This
post is two things: first, a review of nine sets of Kurt Rosenwinkel’s New
Quartet (Aaron Parks, piano; Eric Revis, bass; Justin Faulkner, drums) I heard
in March; second, a preview of the material of his upcoming record (not the
actual recording, but the songs), entitled “Star of Jupiter,” which will be released this fall and features the same songs they played on tour. I caught five sets of their show at the Village
Vanguard in New York (the tour leg right before recording) and four sets at the
Regattabar (the tour leg right after recording) in Cambridge, MA. Having this much
material allowed me to explore each song in depth, and so made sense to explore
each song on its own as it was played on the tour in general. So this review is
more of a series of exploratory essays about each tune.
Our Secret World
“Our
Secret World” is a frequently a set opener for Rosenwinkel. It topped the first
set at the Village Vanguard shows, many I've seen in the past, and, of course, it is the
opening and title track of Kurt’s latest record with the big band Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos (OJM).
The
backbeat on its own a distinctive identity mark of the tune as a whole, and it
played a key role in creating the song’s funky yet otherworldly vibe. Stylistically this
beat inhabits its own world, being completely original, yet bearing close
proximity to drum patterns from other familiar genres: it sounds similar to
something out of hip-hop, funk or early rock. It has that popish feel that you
hear in, say, early Beatles (like “Please Please Me”), with snare hits on
the second half of beat two and on beat four.
Mr.
Faulkner, instead of playing a subtle triplet on the first beat of each measure,
as is typically done with this song, did away with the triplet roll and instead
emphasized the quarter note with a half open hi-hat, giving the New Quartet’s
version a smoother, more head rocking, canvas of cymbal. With an occasional a light triplet that would preempt the third beat he would create a stronger lean or pull on each quarter. His potent
cymbal crashes and snare hits gave the climactic breaks during the melody a new
kick, making the groove hard to ignore and easy to nod your head to.
The
melody follows an expanding intervallic logic. Short gestures, in
straight linear directions, imply strokes of angular direction and subtle
shifts in mood and color -- major and minor thirds, minor seconds, climb by small intervals with each phrase, and expand from short phrases of small sounds to longer phrases with wider intervals. The strokes of melody weave suspense and subtle development against the easygoing ride of the beat. The
harmony is exotic, and I might be stretching it to say that it reminds me of flamenco music (which Kurt has identified and
exhibited as an influence) during points where the guitar strums major
chords that travel in whole steps and resolve by half steps.
Déjà Vu
At
the Village Vanguard shows, this tune emerged out of a rubato, open, dreamlike
segue from the ending of the previous number, "Our Secret World." Ejecting from any definite harmony or rhythm, the
segue completely rips open a kind of musical void, in which Parks and
Rosenwinkel gradually explore and develop musical forms. Parks began by laying
down a plaintive bed of harmony, over which Kurt would create very atmospheric,
X-factor sounds -- running his hands along the fretboard with the delay kicked
all the way up, or picking behind the bridge of the neck, creating thin high
clinks, like a wind chime, which Aaron mirrored with high clusters of dissonant
tones. Eventually, Aaron would take over for the most part, with his own, somewhat
impressionistic expressions of chords and melody, leading through a tunnel of
tonalities, arriving upon the two-chord vamp between C7sus and Eb7sus that
starts, and also ends, “Déjà Vu.”
“Déjà
Vu” is one of Kurt’s most idiosyncratic and mysterious new tunes. In my
previous reviews of Rosenwinkel’s shows I wrote at length about its odd
form – the strange ways each melodic section ends; the surreal, dreamlike
resolutions of the harmony; the way in which the melodic motif (two ascending
minor thirds) is actually a step down from its original place, but that change is almost imperceptible thanks to the song's strange harmony – at first you think you’re hearing the
exact same thing but a closer listen reveals that it’s different. During his visit to Birdland (with the OJM big band) in August of 2011, I asked him a
few questions about the form, and he responded by asking, “would you like to
see a chart?” He graciously let me take a photograph.
There
are tons of little fascinating details hidden in this song. Knowing the actual
chords, it’s more complex than I previously imagined. I first thought the tune
at least had repeating sections, but there turns out to be no sections that
repeat exactly. Sometimes a chord will be very close to another in terms of
notes, but will have a different root, or function in a different spot of tune.
The melody almost repeats in places -- enough for it to sound like a coherent
melody, to imply some repetition -- but every phrase ends differently. I talked
about this tune with Parks for a bit after one of the Regattabar sets and he
brought up the use of bass motifs in this song, and pointed to an example or two. The first two bars go from Gb to Bb, and later on, in the middle of the
second iteration of the melodic motif, the bass, once again, goes from F# (Gb) to
Bb, although the chord qualities are different.
Thinking
about the harmony more generally, the chords in “Déjà Vu” are at first
familiar, but quickly evolve into odd ambiguous dreamy resolutions. The bass
notes of the first three chords create an augmented triad, anticipating the
strangeness that ensues when D-7 goes to E/B. Another surreal chord transition
is G-7/D to F#/D. There is a palpable sense of humor with this incongruous,
absurd harmony. (That witty subtext might explain the guitarist's habit of joking about déjà vu when announcing this song.) At the end of the first phrase the chords skip
up the first, second and third chords in the B major scale briefly in one bar,
as if pretending that the odd chords that precede this switch (G-7/D to F#/D)
never even happened, then abruptly transition right to the second iteration of
the first melodic motif.
