Nate Wooley - Ancient Songs of Burlap Heroes

August 16, 2022

Label: Pyroclastic Records, 2022

Personnel - Nate Wooley: trumpet, amplifier; Mary Halvorson: guitar; Susan Alcorn: pedal steel guitar; Mat Maneri: viola (#2); Trevor Dunn: electric bass (#4); Ryan Sawyer: drums.

Impregnated with chilly dystopian-like vibes, the sophomore release of trumpeter Nate Wooley’s Columbia Icefield is a suite whose three main parts and four interludes derive from heroic inspirations. A film by Frank Heath accompanies Ancient Songs of Burlap Heroes, which creates a cinematic universe of its own through otherworldly sonic sensations and field recordings. The ensemble remains with no alterations, transversing modern jazz forms and experimental foundations specified in Wooley's composition.

“I Am the Sea that Sings of Dust” stealthily steps in, attempting to mediate the struggle between the natural world and the human expression. Sparse guitar chords, background electronic noise, and effusive drumming by Ryan Sawyer draw a distinction to an early phase that plunges further into a downcast chamber atmosphere accentuated by plaintive trumpet lines and the pastoral glissandi winks that pour from Mat Maneri’s viola. This disenchanted impression is transferred to the interlude that follows: a suspended mode with moderately warped guitar sounds and trumpet tranquility.

Clocking in at nearly 15 minutes, “A Catastrophic Legend” was penned for the late cornetist Ron Miles. The constant vigilant state of the piece hypnotizes more than shakes in the initial phase, when Wooley and Halvorson engage in unpredictable parallel moves over a quiet substratum reinforced by guest bassist Trevor Dunn. The texture then varies in intensity, falling in with rock-infused distortion and asymmetric progression. After a trumpet solo, there’s a convoluted passage with electronics and rollicking drums.

“Returning to Drawn Myself, Finally” is based on a Swedish dalakoral (religious song). The trumpet lamentation leads to a modernist abstraction delineated by Halvorson, an electric guitar innovator whose loose-fitting phraseology can be heard concurrently with Alcorn’s pedal steel electrification. Serenading activity replete with ostinatos takes us to a closure.

Emphasizing more the collective than the individual, Wooley explores creative approaches to music making by combining strange and foreboding elements. This is a curiously atmospheric if not essential album.

Favorite Tracks:
02 - I Am the Sea that Sings of Dust ► 04 - A Catastrophic Legend ► 06 - Returning to Drawn Myself, Finally

Nate Wooley - Mutual Aid Music

July 27, 2021

Label: Pleasure of the Text Recordings, 2021

Personnel - Nate Wooley: trumpet; Ingrid Laubrock: tenor saxophone; Sylvie Courvoisier: piano; Cory Smithe: piano; Matt Moran: vibraphone; Joshua Modney; violin; Maria Roberts: Cello; Russell Greenberg: percussion.

For this stunning new double-album, the Brooklyn-based trumpeter and bandleader Nate Wooley, a notable figure in the avant-garde jazz scene, asks his bandmates to use their gifts and decision-making ability throughout eight ensemble concertos devised with an inventive compositional system of his own. Given certain pre-established rules, each member have to decide what to play, firstly as a human being and secondly as a musician, developing musical sequences that, going beyond expectation, blossom into completely new vistas than those presented on paper. The results are astounding, and the group forges inimitable sequences, probing both diaphanous atmospheres and spiky musical razors that invite us to picture worlds beyond the tapestries of sound.

“Mutual Aid Music I” plunges in a lachrymose state, fluctuating between the ethereal and the substantial with the trumpeter at the helm. A beautiful cohesion is achieved - the piano work is phenomenal, the cellist saws away with purpose, the saxophone quietly brings a velvety smoothness with it and the violin introduces some acerbic rasps. It ends with moving trumpet and a chain of piano effects.

“Mutual Aid Music II” kicks off with trumpet and saxophone manifestations: Wooley employs his adamantine melodies of rare elegance, which serve as a foil for Ingrid Laubrock’s more temperamental curlicues. Later on, they have Matt Moran’s relaxing vibes mediating their conversation until Sylvie Courvoisier’s piano stirs some friction. A central rhythmic figure is addressed by everyone with different intonation and the piano, which can easily bend from cloudy to ecstatic, triggers a type of fanfare with trumpet and violin immersed in repetitive riffing and a more loose saxophone improvisation.

I found “Mutual Aid Music III” to be very emotional, oozing sentiment through every pore of its brittle skin, whereas “Mutual Aid Music IV” offers a stratospheric confluence of avant-jazz, modern classical and new music, in which the strings (in a first stage) and then the prepared piano (toward the finale) assume prominent roles.

The highlights of the second disc are “Mutual Aid Music I-I”, whose grandiose outset takes us to warped, hypnotic and eerie experimental atmospheres, and the 14-plus-minute “Mutual Aid Music IV-I”, where the group keeps varying the intriguing orchestral alchemy by dint of ostinatos, suspensions, gracious contrapuntal movements, pensive muse and emotional exteriorization.

