feature photo: Colleen Morgan
Will Mason set his sights on microtonality in a jazz setting, and the ever-curious drummer, composer and bandleader comes away with another compelling treatise on an unorthodox musical idea.
Taking a cue from a LaMonte Young’s The Well Tuned Piano, a sprawling, five-hour opus exhaustively exploring pretty much every avenue of possibility afforded by a solo piano tuned with just intonation, Hemlocks, Peacocks (New Focus Recordings) likewise unlocks many doors using special keyboards that plays notes in smaller intervals than the common, wider 12 tone equal temperament. Only this time, within a small jazz ensemble.
In carrying out his latest set of concepts, Mason constructed a quartet comprising of himself on drums, deVon Russell Gray on keyboards and a tenor sax/alto sax horn section of Anna Webber and Daniel Fisher-Lochhead, respectively. Intended or not, doing without a bass further isolates the keyboards, deepening its idiosyncratic sonic impact.
Typical of Mason, he doesn’t absorb inspiration only to spit it back out again, he uses the innovations of others as building blocks for his own novel approach. As the keyboardist, Gray doesn’t actually use a “well-tuned piano,” he turned to micro-tuned electric pianos — two, actually — using two different pitches. Further, Mason has long employed notions of chamber music in his compositions while leaving space for the pure improvisation of jazz, and continues to do so here.
The micro tones coming from these keyboards takes a small adjustment period for Western-trained ears but are very germane to Mason’s melodies. By choosing a two-sax front line, Mason matched two instruments micro-toned by nature to one that normally isn’t, easing the transition to embracement of his ideas.
“Hemlocks” is arranged so that Webber and Fisher-Lochhead harmonize to Gray, making it the right track to start the album off with because the listener can begin to make a connection to this dissident sound. A similar approach is undertaken for “Twilight,” except that Gray goes down to almost the missing bass level of tones while the reeds slowly draw out contrasting, drone-like notes.
The interaction between Webber and Fisher-Lochhead frames “Peacocks,” first starting percussively and progressing to emotional expressions while Mason’s tumbling toms take over the rhythmic pulse.
Any jazz element of “Hymn” comes primarily from Mason himself, applying a carefully modulated flow of tom and brushstrokes to establish variation behind Gray’s alien but logical chord progressions. Mason puts a light swing underneath “The Fallen Leaves, Repeating Themselves,” perhaps the jazziest tune in this set, and Fisher-Lochhead solos along the micro-toned scale with the command of Rudresh Mahanthappa.
Webber gets the limelight for “Turned in the Fire,” kicking off the tune interacting Mason “Countdown” style, and as Gray enters the room, she applies ample chops to the elusive melody he’s playing. Both of the saxes go off the hook during “Planets,” a freedom fest with Mason that slows down to the hanging resonance of Gray’s offbeat chords.
Microtonal jazz has been explored for a while, but Will Mason finds innovative ways to scale its limitless potential. Hemlocks, Peacocks is now available and you can get it from Bandcamp.
- Will Mason Quartet – ‘Hemlocks, Peacocks’ (2025) - January 11, 2025
- Roscoe Mitchell – ‘One Head Four People’ (2024) - January 6, 2025
- Cheer-Accident – ‘Vacate’ (2024) - January 3, 2025