Through the complex nuances that hide underneath its deceptively simple surface, the song embodies
the idea of déjà vu, which is perceived repetition -- maybe it’s the same, but
probably not (that’s the question), but it sure feels similar. The motifs in
the song -- the real similarities -- are tucked away in unlikely corners, like
bass note intervals or tiny fragments of the melody; yet whatever similarities
there are, they are placed in a musical context of near-similarities or close
resemblances that trick the ear into feeling musical déjà vu, a sense that one is
hearing repetition but not experiencing repetition. The uncertainty underlying
the experience is heightened with the juxtaposition of strange harmonic
resolutions and diatonic, familiar progressions, which create a slightly
disoriented feel. And the false endings, sudden shifts and the dramatic turns
of the song mimic the flashing nature of déjà vu.
Homage A Mitch
“Homage
A Mitch” is dedicated to the founder and owner (now co-owner) of Smalls jazz
club, Mitch Borden. Smalls was a breeding ground and hang spot for the group of
now influential musicians who came of age in New York in the 1990s. It
functioned as a place for them to hone their styles, play their music, hear and
learn from old masters and up-and-coming peers. And despite the club’s
commercial success in recent years, the underground atmosphere still pervades,
and its place in the jazz community is still the same. You can enter whenever
you please, find a seat, and if you look around, you’ll always spot several
jazz greats hanging out or playing on the bandstand.
In
a 2001 interview with Fred Jung, Rosenwinkel gives Smalls and its owner this
spoken homage:
[T]here is so much I can say about Smalls. It's probably the
only place in New York City that has provided musicians of my generation a
place where we can go and work on our music in the context of a club. It has
become a scene unto itself and there is always many musicians who hang out
there all the time. Two or three bands play there every night. So there are a
lot of ideas being bounced around there all the time. There is a high quality
of musicianship and a seriousness about improvised music that is inherent in
that place. It's been a real family to me, a real community. And Mitch, the
owner, that is his mission. That's what he wanted to do and that's what he is
doing. He struggles to keep that happening against all odds. He's basically
just running it by himself. He's always been an extremely fair club owner. I
don't even consider him a club owner. He's Mitch. He's very fair always. He
pays the musicians well. He gives people like myself a chance to develop a band
over the course of years. He's given that opportunity to many other musicians,
who otherwise wouldn't have had a venue. I think that a lot of musicians in my
generation owe a lot of their development to that club, including me.
In another great interview with Ted Panken in 2008, Rosenwinkel describes how the club was the
setting in which he learned core Bebop’s ideas and language from the old master
Frank Hewitt, who, like Rosenwinkel, frequently graced the club’s stage.
“Homage
A Mitch” is in tune with Smalls’s stylistic identity and heritage. Rosenwinkel
can speak the old-school style in his contemporary vocabulary; similarly, the core
roots of the jazz tradition are alive in Mitch’s club as well as budding talents
who aim to find their own jazz idioms. ‘Homage’ incorporates a few hallmarks
of the old hard-bop style. The bluesy shuffle sounds like something you’d hear on an Art Blakey record,
like Moanin’ (1958). The bridge
in particular, as I’ve written before, reminds me a lot of Benny Golson’s
“Along Came Betty”, and it stands
out among Rosenwinkel’s original compositions in its use of traditional two-five
harmonic resolutions. It also begins in a latin feel, kind of like a brief
tango, a common trait of old bebop standards. The club’s atmosphere -- the cool and
sophisticated, laidback ‘jazz cat’ social vibe -- is also felt in the easy shuffle, the strolling tempo, and the blusey passages that close out the melody. (In fact, the club houses an actual cat
that mingles freely around the club, a living pun on jazz lingo.) There’s no
overarching sense of pressure or expectation in the narrative arc of the song,
but instead, easygoing celebration.
'Homage' was one of a few songs where the band could blow and swing in an old-school
context. Aaron and Kurt began their solos with block chords, simple, slow and emphatic rhythmic placement, and dug hard into the swing groove with a post-bop
edge or glow or coloring for a few satisfying choruses. From these chords long and
winding bop lines eventually poured out. The harmonic makeup of the block
chords is fascinating; Parks, playing bluesy chords in a kind of new-age
stride style, would sometimes voice his block chords by using parallel
independent right hand and left hand voices. One could write a solid big band
arrangement by simply transcribing those improvisations.
Under It All
In
the past couple of years Rosenwinkel has re-incorporated this old gem of a ballad into
his quartet repertoire, and it will finally be recorded on the forthcoming
album. It is the title track from an album of the same name, which was recorded
along with Enemies of Energy (2000), but Verve didn’t want to release
it, fearing the record’s mix of style was too far outside their mainstream jazz
narrative.
“Under
It All” is completely accessible -- a pure, ineffably from-the-heart, pop-rock
ballad, with phrases of melody that envelop you in a soothing arc of resolution.
The use of space, in groove and melody, bring you into the moment, and every
statement carries deep, direct intent. I particularly dig the
falling chromatic line that accompanies the second statement of the melody. The
bridge launches into a loud and, for a lack of a better word, upset vibe: the
minor thirds in the bass imply diminished, ominous tonality --
power-chord-infused hits connote anger. The song mixes introspective and
extroverted energy; the melody indicates pain, and the bridge acts as a
release.
Rosenwinkel
usually began this piece with free intros: stochastic, stream-of-consciousness
improvised compositions of not only melody (i.e., lines) but harmony, shape,
texture and so forth. Most memorable were the two I heard at the Village
Vanguard. The first (March 3) centered loosely around an intervallic and
textural motif -- dyads (two note chords) spaced apart in half steps. He shifted these parallel shapes up and down and around in various distances, cultivating shape
and space and melody from an undefined key center. They expanded into glistening
celestial chords, of darker, minor, and diminished tones, and were blended
together by tremolo strumming as well as the delay and reverb pedals. At one
point a low voice from Rosenwinkel’s lapel microphone grew loud in relation to
everything else from as he was descending into the lower regions of the
instrument.
