Pianist Phillip Golub has spent the last few years taking on worthwhile missions, whether it’s securing pandemic assistance for independent musicians in New York, collaborating with Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding on their lauded opera Iphigenia or digitizing Shorter’s sheet music and scores for his estate. He’s also a member of the Anthony Braxton-themed quintet Tropos. Now, Golub steps out to the forefront with a debut album that puts his deep insight into the most challenging aspects of jazz into plainer view.
That debut, Abiding Memory (Endectomorph Music and Berthold Records), introduces Phillip Golub as a forceful composer, bandleader and musician, able to conceptualize sophisticated, symphonic works of music and platform them through a quintet. Joining Golbu on this adventure are Alec Goldfarb (electric guitar), Daniel Hass (cello), Sam Minaie (bass) and Vicente Atria (drums).
Golub does not write pieces that sound like Shorter — and to go further, it’s hard to find a comparable for him at all — but his melodies have some of that elusive, searching quality that Shorter and Andrew Hill were known for. Like an amoeba, the shape of his music is constantly shifting. It’s not just modern jazz, it’s up-to-the-minute, leading-edge modern jazz.
There are also classical concepts incorporated into Golub’s musical identity, and it’s not just from the presence of a cello. The ten tracks flow right into each other, making this inherently a single, multi-suite jazz symphony through-composed. His harmonics are marked by improbable concurrencies, genre-agnostic arrangements and tight rhythm dynamics.
Accordingly, there is a flow to the overall album that makes Golub’s carefully conceived plots progress in a natural, instinctive manner. The opener “Catching A Thread” introduces that pervasive searching quality with the density building up non-linearly until the release that comes midway through the third track “The Group To Hear.” That leads to the wind down of “A Regrouping”, the suspended state of “Unspooled (Waiting Quietly)” and the reawakening of “In A Secret Corner.” That last song features Golub on Fender Rhodes hooked to an effects pedal but this doesn’t signal of change of style at all, just a different vessel for rendering it.
“Where Lapses Elapse,” Golub’s most extended work in this batch, sticks to the same root key but so many riffs and motifs spring from it and is temporarily broken up by some highly free and improvisational passages, including a choice solo bass moment from Minaie. The last pattern is carried over into “At The 11th Hour” but with more intricately involved interplay, and even threatens to go off in a rock direction.
While the essence of this record is Golub’s composing and bandleader, “Abiding Memory” reveals maximal piano acumen, a language that incorporates advanced jazz and classical elements.
One of Phillip Golub’s biggest fans is mentor Vijay Iyer, who wrote the liner notes for Abiding Memory with a great deal of enthusiasm for his former student. Inventive, radical and full of intellect are attributes often applied to Iyer that can also be said of Golub. Is Phillip Golub the next Vijay Iyer? In many ways, Abiding Memory makes a strong case for that.
Abiding Memory is available now on Bandcamp.
*** Purchase Wayne Shorter’s CD’s and vinyl from Amazon ***
*** Purchase Esperanza Spalding CDs and vinyl from Amazon ***
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