3 + 3 / Turning Toward – Sometimes You Just Have to Run With It. Sauntering With Mr. Brown. Exploring Outward/Funambulist Fever / Tomeka Reid Qrt: Reid, vc; Mary Halvorson, el-gt; Jason Roebke, bs; Tomas Fujiwara, dm / Cuneiform Records, Rune 525, available for sampling or purchase on Bandcamp
Tomeka Reid (b. 1977) is an avant-garde cellist, composer and improviser who has performed with, among others, the world-renowned Art Ensemble of Chicago, which from its inception in 1969 has always tried to stretch the boundaries of the jazz form by incorporating free-form improvisation with elements of classical music. In addition to leading her own quartet, Reid has also recorded with flautist Nicole Mitchell’s 2002 Black Earth Ensemble album, Africa Rising. This is my first exposure to her although this is her second album for Cuneiform Records (the first was Old New in 2019), thus I am new to her and, I would assume, most of my readers are, too.
According to the promotional sheet accompanying this album:
Reid wrote the 3+3 music with the support of a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Commission and she ended up writing the pieces while an artist in residence for the Moers Jazz Festival in 2022. The quartet premiered it during her residency at the Stone in August 2023, an apt setting to navigate the ebb and flow of a freely improvised and tunes-based program. The music gathers momentum over the course of several movements, not so much tracing a narrative arc as circling through a series of loose and limber themes and tempo shifts.
“I see the whole album as a suite,” says Reid, who moved back to Chicago in 2020 after about four years in New York. “Previously I’d written shorter pieces and felt like I had to write ‘jazz pieces’, and for this album I wanted to write longer forms. I do a lot of free improvisation and wanted to reflect that more on my records. There are tunes on this too, but it’s more open.”
I immediately sensed an AEC “vibe” to her music on this disc. I liked many, but not all, of the things AEC did, and was lucky enough to see them in person once—at, of all venues, the Chicago Art Museum circa 1980 or ’81. At the tine, I hadn’t even heard of them, thus I was startled by both their appearance (all but one of them, trumpeter Lester Bowie, in African garb and face makeup…Bowie wore a doctor’s white jacket and stethoscope) and the strangeness of their music. I listened to them for about five minutes before moving on, not knowing that most of their pieces lasted anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes long. Each of these three works on the present CD is also an extended composition/improvisation. Turning Forward – Sometimes You Just Have to Run With It lasts 16:23, Sauntering With Mr. Brown a mere 8:37, and Funambulist Fever 15:15. Even so, the total playing time of 40 minutes plus may seem a bit short for a CD, but what it lacks in length it makes up for in density.
Reid’s music is not easy for the average listener to follow. Her recordings will seldom if ever be played on those jazz streaming services online or, if you are lucky to have one (most have disappeared into the ether), your local jazz radio station. It is not “fun” music in any way. It is art music, which of course makes it perfect for this blog although, as usual, my classical followers will not even read this review because any kind of jazz is just so beneath them. It’s their loss.
The first piece opens with Halvorson picking gently at her guitar while Reid produces some strange, strangulated cello sounds in the background while bass and drums stay sotto voce underneath them. As with much if AEC’s music, there are no themes that the listener can hang on to; having recently finished reviewing Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s surreal string quartets, I found a strong kinship between his music and Reid’s with the exception that the former often wrote tongue-in-cheek while the latter is deadly serious. One thing that pleased me a great deal was that, although she plays electric guitar, Halvorson is also a very serious jazz artist, thus although she uses some reverb effects in her playing she does not indulge in typical “rock guitar” screaming licks.
With the music being as fluid as it is, one listens for as many musically solid signposts as one can. At the 4:31 mark Reid, now playing bowed cello, and Halvorson play a repeated descending motif of A-flat/E/D/B before leading into a brief melodic line, eventually followed by a rising motif of G-A-B. Then, suddenly, we get an actual theme played by Reid with a really swinging beat which incorporates this rising motif into it, sometimes as a break, sometimes as a secondary theme, before taking off into improvisation. It’s an ingenious yet subtle musical maneuver which speaks volumes for the leader-composer’s whimsical imagination. At least the rhythm section keeps a steady 4 beat, something that the AEC only did on occasion. Halvorson’s solo is excellent and very creative, using the whole-tone scale as well as some modal changes mixed in with the changes of the tune thus established. Reid then plays repeated riffs behind her before bassist Jason Roebke takes a solo. Although he does not have a powerful tone—either that, or he purposely keeps his volume a bit low-key so as not to disturb the balance of the quartet—his solo is also quite imaginative, using some fracturing of the rhythm to play against drummer Fujiwara’s steady pulse. Then, it is Roebke who drops into playing three-note riffs while the drummer solos. Once again, I was very pleased to hear Fujiwara because for most of the track he keeps a steady pulse, with some small modifications, rather than trying to show off how many fractured rhythms he can pound out as if he were a free-jazz Buddy Rich. Towards the end of the track, we hear Reid playing what sounds like electronically modified lines pitched up an octave higher than her instrument can naturally go while Halvorson plays riffs; then the tempo slows way down and we are back to the slow beginning melody for the coda.
Sauntering With Mr. Brown opens in a similar fashion, with soft pizzicato cello, this time with just the drums sneaking in behind it. At the one-minute mark, the bass adds a few notes here and there, then Halvorson enters playing an interesting counter-melody. Although bitonal. the theme’s rhythm is rather catchy, a nice medium-tempo swing. Halvorson moves into soloing as Reid continues along with her little rhythmic motifs through the first half of the piece. As free jazz goes, this is a rather pleasant piece with good form. At about 4:12, Reid switches to bowed cello; it sounds as if the sound is somewhat distorted, either by her finger placement on the strings or electronically. She also throws in a few quarter tones, slightly under the established pitch, which gives a suddenly ominous feeling to this “saunter” as the bass and drums slowly increase their volume (but never overpower the gentle sound of cello and guitar). As it develops, the piece sounds rather gentle until the seven-minute mark when Reid starts playing louder, edgier string tremolos. It also sounded to me as if she overdubbed herself, with a melodic cello line clearly heard over the continuing edgy figures. At the very end, a short coda, then one sustained cello note and out.
Funambulist Fever opens with distorted cello playing. The title, for those who are wondering, refers to an acrobat who walks on either a tightrope or slack rope; this piece seems to evoke a bit of both. The music stays very fragmented for quite some period of time, with Halvorson also bending notes on her guitar, and the drums play quixotic fractured beats which break things up even further as the bassist plays in-time and double-time fills as he sees fit. This is clearly the most fragmented and free-form piece on the album, very much in the style of the AEC despite a lull at around the five-minute mark in which we hear some gentle chords strummed on the guitar against electronically-distorted but very soft cello figures. Then, at 6:19, Reid begins playing a very slow and quite lovely melody on bowed cello as the others continue their work around her. Eventually, the cello line becomes faster, more distorted and rather abstract, followed by an excellent drum solo by Fujiwara. Then, at 11:20 or so, the bass settles into a rhythmic groove and the whole thing begins to swing, albeit in a free-jazz way. Fujiwara shows off some nifty stick work, but eventually our funambulist seems to have hit a snag on the tightrope as there is an odd divergent change in the music before she finds her footing again. We end with the cello and guitar really swinging their way to the other side of the rope, underlined by more stick and bass drum work.
It’s really a shame that most jazz aficionados will either ignore this album or fail to understand what is going on here, and even more of a shame that modern classical composers will turn their nose up at it as something beneath them. This is highly creative and original music that takes chances and, more often than not, finds its way out of its own musical mazes. You might call it a truly a-MAZE-ing album!
—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley
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