The
second intro (on March 4) was quite different. It began with triadic chord patterns, and flowed into
passages of improvised traditional chord-melody: a stream of unrelated, but
beautifully connected, functional major diatonic progressions, fingerpicked
with a soft attack. The tone was clean, with slight tremolo -- similar to this video, which was taken, I think, in the week
following his tour. His voice was also very present in the
sound, as if a spirit singing from above. The voicings, tone, and the bass
motions channeled legendary guitarist and chord guru Ted Greene. The comparison
may not be entirely coincidental: Kurt quoted a snippet of “Danny Boy,” which
is a chord melody on Greene’s only album, Solo Guitar (1977), and I have
heard Kurt say that he is influenced by Ted Greene’s chord books. At the end of this beautiful
solo, someone in the audience exclaimed “wow.... wow!” as if in disbelief at what
he’d just heard.
Star of Jupiter
I first heard “Star of Jupiter”
(previously titled “Birds of Prey”) when Kurt played at the Regattabar in March
of 2011. You can hear a bootleg recording from a different set of this tour on
YouTube.
The
arrangement of this tune in the New Quartet creates a markedly different feel
from the one I heard last year. A samba feel replaces the backbeat of the earlier version, and provides the song a festive mood, with active texture coming from drums, piano and guitar. Faulkner often layered 5 / 8 hits over its 4/4 core. The change in arrangement, be it a small change, makes
for a huge difference in the sound of the tune.
In the more recent arrangement, the guitar now begins the song. Rosenwinkel
would play the main ostinato at the heart of the tune by holding a constant
fretboard shape, like a chord, and manipulating his left hand
through hammer-ons and pull-offs to play the windy and layered figure. As Parks would join in on
a similar ostinato, the two developed an oscillating macrocosm of
guitar-piano orchestration -- twinkling, lightly distorted guitar tones poured into the lush harmonic ocean from the piano, and as the collective ostinato
groove would progress, and the rest of the band came in, they evolved their
ostinatos subtly. The band was grooving with a musical and mental oneness, an
organic fluidity. The guitar-piano blend kindled a ‘third instrument’
overtone -- the sense that there is either another keyboard or guitar when the
two play together, as Aaron Parks discusses in an interview with Jason Crane.
Rosenwinkel’s
soloing on this tune was magical. One unique technique he used exclusively when
soloing over this tune was the previously mentioned fixed-fretboard layering of multiple fast, interwoven lines at once, fired off in rapid oscillations. (An
example of this can be heard at 4:04 in the linked recording.) In other moments he could fit as many notes as possible within the smallest space of
the tune. Once, during a split-second transitional chord change -- between the
first and second halves of the bridge; a difficult place to play anything -- he
blazed the half-step/whole-step diminished scale in 32nd-notes and bottomed out exactly on
the next note of the relatively simple melody. He often plays the most frenetic
and complex runs in the most harmonically active parts of the tune, giving his
solos ear-grabbing dramatic thrill.
The song also
showcased Faulkner; he soloed as the band held out the interweaving rhythmic
motif of the tune. One of my favorite solos of his was the second set of their
first night at the Regattabar - with his gaze locked in focused, unchanging,
angled position, he would throw a succession of incredible hits and fills, then
stop entirely, faking you out, thinking way ahead of you and firing way ahead
of your expectation, knocking you out with a combination of drumset-encompassing
rolls at stupefying speed.
I Need To Know
This
song is a thrilling musical experience, a hair-raising narrative that travels
through ecstatic passages of improvisation, chaotic breakdowns of percussive
mayhem, and grooving rides of joy.
“I
Need To Know” has evolved subtly but noticeably over a few years. Its
development might also explain the subtle changes in. Rosenwinkel’s group
sound over this time, and point to some areas in which the "New Quartet" is new. This clip of Kurt rehearsing his song "Whispers of Love" with his band offers a glimpse into the details of Kurt’s group sound, especially with regard to shaping the
movement of a composition with a band -- “the vibe of how it moves,” as he
says. With the New Quartet, “I Need To Know” moves much differently than
before, so that the same composition feels entirely different.
The
earliest version I know of is from the second set of a live radio broadcast from the Village
Vanguard, which you can find here.
The melody sings the way, functioning like a pivot note on which the chords hinge,
leading changes that shift dark and light colors, like the kaleidoscopic chord
changes in “Zhivago" where clusters
of colors morph into each other naturally. The melody (plus the intro) is stated
twice in different feels: first in rising and falling parabolas of rubato, and
then a second time with the backbeat. During the second statement the overall movement
of the song gravitates toward equilibrium: since there is no rubato shaping of
rising and falling energy, each group of chords feels planar. There is a sense
that the song is building to a point, but the slow pace of the momentum when
the melody is played twice inhibits the experience of this development on a
moment-by-moment, beat-by-beat level. It only becomes apparent on a broad level
after a few listens.
More
recently, when I heard Kurt play with the big band OJM at Birdland in August
2011, they added an arrangement of this song to their repertoire. With this
arrangement the melody and intro were played once; the intro in rubato
and the melody in time. The vibe was also more aggressive, with drummer Marcos Cavaleiro's bustling 3 /
4. He would often emphasize the first beat of
each measure three and the dotted-quarter in the center of each three
beats, creating a galloping momentum. The intensity, and the strength of the singing of Rosenwinkel’s lines, was
also greater against the backdrop of the big band.
The "New Quartet" played this song with the same sequencing as the arrangement of
OJM, but the song’s steady arc of momentum -- which begins from a place of pure
weightlessness and formlessness, and travels to unbelievable heights of musical
intensity – was palpable on a beat-by-beat level. The free rubato intro began
as a spacious improvisation, with an impressionistic swirl of chords from Mr.
