When one of their brethren has fallen, musicians will mourn the death and celebrate the life of the deceased among them with song. But the jazz community is made up not just of musicians. That ecosystem needs promoters, festival organizers, impresarios, club owners and of course, fans, just to subsist. It also needs those small record labels whose owners who often sacrifice personal wealth (and the prospect of gaining wealth) in order to bring this music to the wider public, to people like you and me. To these unsung entrepreneurs, it’s purely a labor of love to them as much as it is to the musicians they record.
Mike Panico was one of those jazz fans who stepped up to give back to the jazz practitioners who enriched his life. He co-founded Relative Pitch Records with Kevin Reilly in 2011 and it quickly became known as one of the best labels for avant-garde jazz and free-improv music, boasting such top artists of these styles as Mary Halvorson, Vinny Golia, Matana Roberts and Michael Bisio on its roster. Last October, Panico’s sudden, unexpected death at the age of fifty-three rocked this tight-knit community.
Bassist Bisio, cornet player Kirk Knuffke and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm were among those buffeted by the loss, but quickly set about to come to terms the very best way they could: by convening to make music extemporaneously in Panico’s honor. Requiem for a New York Slice results from a single session just three days after Panico passed away, and the title points to his quest for the best slices of pizza in his hometown New York.
Jazz is the music of pure emotion, and it’s the vehicle by which Bisio, Knuffke and Lonberg-Holm sorted out their feelings about this tragedy. As improvisation artists of the highest order, they already treat every performance as a requiem of some sort but there’s an extra impetus this time, and it shows up masterfully in these five group improvised performances.
Bisio acts as the anchor for “Agnus Dei,” leaving Lonberg-Holm no boundaries. The cellist capitalizes first with some squeaks and high-end scrapes, eventually merging his thoughts with Knuffke’s. The solemnness turns to an outpouring for the last third of the performance, kicked off by Bisio’s hastened pace and the cellist opens up a spigot of notes in an astonishing display of gumption informed by virtuosity.
Knuffke is the one undertaking the alien sounds chores for “In Paradisum,” resembling a faint wail to start with, followed by cry of less restraint. Lonberg-Holm picks up where the cornetist leaves off and Bisio charts the overall direction of the song composed in real time by leveraging his elite dexterity. Halfway through, the song grounds to a halt as Lonberg-Holm regroups with his bow and saws some sorrowful figures, soon joined sympathetically by Bisio and Knuffke to form a musical support group.
Lonberg-Holm’s gift for wresting just about any kind of sound from a cello is already evident by the time we reach “Introit et Kyrie,” but here he even manages to make it sound like a saxophone, fitting right alongside the ‘real’ horn of Knuffke’s cornet but also the lower bowed tones of Bisio’s dive bombing bass. Over the course of this long improv, the three voices slowly converge into one. Afterwards, Knuffke and Lonberg-Holm fall back to leave Bisio’s impossibly dense figure isolated for a while.
Bisio spins a contemplative, somewhat melancholy yarn for “Pie Jesu” that lays the bedrock on which the other two elaborate. The long, low droning notes that characterizes the first half of “Sanctus” resembles — intentionally or not — a Scottish bagpipe funeral march.
Just as a savory piece of pizza in Brooklyn or Queens exemplifies the taste of New York, the free jazz made by three of the leading lights in New York’s downtown scene represents a succulent slice of the city’s sounds. And Mike Panico would have surely enjoyed these sounds as much as that perfect New York slice.
Requiem for A New York Slice will be released by Iluso Records on March 25, 2019.
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