Webber’s discography.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Slingsh0t ► 02 - Idiom VII ► 04 - Foray ► 05 - Five Eateries (in New England)

Anna Webber - Shimmer Wince

October 19, 2023

Label: Intakt Records, 2023

Personnel - Anna Webber: tenor saxophone, flutes; Adam O’Farrill; trumpet; Elias Stemeseder: synthesizer; Mariel Roberts: cello; Lesley Mok: drums.

Constantly at the vanguard of the most adventurous jazz, saxophonist and composer Anna Webber explores a laborious yet stimulating concept with her remarkable new quintet in her latest release, Shimmer Wince. By interlocking mathematical patterns and polyrhythmic pitches, Webber creates intricate frameworks that sound perfectly natural and balanced, employing a concept known as Just Intonation. Requiring a lot of effort from the musicians, this process - an ancient tuning system based on the natural harmonics and resonances of notes - is applied to her own rhythmic and harmonic investments.

The opening track, “Swell” is a characteristic example of post-modernistic ingenuity laced with circularity and improvisation. It falls into a kind of modal blues that, starting uninterruptedly at the base with Elias Stemeseder’s synth and Mariel Roberts’ cello, is disrupted by Lesley Mok’s cymbal washes and scratches, progressively gaining body and form with the help of her proliferating drumming. As the track unfolds, occasional cello pedals encourage freedom to be simultaneously embraced by Webber and trumpeter Adam O’Farrill.

“Wince” resonates rhythmically with a sweeping rock-inspired backbeat and non-linear pulses, framing an asymmetric sonic landscape. Showcasing exciting trumpet artistry, O’Farrill opts for a dense yet highly articulated vocabulary, while Webber infuses her solo with substantial malleability, adapting seamlessly to a new foundational terrain. “Fizz”, on the other hand, seems inspired by uncompromising, playful electronic music. This distinctive atmosphere is produced via synth, rhythmically stirred by snare rudiments that drive the music forward at just the right speed. Melodically, it comes stamped with flute and cello figures.

Demonstrating an uncanny ability to create detours within her own style, the saxophonist employs multiphonics as a vehicle for superb rhythmic punctuation on “Periodicity I”. Here, Roberts is free to mine the lower registers with rasping tones and also contributes contrapuntal incisions. Fragmented rhythms, glitchy sounds, and digital sonic matrixes are part of a big musical equation that acquires a seductive exoticism through an expressively powerful tenor statement. Also brilliantly orchestrated, “Squirmy” features in-and-out flute zigzags, becoming abstract and droning along the way before returning to the vibrant counterpoint that often permeates these pieces.

Shimmer Wince stands as a monument to unbridled creativity; a demanding yet tightly woven body of work where the musicians play with and against each other, exploring new directions with both rigor and ingenuity. Despite all the intricacies associated, Webber never loses her compositional and artistic identity.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Swell ► 02 - Wince ► 04 - Periodicity I

Anna Webber - Idiom

May 20, 2021

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.

Favorite Tracks:
01 (disc one) - Idiom I ► 03 (disc two) - Movement II ► 04 (disc two) - Interlude 2 and Movement III

Webber / Morris Big Band - Both Are True

March 27, 2020

Label: Greenleaf Music, 2020

Personnel - Anna Webber: conductor, tenor sax, flute; Angela Morris: conductor, tenor sax, flute; Charlotte Greve: alto sax, clarinet; Jay Rattman: alto and soprano saxes, flute; Adam Schneit: tenor sax, clarinet: Lisa Parrott: baritone sax, bass clarinet; Adam O’Farrill: trumpet; John Lake: trumpet; Jake Henry: trumpet; Kenny Warren: trumpet; Tim Vaughn: trombone; Nick Grinder: trombone; Jen Baker: trombone; Reginald Chapman: bass trombone; Dustin Carlson: guitar; Patricia Brennan: vibraphone; Marc Hannaford: piano; Adam Hopkins: bass; Jeff Davis: drums.