Parks and loose intimations of melody from Mr. Rosenwinkel, which the pianist
would then respond to with splashes of chords, as if the guitar lines made
ripples in a still pond. Then the composed intro line would be played, still
out of time, but with the band playing in time together, following Mr. Rosenwinkel’s
lead. The intro seamlessly congeals into a time feel, transitioning from
spacious rubato of the intro to the solid march of the melody and backbeat with
as little leaps or abrupt changes as possible.
During
the melody the band outlined its cruxes and cadences sharply and distinctly. An example
of one of these points would be the beginning of the song’s central
two-tone motif. Between each phrase and change, they left more space, with the
exception of the steady backbeat. In other words, there was a sharper distinction
between positive space (where the band plays) and negative space (where the
band doesn’t play). The immediate result was that the rhythmic and harmonic
lines of the song were bolder, but the emphasis on turning points and
cadences also determined the feel of how the song moves. When boldly outlined,
the turning points of the song functioned like platforms that would push
momentum forward, creating anticipation toward the next phrase or turn of
melody. Every moment of the song seemed to contain, in potentiality, the
momentum for the next; every place the song travels, likewise, is somehow a
part of the place from which it came.
The bold cadences at the beginning of each measure also implied a feel
of 4/4 underneath the song’s 6/8 surface, indicating a march-like direction and
continuity of overall momentum throughout the entire melody.
The
next major phase in melody development occurs after about four passes of the
two-tone motif, where the song’s parabolas of rising and falling of intensity
are accentuated in the guitar melody by several abrupt deviations from the
two-tone theme: a series of leaping intervals, a run of dramatically building arpeggios,
and some coordinated side melody lines. (I borrow the parabola idea from Mr.
Faulkner. After reading his words in this article, it doesn’t
surprise me that his drumming on “I Need To Know” shaped the arc of momentum so
precisely.) The original two-tone theme
persists, but these turbulent twists boost its build and elevate it to new
energetic heights. And here the contrast between positive and negative space
was even more striking: during the unevenly spaced two-note leaps in Mr. Rosenwinkel’s
melody, for example, Mr. Faulkner would drop the groove, catapult the melody
line with simultaneous snare hits and cymbal crashes, and leave empty space in
between. Those surprising unexpected gaps of silence build suspense and
anticipation, and even make for fleeting moments of chaos.
The
song peaks in intensity on a simple, but awesomely powerful, final statement of
the two-tone theme. The last statement of the original motif is exactly the
same -- at least in pitch -- as the closing statement. The chords have resolved
from kaleidoscopic subtle builds and shifts in tension, to something definite,
direct and dark, made by a minor chord switching, up a third, to a diminished
chord, and interrupted by a IV III (four major and three major), on which the
entire “New Quartet” would slam, halting the groove. These two chords, in the context of the entire build, are
crucial; they are the breaking point and the resolution point – the “confirming
release,” in Rosenwinkel’s words. Those chords are also straight out of rock
vocabulary, sounding like a chord progression that could come from Led
Zeppelin: similar breaks can be heard starting at 1:44 in Zeppelin’s “Black Dog." That break was
followed by a split second of silence, in which Mr. Faulkner would fire off a
drum kick with swagger.
Thus, the spring of energy that explodes at the end is wound from the outset. The buildup
is thus entirely continuous and seamless, from the form’s beginning to end. The
breadth of energy through which the song travels is substantial – the tranquil
impressionistic meditations in the intro eventually arrive at euphoric Led
Zepplinesque earth-shattering bangs at the end of the melody.
***
The
momentum doesn’t simmer down after the melody, but enters a higher gear in the
solo passages. As with the through-composed melody, I was intrigued to hear
each soloist -- Parks and Rosenwinkel – discover and experiment with ways to
play over the form. Unlike a traditional swing feel, where high-speed lines
gain traction easily, the 3 / 4 presents a different challenge. Swinging
eighths or sixteenths -- or even faster lines – don’t accumulate as much
momentum. It’s also difficult to end your phrases on the right beat when
playing fast, without bottoming out too early (which is easy to do when you can
play so fast). But night after night you could hear the band working things out
and finding what works, and when they would hit upon something that clicked it
was always an exciting moment. At one point on Kurt’s solo on March 2, he played
an elongated line, catching traction, surfing a curve in the groove that gave
it the kind of flying quality, the group came together and grooved with that
line, and Parks yelled out in a moment of joy.
The
most memorable take to me was the last take of the Village Vanguard engagement
(March 4). Rosenwinkel played a perfect solo, never once dropping the feeling;
with every idea fulfilled, actualized, and leading to the next. With his new
pedalboard his raw tone sounded raw,
hitting you directly and at the same time resonating throughout the entire room. He started out
with funky, short riffs, just hanging with the groove. Shortly after he set on
a path of long continuous lines and pyrotechnic fury: long patterns of bolting
speed, traveling between increasingly low and high extremes of the instrument; Coltrane-like
sheets of sound; groups of five or six notes spun around each beat, evolving
through each register, thrusting upward.
Pianist Aaron
Goldberg’s observation that Kurt’s playing “never loses its human quality, no
matter how complex or theoretical it gets” was definitely apparent with this solo. In the
high register of the instrument, he could make a swarm of notes wail with the
clarity and expression of the blues. Or he would climb an operatic,
cadenza-like line into the stratosphere during a suspenseful resolution in the
changes, and peak on a bright high note, abounding in the vast space of reverb.
