Item: Fifteen
Rating: 8
Author: guardian

Wavelength

Rate and discover music with friends

Get

Fifteen by Henry Threadgill, Vijay Iyer & Dafnis Prieto reviewed by guardian — 8.0/10 | Wavelength | Wavelength

Pulitzer winner stirs gorgeous improv patterns

Publisher Joseph Pulitzer once declared his dreams for his readership were “to arrest their attention, enlist their sympathy … stimulate their imagination, convince their reason, and awaken their conscience”. Contemporary-classical composer and flautist Threadgill has been doing all that with his music, his personal story, his internationalism and his charisma since the 1960s. Now 82, he releases Fifteen, joining him in a brilliant trio featuring pianist/composer Vijay Iyer and creative Cuban percussionist Dafnis Prieto.

The album title references the number of years since this collective originally convened on a fundraiser for New York’s Jazz gallery. It’s simpler and more explicitly improv-oriented than Threadgill’s Pulitzer winner, the instrumentally diverse, polyphonically dizzying In for a Penny: all three members here are simultaneously composers and free-improvisers who cherish the communality of recurring patterns in ways some free-jazz players avoid.

Trio Piece is begun by Prieto and Iyer in staccato interval-hops and asymmetrical snare-drum snaps before Threadgill’s skimming flute lines glide in. Last Night is an urgently pressing piano groove powered by Iyer against Prieto’s supple, sensuous drum sounds, while Threadgill’s own Where Coconuts Fall is a rumination for piano, frothing cymbals and imploring alto-sax long tones. Prieto’s closing On the Way is a coquettish Latin frolic, edited by the stately Threadgill to clipped sonic punctuation marks, but gleefully stormed all over by Prieto and Iyer. Hearteningly delightful contemporary music-making.

Bassist/composer Linda May Han Oh also celebrated the arts of the jazz trio on Strange Heavens last year, but the Malaysia-born bassist/composer gets even more closely conversational on Beneath Lifted Skies (Biophilia) in a duo partnership with Chilean saxophone star Melissa Aldana that will entrance jazz traditionalists and newcomers alike. A hurtling interchange on the Charlie Parker classic Anthology, lyrically haunting wanderings on Wayne Shorter’s Dance Cadaverous and Oh’s beautiful solo reflections on Billie Holiday’s God Bless the Child are among 15 exquisite vignettes, likely destined for the end-of-year faves lists. Three-volume set The Riverside Years 1959-1962 (Acrobat) captures the effortless lyrical fluency of short-lived guitar genius Wes Montgomery in some of his hottest company, including saxist Johnny Griffin and Miles Davis pianist Wynton Kelly between those years. And innovative UK-based guitarist/composer Nicolas Meier draws on the work of Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla, flamenco and new configurations of his jazz, Turkish and Middle Eastern roots on Elysian Drift (MGP).

Though the century-old Pulitzer prize – launched as a celebration of the craft and social necessity of good news reportage – was eventually expanded to include fiction and music by 1943, the US-born art of jazz has only been represented by Ornette Coleman and Wynton Marsalis in their lifetimes, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk posthumously – and most recently Henry Threadgill, for his four-part suite In for a Penny, In for a Pound, in 2016. Publisher Joseph Pulitzer once declared his dreams for his readership were “to arrest their attention, enlist their sympathy … stimulate their imagination, convince their reason, and awaken their conscience”. Contemporary-classical composer and flautist Threadgill has been doing all that with his music, his personal story, his internationalism and his charisma since the 1960s. Now 82, he releases Fifteen, joining him in a brilliant trio featuring pianist/composer Vijay Iyer and creative Cuban percussionist Dafnis Prieto. The album title references the number of years since this collective originally convened on a fundraiser for New York’s Jazz gallery. It’s simpler and more explicitly improv-oriented than Threadgill’s Pulitzer winner, the instrumentally diverse, polyphonically dizzying In for a Penny: all three members here are simultaneously composers and free-improvisers who cherish the communality of recurring patterns in ways some free-jazz players avoid. Trio Piece is begun by Prieto and Iyer in staccato interval-hops and asymmetrical snare-drum snaps before Threadgill’s skimming flute lines glide in. Last Night is an urgently pressing piano groove powered by Iyer against Prieto’s supple, sensuous drum sounds, while Threadgill’s own Where Coconuts Fall is a rumination for piano, frothing cymbals and imploring alto-sax long tones. Prieto’s closing On the Way is a coquettish Latin frolic, edited by the stately Threadgill to clipped sonic punctuation marks, but gleefully stormed all over by Prieto and Iyer. Hearteningly delightful contemporary music-making. Bassist/composer Linda May Han Oh also celebrated the arts of the jazz trio on Strange Heavens last year, but the Malaysia-born bassist/composer gets even more closely conversational on Beneath Lifted Skies (Biophilia) in a duo partnership with Chilean saxophone star Melissa Aldana that will entrance jazz traditionalists and newcomers alike. A hurtling interchange on the Charlie Parker classic Anthology, lyrically haunting wanderings on Wayne Shorter’s Dance Cadaverous and Oh’s beautiful solo reflections on Billie Holiday’s God Bless the Child are among 15 exquisite vignettes, likely destined for the end-of-year faves lists. Three-volume set The Riverside Years 1959-1962 (Acrobat) captures the effortless lyrical fluency of short-lived guitar genius Wes Montgomery in some of his hottest company, including saxist Johnny Griffin and Miles Davis pianist Wynton Kelly between those years. And innovative UK-based guitarist/composer Nicolas Meier draws on the work of Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla, flamenco and new configurations of his jazz, Turkish and Middle Eastern roots on Elysian Drift (MGP).