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| 4.840 Ft
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| 1. | Arabesque
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| 2. | 5 Miles to Wrentham
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| 3. | Morpion
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| 4. | Luteous Pangolin
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| 5. | Look to the Black Wall
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| 6. | Holiday for Strings
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| 7. | Endgame
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| 8. | It Never Entered My Mind
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| 9. | Roundup
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| 10. | Oh, What a Beautiful Morning
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Jazz / Post-Bop; Avant-Garde Jazz
Recorded: Nov 10-12, 2001
Wisdom - not exactly the first word which comes to mind to characterize a man in his seventies who loves touring and who has the knack of surprising his audience time and time again. Yet wisdom applies more than any other word to the latest release by drummer and band leader Paul Motian, Holiday for Strings. Its refined coolness captivates the listener from the first to the last sound.
Holiday for strings is first and foremost the project of a group, Motian's Electric Bebop Band, which has, during its ten years of existence and despite various recastings, evolved into a one of a kind assemblage. The concept has remained the same all along: a guitar pair and a saxophone pair, alongside a rhythm section made up of an e-bass and drums. Behind this sound doubling lies a communication principle: "Bands where one musician plays while the others stand around doing nothing don't interest me. I like when the musicians inspire one another, exchange ideas, and sometimes play solo together. When that happens - it's marvelous!", says Motian. This is not an easy task for a band; the cooperation can turn to friction and destroy the group's unity. But the E.B.B.B.'s musicians succeed very well in expressing their own sound as a collective in which the individuals' playing influences the whole, without being drowned by it. The band members have nothing to prove, none of them has to flamboyantly show the way, especially not the leader himself, who, with his imaginative and communicative playing, organizes the group from the background. As a result of this, the Electric Bebop Band can fix its virtuosity on the individual sounds, on breaks, stillness and dynamics. The E.B.B.B.'s uniqueness lies in their ability to create fully surprising time structures and reveals itself in the shaping of sound material.
This is especially perceptible in Motian's own compositions, such as Arabesque or 5 Miles to Wrentham. Short motifs travel back and forth between the individual instruments, sometimes coming into mesh, then being played, with a tiny moment's delay, by the instrument pairs almost concurrently. Complex - and at times extraordinarily simple - exchanges take place, various dialogues, in which the music comes to life, carefully unfolds, and finally displays all of its nuances. The work with sound, the material, is brilliantly celebrated on this recording. The musical versatility which can emanate from the band's constellation is impressive. It ranges from broad guitar sounds - which allow the saxophones to stand out even more - to intimate alternating trio playing in It never entered my Mind, all the way to the country-inspired first sounds of Oh, what a beautiful morning, in which the pairs are made up of one saxophone and one guitar (instead of same-instrument-couples). In particular these two ballads by Richard Rodgers, which do lapse too easily into silly (old) sentimentalism, retain, with Paul Motian, a lyrical balance charged with tension, an equilibrium in which lightness and profoundness are reconciled. This characterizes the whole recording. Holiday for Strings is measured, restrained; not in the least wild or loudmouthed. On the contrary, the ten pieces have a focused and incisive quality. This consciousness of the essential emanating from Paul Motian's music manifests the beauty of jazz, which clearly still belongs to his nature.
-Gabriel Fehrenbach
Paul Motian - drums
Anders Christensen - electric bass
Chris Cheek - sax
Pietro Tonolo - sax
Ben Monder - e-guitar
Steve Cardenas - e-guitar |
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