One
of the elements during this solo, which was present throughout, was his rhythmic
elasticity in phrasing. Long lines often would accelerate and decelerate in a
way that did not always line up with the groove. In a sense he warps the time
feel of his lines and in doing so ratchets up their expressivity. This style of
phrasing out and in the pocket was one way he could command momentum over the
straight 3/4 feel. Instead of stopping his lines midway as they would naturally
run up against the edge of the beat or a change in the form, he would continue
beyond any natural stopping point, despite the meter, leaving the time
completely and following his own sense of time. Or he would ram a line, and let
it slow and stall at its peak, and follow it with a steep nosedive phrase ahead
of the beat, and crash it down into the beat with spiraling symmetry.
There
is also a sense of physical height to Rosenwinkel’s playing against the rest of
the group -- in the phrases where he hangs onto a note during an important
buildup, it feels almost as if the guitar is soaring high above the band. And
at some of the most intense moments, like the IV III break, he would forcefully
ground the solo, slamming on trenchant power chords -- which Mr. Faulkner
anticipated with simultaneous cymbal strikes -- slicing distorted guitar
through the beat.
The guitarist's mercurial blowing was impressively accompanied by Faulkner, who could play
aggressively behind the guitarist’s rhythmically volatile lines in a way that
didn’t obscure them but made them, in a way, more clear. His beat is a stream
of varying patterns and permutations, sub-grooves that vibe with the soloist,
constantly changing but within that flux implying a definite sense of time. It’s
got a flex to it -- it shifts and moves; he’s all over the drums -- yet he
implies consistent sense of time and groove. The groove feels free, flexible,
constantly in flux, but within that loose atmosphere the music is grounded. The
cadences of the song are always present in Mr. Faulkner’s playing, yet they are
marked by a variety of percussive phrases. Much like a chordal accompanist -- a
guitar or piano -- chooses different voicings to outline the song’s harmony,
Faulkner finds a different way to outline the rhythmic structure of the song
every time in relation to the soloist and the moment of the song.
Spirit Kiss
I
was introduced to this song back in January of 2011, and write about it here. As with other numbers, this song was arranged with a more active groove
than previously, with emphasis on 4/4 instead the solemn steps of the melody.
Space is another key component of this song, as with each diatonic line. In the
ending space of the melodic statements of “Spirit Kiss,” the music had a swaying
quality, like wind through trees, with a cymbal simmering into silence. The
simplicity is beautiful in this tune.
The
melody channels the sound and mood of Gregorian chants: it is modal and
diatonic, confined to a low range, and slowly ascends scale steps, with the
occasional fourth. Unlike some of Rosenwinkel’s other compositions, the phrases
of the melody stick to a mantra-like rhythm, devoid of any knotty shapes or
chromaticism. The repeating melodic motifs are also chant-like, and sometimes
he used the Harmonic Octave Generator (HOG) pedal to add octave harmony to the guitar, or even a fifth harmony.
I
thought these similarities might be coincidental when I heard the song back in
2011. That was before I knew about Rosenwinkel’s interest in the music of Maurice Durufle, who was, in turn, heavily influenced by
medieval chants. When I his solo set in Montreal (June 2011) he used
the HOG to create an organ tone over which he played an improvised
requiem-esque song, playing expansive organ-like chords and singing a traveling
angelic melody into his lapel microphone independent of his guitar lines. I
asked him about that piece at a later gig, and he told me that it was inspired
by Durufle’s sounds. For a reference to the requiem-esque sound, check out
this short clip from Rosenwinkel’s recent solo performance in Toronto’s Trinity
Church. In Montreal he didn’t have a vocal harmonizer like this video, and the
melodies he sang were more traveling, like in the Durufle requiem, but the
setup and general sound were similar.
A Shifting Design
This is one of
my favorite Rosenwinkel standards to hear and to write about. It is captivating to follow soloists
as they cruise through its complex turns -- its jagged but curvilinear harmonic
structure.
The way the
band has evolved this song is another example of the stronger presence of
groove in the sound of the “New Quartet.” When played on The
Next Step (2001), Jeff Ballard drums with a loose, spacious
swing, part of which is played in a half-time feel with brushes. The “New
Quartet”, by contrast, played the song with a consistent robust swing and
hardly a beat of intentional space. Mr. Revis’s unrelenting stream of thick
commanding bass lines cemented the feel of the harmony and defined clearly the
presence of each beat. Faulkner drove the song forward aggressively with cymbal
and snare vocabulary reminiscent of Elvin Jones.
Parks’s
approach to soloing over this tune was nuanced and fascinating. He would punch
clustery chords in odd rhythms and follow them with long in-the-pocket long
runs that ride across the changes perfectly; other times he would be slightly
aloof and state a few notes that subvert the flowing of the song with a steady,
unchanging direction. On one night, he played a line with each single note
repeated rapidly three or four times, creating a strobe light musical effect
over the song, as if he were playing a normal line in slow motion.
Some of the
most intriguing moments were his passages of chord soloing. His voicings in
these sections consisted of subtle shifts of independent voices that move
within chords, resulting in a more interwoven and less blocky transition from one
chord to the next. Within these chords, many of them mysteriously clustery, you
could discover a bluesy subtext, or subtle melodies that bring out the colors
and shapes of the song’s shifting harmony in beautiful arrays. His soft attack
also adds to the flowing quality between chords. At times his chords sounded
like they simply emerged from the piano, without being struck by the pianist.
Parks also conjured McCoy Tyner’s style when he marked the cadences of the
song’s shifting hits with low
root-fifth jabs, or in his comping rhythms and hits, like when he would play a
low chord, then travel to a clustery one; or when he would accompany soaring
lines with piercing clusters. His right
hand improvisational lines and phrases traversed wide distances on the piano
before ending, and were comprised of a triadic and pentatonic spacing. After
the last Regattabar show he told me he was listening to the John Coltrane Quartet
in preparation for playing in this band, so the similarity may not be entirely coincidental.
