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.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Twardzik ► 02 - OKWA ► 05 - Philosophy Series

Label: Clean Feed, 2019

Personnel - Matt Mitchell: piano; Mario Pavone: double bass; Tyshawn Sorrey : drums.

At the age of 79, American avant-garde bassist Mario Pavone is not interested in slowing down and both productivity and innovation are kept as two determinant factors in his career. For this year’s Clean Feed release, Philosophy, he reunites with the two freedom seekers and revered bandleaders that compose his Dialect Trio, namely, pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. All three form a democratic alliance whose tensile creativity is immediately mirrored on the lead-off track, “8-18-18”, a brand new Pavone composition that hangs loose, coiling Mitchell’s acerbic clusters and zigzagging motions, Sorey’s swift and precise brushwork, and bass rambles shrouded in ambiguity but never indecision.

The trio settles upon swing and groove all the way through on the title track, with Sorey and Pavone underpinning with gusto the motivic bop spins of the pianist, and “Two Thirds Radial”, a Monk-ish crotchet permeated with gorgeous riffs and slippery angularity. The latter tune was previously recorded, appearing in Pavone’s album Vertical (Clean Feed, 2017), just like “Iskmix”, a motivic statement with tricky additive meter, whose first release wings back to 2008, to the masterpiece record Ancestors (Playscape Recordings). Naturally, they both resurface here with new looks and textures.

“Everything There Is” is a spontaneous improvisation credited to the trio, which skews into a controlled centrifugation. Yet, I found them at their most investigative on two renditions of Annette Peacock’s tunes, “Circles” and “The Beginning”. The former, a ballad multiple times tackled by Paul Bley in the past, unscrambles any complexity and features the solitary bass in a minimalist sequence, while the latter invites us to get lost in the noisy atonalities of its short course. It feels like jumping into a big vortex full of small whirls inside.

Pavone’s “Noka” introduces a bit more roundness in its lines, setting the pace out of the work in tandem from bass and piano, which is complemented with Sorey’s speaking drums. However, Mitchell, as an inveterate off-center explorer, grittily seeks alternative routes.

Philosophy follows a smartly designed architecture that besides other benefits, ensures that no tune is overextended. It reinforces with new music what this trailblazing piano trio can offer.

Favorite Tracks:
02 - Philosophy ► 04 - The Beginning ► 07 - Iskmix