This is a smart, masterful study in constructive music with a focused human perspective. Wooley stands out among the crowd of modern creative innovators, and Mutual Aid Music is his masterpiece for 2021.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Mutual Aid Music I ► 02 - Mutual Aid Music II ► 03 - Mutual Aid Music III

Nate Wooley - Columbia Icefield

February 18, 2019

Label: Northern Spy Records, 2019

Personnel – Nate Wooley: trumpet; Mary Halvorson: guitar; Susan Alcorn: pedal steel; Ryan Sawyer: drums.

American trumpeter-improviser Nate Wooley writes cleverly configured music for a new experimental ensemble featuring guitarist Mary Halvorson, pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, and drummer Ryan Sawyer, who doubles on vocals. All three compositions on Columbia Icefield (the album was titled for the largest area of interconnected glaciers in the Rocky Mountains) run between 10 and 20 minutes. The quirky quartet builds structural blocks according to Wooley’s arrangements, in a demonstration of versatility and imagination. The bandleader pictures the inaccessible ice field as a metaphor of man’s relationship to nature, many times suggesting sonic mystery.

“Lionel Trilling” starts off with concurrent guitar ostinatos filled with acerbic atonal intervals and subtle chromatic shifts, a relentless cadence sustained by a sort of obsessive thrust. As the tune progresses, surprising rhythms erupt, bringing Sawyer’s unpredictable drumming to the forefront. You must wait around for controlled moments of chaos as well as intervals of reflective stillness. Both invite us to picture vast hyperborean landscapes in our minds. Rasping, vibrating slides on the guitar and vocal effects help to magnify the milieu, which, near the final, shapes into a waltzing, electronic-like passage with rhythmic patterns atop.

Refraining the dynamics, the group embraces a certain languidness for most of the duration of “Seven in the Wood”. Alcorn and Halvorson combine their quirky sonorities, weaving a serene tapestry over which Wooley pronounces crisp lines with descriptive properties. Sawyer creates uncertainty in his interventions, and the reverent care for nature seems to emerge from a solemn folk source. This hushed instrumentation lingers until Halvorson turns on distortion and Sawyer takes his drums to thunderbolt heights for a torsional indie-rock flutter.

The title “With Condolences” doesn’t mislead, considering that the music resembles a requiem. However, on occasion, the dismalness is cut out by the tribulation that results from layered instrumental entanglements. Sawyer’s narration is done in conformity with the tenebrous understructure.

The music orchestrated by Wooley might not move a mountain, but has the power to shake it.

Favorite Tracks:
02 - Seven in the Wood ► 03 - With Condolences

Corsano / Courvoisier / Wooley - Salt Task

April 10, 2017

Label/year: Relative Pitch Records, 2016

Lineup - Chris Corsano: percussion; Sylvie Courvoisier: piano; Nate Wooley: trumpet.

Drummer Chris Corsano, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, and trumpeter Nate Wooley are three inveterate improvisers who joined forces in Salt Task, another hallucinating trip into arduous avant-garde galaxies.

All the members of the trio have been very active lately, participating in a variety of recordings and performing live with regularity. The versatile Corsano, whose collaborations can range from Bjork to Evan Parker, is a member of the powerhouse quartet led by the Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, which also features American saxophonist Joe McPhee and bassist Kent Kessler. Besides recording with the avant-rock trio Rangda, he keeps on teaming up with saxophonist Paul Flaherty, a longtime collaborator.

Wooley launched great records in duo with multi-reedist Ken Vandermark and released Argonautica (Firehouse 12 Records, 2016) with a hot sextet that includes cornetist Ron Miles, pianist Cory Smythe, keyboardist Jozef Dumoulin, and drummers Rudy Royston and Devin Gray.
Last year, Courvoisier put all her musical passion in Miller’s Tales (Relative Pitch, 2016), an avant-jazz delight cooked in partnership with her violinist husband Mark Feldman and featuring saxophonist Evan Parker and electronics wiz Ikue Mori. This year, she could be heard in Crop Circle (Relative Pitch), recorded in duo with the nonconformist guitar sensation Mary Halvorson.

Salt Task opens with the revolutionary title track, a 20-minute-piece that erupts with dense contrapuntal cogitations simultaneously driven by the trio. After the opening section, the musicians usually interact two by two, exploring different sonic possibilities and moods until reaching the final section, where the trio strikes again. Depending on the setting, one may float serenely over idyllic landscapes, march at the sound of a military trumpet, startle with ominous low-pitched piano vibes, revolve around cyclic ideas, or become energized through piano-drums sweeps and thunders.

Eminently percussive, “Last Stat” displays extra alternative textures with Corsano in the spotlight. He reproduces the sound of a plastic trashcan rolling down the street while Courvoisier strums the piano strings to make it sound like a stale harp. Wooley contributes with airy sounds and rapid attacks that often uncover playful melodies.

“Tall Stalks” conveys admiration through Wooley’s muted phrases on top of Corsano’s combustible rhythm flows and Courvoisier’s unflagging textures. She creates tension by continually hitting the same key with her left hand.

The gently atmospheric “Stalled Talks” finishes the album with a circumspect narrative flow, probing techniques of meditation that feel intense on one side and tranquilizing on the other.

The inventive trio wisely plays with textural agitations and composures, arranging them with freedom, responsibility, and an evident musical insight that makes them first-rate avant-gardists.

Favorite Tracks:
02 – Last Stat ►03 – Tall Stalks