Rosenwinkel’s
solos would surf the song’s shifting changes in drawn out eighth note bebop
streams, following the time and harmony closely and consistently without pause,
riding and illustrating the edges of the tune’s harmonic and rhythmic curves in
a straight line. These lines not only swung hard, but also had a flow similar
to hip-hop phrasing. At times he would begin a long phrase on an odd beat, and
the natural rhythmic cruxes of that phrase would fall on the off beats of the
song. In between phrases, he would also slice up the groove with turbulent
patterns, out-of-time whole-tone scale flares, and streaks of straight scales.
But
while the linguistic makeup of flowing phrases sounded post-bop, they were
actually comprised of a broad array of styles and sounds. An arpeggio pattern
would be followed by a blues lick; a pentatonic ride would be concluded with a
series of harmonized hammer-on licks [example], one of Jimi
Hendrix’s signature sounds, played horizontally across the instrument. I also
heard vocabulary akin to that of Wes Montgomery, like ascending major seven arpeggios,
and so forth. And he always quotes bits of familiar jazz melodies on this song:
I caught Miles Davis’s “Four,” Denzil Best’s “Wee,” and Sonny Rollins’s “Pent
Up House.” These various styles and approaches were almost always logically
part of the flow of phrasing, so that the flow was not only existed in rhythm,
but in the palpable sonic logic through which Rosenwinkel hears and brings
together sounds from various traditions into his own unified, coherent improvisational
language.
Since the
groove is solid against the fast stream of the chord changes, the tapestry of
comping and metric variation over the groove allows the rhythm section a space
to shape the song. Faulkner and Parks would bounce their chords and fills off
and on the song’s natural hits, cadences and harmonic turning points. They
closely followed each other’s changeups with an ear toward collective groove, at
times engendering sub-grooves and mini-grooves spontaneously. These evolutions
in rhythmic tapestry propelled -- and did not hinder or interrupt – the overall
momentum. In one memorable musical event during Revis’s solo on the second set
of the Village Vanguard show of March 3rd, Faulkner switched up the beat by
accenting three-beat increments, creating a coasting feel over the 4/4 swing.
The hits would fall on the fourth beat of the first measure, then the third
beat of the next, then the second beat of the next, the first beat of the next,
and so on. Parks contributed glistening clusters and live textures to this
changeup -- voicings that intervallically expanded and contracted -- and
floated them down the line with in dotted quarters, which worked out to be two
chords per Faulkner’s three beats. As Parks drifted downward, Mr. Revis walked
lines straight upward, and hinged on Faulkner’s three beat emphases. Even when
each member was performing a distinct function, their voices blended into a
unified kinetic musical sculpture of melody, rhythm and harmony.
***
On
the first night of their Regattabar performances, after the second set, Kurt
sang ‘the lick’ (“do bah dih be dwee do dah”) while idly hanging around the
lobby after the show (the club is a room on the second floor of a hotel). Parks told him to play it as a joke during a solo. On the next night, during
the melody to “A Shifting Design,” he played ‘the lick’ during the melody,
looked at Aaron and laughed for a second.
Mr. Hope
Rosenwinkel
has cited pianist Elmo Hope, to whom the song is dedicated, as a major
influence and inspiration. He was also a major influence for bebop pianist
Frank Hewitt, who Rosenwinkel also has cited as a major influence. Mr. Hope was
a pillar of bebop piano language and methodology, contributing a unique and
identifiable approach to the idiom, and wide body of original compositions with
complex, wonky yet songlike melodies and forms. In a short video on YouTube, Bertha Hope, Elmo’s
wife, talks about some of his compositional hallmarks: angular melodies (created by nine
bar phrases and unexpected, rare kicks and tricks), expectation-defying chord
resolutions, and forms that play on subtle variation. In repeated sections in
melody and form (say, the second A) certain changes would be seem the same but
actually be subtly different. Mr. Hope’s philosophy was that “if you did it
again, you’re doing it wrong.”
With
these characteristics in mind, it’s not difficult to see the similarities
between Rosenwinkel and Hope. “Deja Vu,” as is discussed above, implies
similarities in harmonic and melodic form but never actually repeats itself,
and always escapes the ear’s expectation. The melodies of “Filters” or
“Synthetics” are angular. And the two musicans also might agree on some ideas about improvisation. Rosenwinkel is known for his organic
approach, executed without pre-rehearsing or working out exact figures of vocabulary.
Elmo Hope also conceived of improvisation as part of practice and performance,
insisting that licks and pieces of vocabulary should not be worked out and
rehearsed (“don’t practice what you’re going to play before you play it,” in
Mrs. Hope’s words), but developed in practice by improvising with what a
musician knows, theoretical concepts and the understanding of a song, and
building solo language organically.
“Mr.
Hope” cleverly incorporates the pianist’s musical personality and unique
musical aesthetic values. Rosenwinkel’s melody is very angular, consisting of
groups of tones tossed around in aberrant rhythmic and melodic structures. A
succession of grooving single notes would be interrupted by frenetic phrases of
jerky interval spacing and rhythmic pacing -- an octave jump encircling a
fifth, a series of quartal leaps, oddly placed snaps of triads and arpeggios, a
long pattern of downward minor thirds spaced in fourths. The rhythmic accents are
set in the odd spaces of the beat and unusual pickups, imply a kind of tripping
sensation, and like in Elmo’s bands, are points where the entire band hits. And
in the first repetition of the melody (the second A) the first chord was a
subtly different quality, diminished instead of major.
The
song tips the hat to the style and feeling of Mr. Hope’s music in the language
of Mr. Rosenwinkel. For example, the long pattern that carries the A section to
the bridge closely resembles the ending pattern on the melody of “The Next
Step.” He interprets Mr. Hope’s style by finding a way to create the same
musical feeling through his own musical language. He unifies his sound and Mr.
