Adam Hopkins’ Out of Your Head Records has recently unveiled an ‘Untamed’ series of albums. These are recordings that might be a little rougher but capture the essence of highly regarded, improvisational artists operating at a high level. We recently surveyed an Untamed album that documented a Michael Formanek Quartet live performance, the only live album from a jazz supergroup now several years dormant.
Another Untamed entry is a more recent stage performance — by saxophonist Anna Webber’s latest band, a quartet named Rectangles. That’s also the name of her Untamed album. Rectangles is an album-length single, as there’s only one track on it, “Rectangles 3.” Webber first introduced this song on record with her 2016 Simple Trio release Binary, broken up into three quips running about a minute and a half each. These are short cyclical patterns Webber calls ‘single measure loops,’ inspired by a YouTube channel playing ten-second videos coupling high pitched sounds with flashing rectangles.
For the December 2019 show, she leads her new group through a single performance running 34 minutes long, but it’s really a series of her sketches derived from those flash videos, stitched together with a dollops of group improvisation (in fact, the whole purpose behind the Rectangles band is to play her Rectangle ideas).
Webber sets the stage alone by sketching out a polymath Tim Berne-ish pattern. But as Mark Ferber’s drums nudges its way in, the pattern gives way to spontaneity and just as she reaches the point where the tether to that motif is broken, Marc Hannaford’s piano emerges to do the reverse: a solo evolves into a defined, circular figure, right as Webber re-enters.
Before long, Webber launches into a series of trills suspended from timekeeping (her breath control is pretty damned amazing) and finds another knotted ostinato. As Hannaford takes over to lead over an esoteric chord change, Ferber’s drums is still holding on to Webber’s last pattern, even for a while after Webber returns.
The middle section of this song is built around a gallop and a groove, and everyone closes ranks and plays tight. It eventually slows all the way down to practically nothing, and Webber puffs out her notes into the fresh void. That presages the freest part, with everyone soloing at the same time but with some connection to each other, including Adam Hopkins briefly switching from plucked to bowed bass.
After a period of faster-paced activity, Webber locks into another ‘single measure loop,’ punctuated this time by high chirps, winding organically down to the final resting place.
Anna Webber builds a talented band around an idea from years earlier and her deeper dive into that idea is well justified, judging from this galvanized performance. Like all of Untamed releases, Rectangles is digital-only and you can obtain your copy from Bandcamp.
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