Label: Sunnyside Records, 2025

Personnel - Marty Ehrlich: alto and tenor (#8) saxophones; John Hébert: bass; Nasheet Waits: drums.

Multi-reedist Marty Ehrlich has led several remarkable sax-bass-drums trios since his 1984 debut recording The Welcome, which featured bassist Anthony Cox and drummer Pheeroan AkLaff. His latest effort, Trio Exaltation—featuring longtime collaborators bassist John Hébert and drummer Nasheet Waits—returns seven years after its debut with seriously good stuff. This Time presents six original Ehrlich compositions alongside two interpretations of pieces by the late, great pianist Andrew Hill, with whom Ehrlich collaborated for four or five years. The album is dedicated to Hill’s widow, Joanne Robinson Hill.

Ehrlich’s “Sometimes This Time” opens with sizzling cymbal work that soon extends across the drum kit, underpinned by a round, grooving bass line that anchors and tempers Ehrlich’s kinetic, zigzagging improvisations. Waits contributes a thrilling drum solo before the theme returns to close the piece. “Twelve For Black Arthur”, a blues-infused burner with post-bop flair, is a tribute to altoist Arthur Blythe. The trio intensifies beyond the theme, with Ehrlich incorporating several of Blythe’s characteristic approaches to melody and improvisation.

“Conversation I” and “Conversation II” are two sax-and-drums duets in which Ehrlich and Waits showcase explosive chemistry and euphoric avant-garde expansiveness. “As It Is” unfolds through a shuffling rhythmic undercurrent from bass and drums, creating a rubato ebb-and-flow over which Ehrlich’s poised saxophone explorations escalate into quick-strike phrases—built on motifs, wild trills, and shifting patterns.

Ehrlich’s burnished tone lends warmth to the romanticism of Andrew Hill’s ballad “Images of Time”, tinged subtly with Spanish inflections. Hébert’s solo here is erudite, elegant, and sequentially coherent. On Hill’s “Dusk”, the bassist employs luminous harmonics, paired with the shimmer of Waits’ cymbals. The rhythm section dances with passion and precision, conjuring a twilight aura. Ehrlich’s commanding alto brims with ideas, flowing dynamically through warped contours and revealing the deep connection among these musicians—all former members of the Andrew Hill Sextet—whose years of collaboration bear exceptional fruit.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Sometimes This Time ► 02 - Dusk ► 09 - Conversation II

Label: Clean Feed, 2018

Personnel – Marty Ehrlich: alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, wooden flutes; John Hébert: double bass; Nasheet Waits: drums.

Multi-reedist Marty Ehrlich, a devotee of compositional adventurism and vertiginous improvisations, is always surrounded by musicians who think alike and are capable of intuitive interplay with an elevated rhythmic perception. His new high-profile Trio Exaltation, featuring John Hébert on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums, proves what I just said.

The trio opens the album strongly with “Dusk”, an original by the late pianist Andrew Hill with whom all of them worked in the past. It starts off as a spellbinding saxophone incantation backed by lively, gorgeously detailed percussion. The bassist only arrives two minutes after, locking down an encouraging groove with clear intent and purpose. He stretches out later in a stroll that subsists in its own pace, regardless the drummer's polyrhythmic fills.

The rhythm section becomes more strenuous on the following piece, “Yes Yes”, whose textural audacity results from a fine combination of bass adventurism and an impermeable yet tasteful net of cymbal crashes and tom-tom fantasies. Unconfined and utterly expressive, the clarinetist spreads a breathtaking fervency while exulting in a prayer. Multiphonics and unexpected piercing notes are constituents of his hip melodic oddities.

In opposition to the dancing spirituality of “Spirit of Jah No.2”, an exhilarating piece for wooden flutes and African-tinged percussion, the haunting sounds of bass clarinet are exerted in compositions with a more reflective and contemplative nature, cases of “Dance No. 5”, a far-from-ethereal John Surman-esque illumination played in five, and “The Arc of the Oar”, an imperturbable duet with Hébert, where the melody of Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” is revived.

Sometimes Ehrlich’s approach is clean and transparently lyric, other times it may come intoxicated with searing lines professed with variegated timbres. This last aspect is particularly noticeable on pieces like “Senhor PC” (not for Paul Chambers but for Clean Feed’s Pedro Costa), a free ramble with questioning motifs and ruminative arco bass conspiring with Waits' mallet drumming, and “Stone”, a burner that keeps instilling brief swinging rides amidst avant-garde passages delineated with free bop melodic moves and sudden boisterous drum chops. With the closing piece, “Reading The River”, a deliberate swinging groove is definitely put into effect. It is not rare to find shades of Ornette Coleman throughout these pieces and “June 11th 2015” was precisely dedicated to him.

The Exaltation Trio creates mesmerizing sonic atmospheres based on the supple interplay and expansive personal statements of its members. If their openness facilitates communication, then their ample sense of freedom concedes fearless exploration.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Dusk ► 02 - Yes Yes ► 04 - Dance No. 5