Hope’s sound into one, illustrating the link between his own compositional
ideas and old-school bebop. In that sense this number is not just a fitting
tribute, but stands for something more, reminding one that the masters of today
are bearers of a great lineage of sounds.
Db Major ¾
The
theoretical title adds an element of mystery to this heartfelt ballad. The song
is evocative and emotional enough that it must connect to some idea, one that
remains a matter of speculation or personal interpretation. Or perhaps the
title simply indicates that the song is still too new.
In
any case, “Db Major 3/4” fosters a similar vibe as “Under It All.” Both are
delicate ballads styled in a pop/rock vein. The main section of the melody is
played under an R&B beat nearly identical to that of Tower of Power’s
“You’re Still A Young Man." The song is R&B not only
in style, but in approach and arrangement too. Accompanying piano chords were
played directly on each beat, and the bass line stays mostly to one note per
measure. But in a simple arrangement, small additions from the rhythm section
make a big difference. Tiny one-note ornaments and approach notes from Revis would
enhance a certain chord resolution. Falling cascades of chords
from the piano filled up the spaces in between the melody with soothing prisms
of harmonic light.
Over
a familiar groove and familiar bass progressions, the chords were a mix of dark
and light colors. A warm major seven chord would be followed by a tense slash
chord, or transition to an unlikely major chord. Most of the chords sounded
calm or neutral individually, but ambivalent in the context of the overall
progression. The bittersweet harmony fosters a feeling of foreboding, one that
is confirmed as the song ramps up to the bridge. The rising subtext of angst
woven in the introspective A section boils over. Faulkner would transition to
an intensified rock-ish version of the R&B beat. Rosenwinkel, who up until
this point would play high melody quietly and with tender care, suddenly
strikes power chords in minor thirds, giving the bridge a markedly dark and
diminished atmosphere.
Rosenwinkel’s
was at his most reserved and lyrical when soloing on this song. He maintained
the intimate quality with sparse melodies, a few notes per bar. He would let a
single note ring out and decay into the R&B beat. His voice, through the
lapel microphone, could be heard clearly along with the lines. Only when he hit
the tumultuous bridge would he pour out long linear diminished buildups. The intimacy
is still there, but the deep emotion is more like an operatic run, with a more
crying quality. On these unornamented solo passages one can really hear the
contributions his numerous effects pedals have made to his tone. I’m not
entirely sure about this, but I think I could hear his newly-acquired attack
decay (“A.D.”) pedal in this solo, minimizing each pick attack by creating a
small swell with each attack. His subtle mixing of flanger and tremolo causes
the steady tone of the guitar to slightly waver, which gave each single note a
vocal, human quality (as he discusses in this video). And each note basked in reverb, resonating beyond the
amp, filling the atmosphere of the entire room.
If
the bridge is the height of the song’s emotional tension, the coda is the
resolution, or perhaps a moment of catharsis, both harmonically and
emotionally. The feel returns to the calm R&B but the changes consist of a
series of ii-V resolutions repeated in downward whole steps. The song then fades
away blissfully on a long Db major vamp that settles naturally into a gentle
ending. One of the most touching moments on this tune happened in this fade
away vamp during their Regattabar show on March 13, where Kurt and Aaron traded
phrases of delicate chords and tiny melodies that would overlap echo and merge
into one another, rising and fading with reverb and sustain pedal into the deep,
soft bed of the groove. The poor condition of the Steinway at the club -- as
Parks pointed out, if you repeatedly play certain notes loud enough, it sounds
like a hammered dulcimer -- gave his tone a twinkly
effect that actually blended beautifully with the guitar.
Kurt 1
“Kurt
1” is one of Rosenwinkel’s tight grooving engines, a vehicle perfect for funky
yet ferocious improvisation, collectively and individually. Essentially this
song is a minor blues, with a modal tint, and the piano accompaniment is locked
in two sus chords shifting on beat one and anticipating beat three, bringing a
side-to-side bounce to the scheme of the groove. The tight groove consisted of
a precise snare clap on each beat, a pulsating bump of the bass drum
underneath, and meticulously controlled hi-hat sizzles. The melody -- which for
the first few bars is a simple riff, an alternation between two notes played in
octaves sounding horn-like -- is instantly memorable. (One of my friends who
saw a set at the Village Vanguard was singing the melody after the show. Her
reaction: “That song was hot.”) The song switches gears into the bridge when
Rosenwinkel strikes a low E chord and tares open a deep, spacious resounding
expansion; the song becomes an open, rock-ish atmosphere of drum fills and high
wails from the guitar that, with reverb and delay, echo and reverberate
throughout the space – an awesome feeling in a small, subway-level basement
space like the Village Vanguard.
Rosenwinkel
reaches uninhibited heights of expressivity in his solos. On the best takes, he
appeared to have a thoroughly connected state of mind, his face red with
energy, and his body channeling the physical arc of his lines. Listening to his
solos was kind of like flying around in a fighter jet. You could feel a sense
of propulsion, a feeling of G force, when he fired long patterns. Delay and reverb
gave the music a sense of height and lift. Rosenwinkel’s art reaches “from the
depth of the soul to the height of the universe” as he once remarked – and this
value is manifest not only in the creative scope of the music but also in the
physical dimensions of the music.
