A Marilyn Crispell Quartet Announces Itself With a Visit to the Border

[7/4]

October 23, 2006

Music Review | Marilyn Crispell

A Quartet Announces Itself With a Visit to the Borderline

By BEN RATLIFF

Starting in the late 1970’s, the pianist Marilyn Crispell played free jazz — the real thing, hot, gestural, abstract. But in the last 10 years she has become more and more valuable as a borderline player, a bridge between free jazz and its more structured original sources; she has broadened and settled her music, and it is giving her many more options.

Saturday night at Miller Theater, she showed how widely her circle has been redrawn, giving her first performance with a quartet that included the tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, the bassist Mark Helias and the drummer Paul Motian. Ms. Crispell has worked in a trio with Mr. Helias and Mr. Motian before — they made a beautiful record two years ago called “Storyteller” — but it was her first time playing with Mr. Lovano.

It’s a powerful group of musicians, and during the evening every member was represented as a composer as well. After two hours, they had made a strong case for themselves; it seems almost necessary that they persist as a band.

They demonstrated some of the great potential of inside-outside jazz — music that sometimes doesn’t have a clearly stated pulse, that jumps between dissonance and holding firm to key centers, that can expand and contract as it needs. At root, borderline is nothing new; it’s been an unnameable underground river in jazz since the early 60’s. Yet it forms a tradition and a valuable one, especially when played at this high level, with such a feeling for pulse and melody.

A lot of Ms. Crispell’s early Cecil Taylor influence has burned off, and what’s much more audible now is McCoy Tyner. Listening to her was at times like hearing a much younger Mr. Tyner, as he sounded toward the end of his time in John Coltrane’s quartet: strong, resonant left-hand chords guiding the tonality in a mode, and powerfully rhythmic phrases in the right hand — but with a more flexible sense of time than he prefers now (or, in fact, did then).

The tacit connection to Tyner and Coltrane reached its peak in the last piece of the concert, Coltrane’s ballad “Dear Lord.” It’s a song that Ms. Crispell has played a lot over the years, and the band got into its marrow. Mr. Lovano’s tone and projection stayed moderate as he blew billowy, note-stuffed phrases across the chords. And Mr. Motian, almost eerily, seemed to fuse the styles of Coltrane’s two great drummers; he played some deep Elvin Jones swing, then some Rashied Ali-like wave-spreading patterns, phrases that didn’t conform to regular time. He did it with his usual economy of motion, keeping to limited sections of the kit.

As a closer, it was fantastic, a state of grace, and the gig, in two sets, moved gradually uphill toward it. The first piece, Ms. Crispell’s new “Lines for Joe,” sounded aggressive, unresolved, a little caustic. The concert proceeded through music by Mr. Lovano (“Topsy Turvy” and “Boss Town”) and Mr. Helias (“Limbo” and a poignant, elegant ballad called “The Harmonic Line”), as well as a half-dozen pithy songs by Mr. Motian, all of them using nubby melodies to configure the rhythm.

Some of Ms. Crispell’s own pieces opened up the concert. One of them, a mellifluous 20-bar ballad called “One December,” could almost have passed as a Hollywood theme from the 40’s. Then the set turned hard into another springy Motian song, powered by short, springy lines.

Taken as a whole, the concert compounded some of the widely varied promises of the last 50 years of jazz — formal elegance and hardboiled abstraction, swing rhythm and free rhythm — and it made sense together.

[Guy Berger]

Saturday night at Miller Theater, she showed how widely her circle has been redrawn, giving her first performance with a quartet that included the tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, the bassist Mark Helias and the drummer Paul Motian. Ms. Crispell has worked in a trio with Mr. Helias and Mr. Motian before — they made a beautiful record two years ago called “Storyteller” — but it was her first time playing with Mr. Lovano.

I thought this record was more sleepy than beautiful, though maybe I should give it another listen (or lesson, as I almost wrote). I think it would have been better with Lovano onboard.

I really don't get Ratliff's comparison of Tyner and Crispell. They sound nothing alike to my ears.

Guy

[7/4]

I really don't get Ratliff's comparison of Tyner and Crispell. They sound nothing alike to my ears.

Guy

I don't get it either. The last album I have by her is Amaryllis.

[GregK]

I really don't get Ratliff's comparison of Tyner and Crispell. They sound nothing alike to my ears.

Guy

I don't get it either. The last album I have by her is Amaryllis.

I want to get Amaryllis, but it appears to be out of print. Didn't it just come out in 2000? I can't find it anywhere, and the online stores I have been checking don't have it as available (other than the ECM site, which is too expensive)

[7/4]

I really don't get Ratliff's comparison of Tyner and Crispell. They sound nothing alike to my ears.

Guy

I don't get it either. The last album I have by her is Amaryllis.

I want to get Amaryllis, but it appears to be out of print. Didn't it just come out in 2000? I can't find it anywhere, and the online stores I have been checking don't have it as available (other than the ECM site, which is too expensive)

copyright 2001

[Guy Berger]

I want to get Amaryllis, but it appears to be out of print. Didn't it just come out in 2000? I can't find it anywhere, and the online stores I have been checking don't have it as available (other than the ECM site, which is too expensive)

Amazon.co.uk has it for 13 GBP. Not sure if that is cheap or expensive.

Guy

[Bol]

I hope this group records soon. And I hope they record with a label other than ECM. Blue Note would be nice.