The big band project co-led by saxophonists/composers Anna Webber and Angela Morris was launched five years ago, but the bandleaders only now are dropping its debut release, Both Are True. The cohesive 19-piece ensemble includes some recognized New York-based artists such as trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, saxophonist Charlotte Greve, bassist Adam Hopkins, and drummer Jeff Davis. With respect to the bandleaders, Webber jumped to the frontline of the contemporary scene with her fantastic septet work Clockwise, a favorite of last year, while Morris released Asleep in the Dust, an art book/double CD with her trio TMT in collaboration with visual artist Jerry Birchfield.

The nine tracks on this record, including two short, spontaneous saxophone duets, besides sealed with their signatures as composers, feature them as soloists. Webber performs in Morris’ pieces and vice-versa.

Webber’s “Climbing on Mirrors” shows that nothing here feels stiff but balanced and fluid. A settlement of contrapuntal congruity is offered with several intensities and the rhythmic punctuations fall into places that may cause a vertiginous sensation. Saxophonist Charlotte Greve soloes with unhurried lucidity and the piece, despite decelerating towards the end, rebounds with the drummer’s actions. In the last segment, a vocal chorale provided by all members of the band makes for a wonderful effect.

The Morris-penned title track begins with deep-seated droning sounds, followed by the timbral complexion of saxophones spiraling non-stop. The improvisations - from Jay Rattman on soprano, Webber on tenor, and Patricia Brennan on vibraphone - are mobilized by a strong creative force, and, by the end, Marc Hannaford’s piano arrhythmias bump into the ghostly presence of the horns.

Morris also composed “And It Rolled Right Down” and “Coral”, yet these numbers are retained in a much different order in the way that the former thrives with an Ellingtonian orchestral touch, following a proportioned structure and teeming with the juxtaposed angular measurements from a trio of improvisers - Adam Schneit on clarinet, Reginald Chapman on bass trombone and Jake Henry on trumpet. The latter piece, in turn, escapes the raucousness of other moments, inflicting some purposeful vagueness, but finding firmness in Adam O’Farrill’s discourse.

With “Foggy Valley”, the band ventures through a dark sonic fare, having Morris' wry sax viscosity populating its eerie backdrops.

Webber’s compositional prowess is on display on “Rebonds”, which adheres to a rocking funkiness that serves as a showcase for guitarist Dustin Carlson’s tart sounds, and “Reverses”, which starts off with carefully spaced delimiters immersed in bright tones of light. The tempo rises and the atmosphere heats up meteorically before decaying again into serenity. The words of the finale are by poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.

Integrating written and improvised material in new ways, Webber and Morris take the big band concept into fresh territory. This is an accomplished conjoint effort.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Climbing On Mirrors ► 03 - Both Are True ► 04 - Rebonds

Anna Webber - Clockwise

February 20, 2019

Label: Pi Recordings, 2019

Personnel - Anna Webber: tenor saxophone, flutes; Jeremy Viner: tenor saxophone, clarinet; Jacob Garchik: trombone; Christopher Hoffman: cello; Matt Mitchell: piano; Chris Tordini: bass; Ches Smith: drums, vibraphone, timpani.

Tenorist/flutist/composer Anna Webber is a compelling exponent of the avant-jazz panorama who has been leading interesting projects such as Percussive Mechanics and Simple Trio. Her most ambitious project to date, Clockwise, marks her debut on Pi Recordings and homages some of her favorite 20th century composers like Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and John Cage. Here, she spearheads a snappy working septet of gifted musicians, delivering nine stimulating tunes with progressive artistry.

Two pieces inspired by Xenakis’ percussive work Persephassa bookend the album: “Kore II” and “Kore I”, opening and closing tunes, respectively. The former is deliciously timbral and contrapuntal, racing with fragments of jagged angularity and pushed forward by an odd groove in seven; the latter is cooked with a slippery, steam-powered tempo and spotlights Jacob Garchik on trombone; it slightly rocks at some point before the culminating crescendo.