One
very memorable solo was on the last night of their stint at the Village
Vanguard, March 4th. Rosenwinkel soloed with erratic shapes, juxtaposing lines
that were flowing and jagged, curvilinear and angular, fluid and pointed. Each passage
of phrases was distinct in theme and shape, but part of a coherent narrative of
mysterious logic. In addition, each passage became increasingly volatile and
explosive, pushing boundaries of time and register. Pentatonic patterns with
firm structures, set in the groove with uniform spacing and curve, would be
followed by uninhibited bursts of notes -- rhythmically non-uniform,
chaotically displaced but still remaining musical and melodic. One line flew
past the orbit of the groove, beyond 32nd note speed, flipped direction, went
beyond the key (a half step above), and landed in advance of the anticipated
resolution. Another line he played might be best described as a chorus of fast
bebop phrases compressed to the density of two bars, the energy simultaneously
compressed and unleashed. A prolonged high note plunged into a
fretboard-engulfing sheet of notes, and bottomed out on the open low E string,
blooming into an open string chord. A long line of symmetrical groups of six (the
beat emphasis alternating) was begun on the offbeat of two; it left the key and
shot high into the harmonic stratosphere, shifting up in cadence until it
eventually cycled to familiar harmonic territory. This out of control line was
followed by a brief return to the melodic theme, during which Mr. Faulkner
slammed the snare on each beat.
Another
technique that he employed, particularly more at the Regattabar shows, were
cell patterns (groupings of scale tones) swept up and down in accelerated
whirls and sustained over a series of bars. The isolated groups of notes in the
very high register were placed at a strange angle in between (and outside of)
the time, achieving a kind of orbit, the velocity and rapidity of the
revolutions high enough to create a centrifugal force, with the notes merging
into one kind of fluid but fixed design. They take on the effect of seeing
something whirl so fast to the point where they seem to appear as a fixed,
beaming constellation of light.
Some
of the most intense moments were when he would let a chord ring for a bar or
two, especially after a long run. The sound would expand in luminosity and weightlessness,
as Faulkner would build momentum with set-wide rolls and crashing cymbals, and
Revis would hold down the song’s center in the midst of chaos by skillfully
guiding the bass groove through the mayhem. One can be blown away by the complexities
of his lines, but equally essential to the intensity of his solos was his
ability to harness the energy inlaid in the fabric of a simple chord, a single
note, or a short riff. During the March 4th show he brought his solo
home by abruptly wailing on a blues lick. Those few seconds were one of some of
the exciting seconds of the whole tour.
After
the head out, the band would groove for an indeterminate amount of time. Like
creating a hip-hop track, they would introduce small harmonic ideas, overlay
and loop one over another. There was one particular lick that Kurt and Aaron
would play constantly, a stepwise funky riff. Faulkner introduced
sixteenth-note hi-hat hits that he could rattle off with one hand. Also at this
time Rosenwinkel would let loose and continue to shred, simply abiding in the
space of the groove. In purely expressive, non-harmonic statements, he would
alternate the same note rapidly on two strings (sounding almost like a tremolo)
and bend the pitch and tempo slowly upward.
Gamma-band
Rosenwinkel
opened the song with a wild intro, using his HOG not only to add octave harmony, but also to make his guitar tone sound like an
organ. At certain points he would repeat phrases, and the speed of his lines
and his reverb/delay allowed the wavering flow to coalesce into a revolving,
swirling array of notes with a switching beat emphasis.
Gamma-band
oscillations are the brain waves associated with consciousness. That image seems
embodied in the song’s architecture. The solo intros were flowing, discursive,
wavy, and rapidly pulsating -- consisting mostly of single note lines with no
particular harmonic structure, giving the lines the sense that they were
flowing out of a source of emptiness, like primordial brain waves. The melody
began with a rapid ostinato of two tones a whole step away from each other,
like a chant, with odd numbered phrases that initiate the song’s 5/4 meter,
creating that circular, oscillating sensation. Faulkner and Revis come in
banging on the first beat of each measure, initiating the song into the melody.
The band thus has rhythmic meeting points in which the multiple layers of
rhythm come together on the same beat. In this way independent rhythmic
textures become something greater than the sum of their parts. The moment of
consciousness comes after the band’s build up, when Kurt switches to a melody
of a few tones, which are constant and unbroken, engulfing the room. The melody
is like a salient point of reference in the active groove tapestry of the rest
of the band.
Night Blues
While
titled a blues, the form wasn’t a traditional blues and didn’t sound like a
derivation of a blues form either. Instead it was a blues in a figurative
sense. It sound similar in style to Rosenwinkel’s other compositions “East
Coast Love Affair” and “B Blues” (which is also not exactly a blues), with a
dark ballad feel, and overall harmonic ambiance of melodic minor, with
alluring, unconventional juxtapositions of chord qualities. The darkness
leavens and settles after the head out, with a long two-chord vamp where the
band creates a simple soothing collective groove, which gradually fades away
into softness and space.
Ab Minor
Mr.
Parks told me that the version of this song on in the studio was off the hook
-- “the jam.”
A distinctive quality of this song is that there are some
unevenly spaced hits where the melody, and band, creating a tripping and
boomeranging series of skips in the beat, and faking out your ability to
anticipate when the next hit will return to the song. These sections would come
at the end of a phrase, so there is a constant play between a coasting groove and
suspended coordinated hits -- pause and resume. The song’s structure, in fact,
is entirely coordinated so that the groove is constant (in other words, not
rubato) but flows with the changes in the melody. Simple shifts in the shape of
the tune -- stepwise melodies, parallel chord shifts -- are like ripples in the
solid funk beat of the song.
The way this song ends is noteworthy as well. After the
second statement of the melody Mr. Faulkner takes a solo, firing off arrays of
drum fills up and down and across the drumset and building to one final crash
that concludes the song. The abnormal shifts of the beat on this vamp coupled
with the power and rapidity of Mr. Faulkner’s long percussion phrases made for
a particularly turbulent and exciting moment in the music. The narrative arc of
the song reaches its zenith at the end of this solo, with the closing strike
that ends Mr. Faulkner’s solo and the song in general.
