A couple of sax bosses fronts The Bad Plus’s rhythm section to take on songs from avant-garde jazz royalty in a surprisingly accessible way. Tim Berne (alto sax), Chris Speed (tenor sax), Reid Anderson (acoustic bass) and Dave King (drums) had gotten together a few years ago and played some clubs, honing their presentations before going into the studio in 2018. Although most of the recordings appeared the following year as part of a vinyl box set, the full album Broken Shadows is finally going to become available on May 21, 2021 from Intakt Records.
Broken Shadows is mostly an Ornette Coleman tribute comprised of his songs primarily covering his New York Is Now–Science Fiction era of the late 60s-early 70s. There are eight songs from Coleman, a couple by Berne’s primary mentor Julius Hemphill and one a piece by Charlie Haden and Dewey Redman. In a sense, Broken Shadows is a cousin to John Zorn’s Spy vs. Spy: The Music of Ornette Coleman (1989) in that Ornette’s unique, bright melodies are the focus over improvisation, or as the liner notes writer Branford Marsalis puts it, “the vehicle is the song,” and a by-product of such an approach means that the songs usually run at short lengths. But it parts ways with Zorn’s renderings in that while the new project is cheerful it’s not hyperkinetic and thunderous like the earlier album (incidentally, Berne lent his alto sax to the Zorn project, too).
The fare begins with Coleman’s joyful “Street Woman,” but this one’s much more succinct and King’s rhythms are full of more complexity. Anderson meanwhile is like a runaway freight train and Speed and Berne just revel in that happy theme.
The quartet gives “Toy Dance” a brisk reading and Berne followed by Speed form a one-two punch of saxophone sorcery. They make “Civilization Day” more fun than the original because everyone is racing to the finish; in fact, Berne and Speed have less than a minute to get their statements in because Anderson’s bass feature takes up most of the two-minute sprint.
Likewise on songs like “Ecars”, “Comme il Faut,” “C.O.D.” and “Una Muy Bonita” the four economically emphasize the colorful patterns Coleman had constructed and minimize excursions outside of those patterns. However, the song that became the namesake of the quartet is tackled quite differently from how Ornette handled it: Berne and Speed don’t play the motif of “Broken Shadows” in unison but instead play different variations of it around each other as King and Anderson keep the foundation quieted, turning the song into a tender ballad and revealing more depth to the composition in the process.
The connective tissue of Ornette that runs throughout the choice of songs applies even to the non-Coleman selections. Redman, who wrote “Walls-Bridges” was present for several of the original recordings Ornette tunes selected for this album. He was also in Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra when Haden’s signature piece “Song for Ché” was recorded. And of course, Haden was the bassist for Coleman’s groundbreaking quartet of the early 60s. Hemphill’s career wasn’t really tied to Coleman’s although they both attended the same high school in Ft. Worth, Texas (at different times) and Hemphill was likewise an innovative maverick, even within avant-garde circles.
Anderson and King really gives Hemphill’s “Body” some kick to go along with the original funk strut and the saxophonists lather themselves in that pocket. “Dogon A.D.” is instantly recognizable from the moment Anderson scrapes his bass string the same way Abdul Wadud did with his cello for the original Hemphill recording and the oddly rock-like structure of the song — especially that loping backbeat — is a perfect fit for the rhythm section that made its name adapting rock songs into the jazz aesthetic. When our horn heroes peel away from the theme to simul-solo, they’re betraying the ground rules of the band but in this case that’s forgivable; the song seems ideal for a little extended blowing.
Haden’s sorrowful ode “Song for Ché” needed an emotionally poignant bass performance to live up to the sentiment and Anderson delivers. “Walls-Bridges” is a freebop head-solos-head number from Redman, and when the quartet jumps into the solos part, it becomes an animated duet between King and Berne with Anderson jumping in during the sax handoff to Speed.
There’s a lot of appealing melodicism built into harmolodics, and the Broken Shadows quartet of Tim Berne, Chris Speed, Reid Anderson and Dave King succeed in driving that point home. Secure a CD or digital copy of Broken Shadows from Bandcamp.
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