I felt a high-energy punch with the buzz-like drones and hypnotic pace of “Idiom II”, in which codified and notated elements were applied. It was like hearing a Scottish bagpipe intermittently discontinued by the injection of low-pitched rhythmic accents. A cello solo reaches far corners… sprawling horn-driven embroideries let the piano and the vibraphone stand out… rhythmic patterns are left to the final section. It sounds beautiful!

The three uncanny parts of “King of Denmark” are intensely percussive and the first of them presents kinetic manifestations from vibraphone, shrieky piano, continual flute chirping, terse cello traces, and indistinct horn sounds. This sets the tone for “Loper”, whose pondered kickoff never impeded the energy to flow. Afterwards, everything transforms with surprise, and a spectacular tenor solo arises, having lacerating cello incisions and bass kicks running in the back. The passage before the final is equally amazing, arranged with unisons and scattered horn wails uttered with a mix of authority and passion. Webber borrowed certain elements of Edgar Varèse’s Ionisation, a musical composition written for 13 percussionists, for this piece.

The title track starts by combining unhurried bass notes, glasslike vibrations, and keyed up bass flute. Our attention is deflected to Mitchell’s thought-provoking classical-influenced pianism before reaching a collective conclusion.

“Array” combines upbeat funk attitude with pointillist fixation whilst the short-lived “Hologram Best” registers John Cage as the motivational source. It showcases outgoing sax lines flying over a danceable surface permeated by piano and horn lines in counterpoint.

Even though individual contributions take the form of strong improvisations, it’s the magnitude of the collective that makes this body of work so extraordinary. Everyone listens closely to one another, a fact that compels the interplay to feel so instinctual, whereas the written parts have no dull moments, demonstrating ingenious imagination.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Kore II ► 02 - Idiom II ► 03 - King of Denmark I/Loper

Anna Webber's Simple Trio - Binary

October 27, 2016

Anna Webber: tenor saxophone, flute; Matt Mitchell: piano; John Hollenbeck: drums.

Anna Webber, a genuine Brooklynite reedist, reconvenes the Simple Trio - Matt Mitchell on piano and John Hollenbeck on drums - and releases Binary, her second album of originals on Skirl Records.
Focusing on a strong collective improvisational concept, Webber and her valuable peers often exercise in tension and release, building up intense musical moments and avoiding conventional approaches or structures.

A provocative, dark-hued exaltation can be felt in “Impulse Purchase”, a tune that constantly balances the light and the heavy, the thoughtful and the impulsive, the contemplation and the action. It starts with Webber’s serpentine saxophone phrases, which are joined by the broken comping of Mitchell, a master in the harmonic deconstruction, and the urgent vitality of Hollenbeck’s exciting drumming. The trio gradually galvanizes energies toward the end.
In “Underhelmed”, Hollenbeck finds his way into a muscled rock, while Mitchell remains devoted to his philosophy of generating breathtaking harmonic passages brewed up together with giddy rhythmic intentions. Webber, in turn, holds onto a state of intense melodic-rhythmic creativity. The tune’s energy switches on our body movements for a spasmodic dance.

The compositional nature of “Tug O’ War” and the choice of flute, calls Henry Threadgill to the scenario. Yet, the reinforcement of the iterative musical ideas translated into an organic compound of sounds is reminiscent of Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet’s explorations. After the storm, the trio slows down for a sober finale.
The title track, alternating between mournful and effusive, starts to be shaped with the help of Mitchell’s melancholic piano textures, the dark timbre of Webber’s beseeching saxophone, and Hollenbeck’s alert brushwork. The inherent tension initially created is widely expanded as the tune moves forward, bringing us short, and often surprising, rhythmical transmutations and mood discrepancies.
Scattered throughout the record, six energizing short tracks named “Rectangle” share similar melodic patterns, cyclic harmonic progressions, and relentless rhythms.

A fervent freedom can be felt in Binary, an avant-garde vessel that navigates among ripe ideas and pugnacious sounds.