Andrew Cyrille, William Parker & Enrico Rava • 2 Blues for Cecil
 his all-star trio is a casual marvel, all the more because these
distinguished veterans seldom cross paths. They did one New York gig in 2016, and another
early in 2020, just before this studio recording in Paris. Although drummer Cyrille and
bassist Parker had long stints with pianist Cecil Taylor, those stints were years apart.
(They did connect a bit between 2003 and 2006, on a smattering of trio gigs with Dave
Burrell or Kidd Jordan.) Italy’s Rava, on flugelhorn here, was one of the more
compelling Euro-improvisers ECM Records spotlighted in the 1970s, longer on warm, pealing,
romantic sound than power chops.
William Parker has likened the four strings of his bass to parts of the drum kit, and his sound is appropriately plosive, restless and supportive, driving the music ahead. Andrew Cyrille’s recent ECM albums find the drummer in poetic less-is-more mode. He steps up here to match Parker’s energy, confirming Cyrille’s place (at any volume) in the tradition of jazz drummers who favor economy and dramatic gesture: the Baby Dodds, Jo Jones, Max Roach lineage. Cyrille can range around the drum kit, flirting with cymbals more than saturating his sound with them, but he keeps swinging through the fragmentation. He’s creative and knows his drum history; his sticks are a griot’s pen and painter’s brushes. He doesn’t make a bassist fight to be heard. And Parker always sounds best with drummers who bring out his own swing tendencies. At first glance the Italian romantic seems an odd choice to front this tandem, but with so much activity from bass and drums, Rava doesn’t need to fill so much space. He has always been sparely effective, making the most of his stylistic tics -- like letting a long last note in a line droop flat. “My Funny Valentine,” the lone standard here, is a mark of European jazzers’ love of flawed romantic Chet Baker as well as pithy self-editor Miles Davis. For 2 Blues for Cecil, Rava brought a couple of older tunes, including personal standard, “Overboard,” curiously reminiscent of Ornette Coleman’s “Law Years.” Rava does have something of Coleman’s (and his cornetist, Don Cherry’s) way of paraphrasing a puckish melodic phrase. Cyrille’s playing on this tune is all dry rolling on open tubs: no snares, no cymbals, hinting at Milford Graves’s cardiac rhythms for trap set. In truth, despite the title and annotator Ben Young’s valiant efforts to make a connection, this trio’s fluid interplay doesn’t have much to do with Cecil Taylor’s particular (and high-energy) structural approach to thematic improvising; things here are less formal and tightly wound. Parker’s “Machu Picchu” is a driving bass line -- he can do that all day -- over which the others fill in the blanks. Cyrille’s structural and less-is-more sides come out on his “Top, Bottom and What’s in the Middle,” prompting a round-robin of short, thoughtful quiet solos. The recording and mix just about put you in Cyrille’s lap for his minimally rustling last turn. The tiniest tap or brush stroke sings its little song. The thundery bass: that’s Parker’s sound,
forceful, percussive and round, never clanky. Rava has had that ECM echo stuck to him for
so long, it’s part of his sound, so it makes sense to leave it on here -- as if
reverb magically follows him around, like Kirk Douglas in Young Man with a Horn.
A little rubs off on the other guys too, so the horn doesn’t stand out too far.
(Ludovic Lanen recorded them at Paris’s Studios Ferber; Miika Huttunen did the mix at
Sonic Pump in Helsinki.) Besides the originals and one standard, the trio play a couple of
long free improvisations and a couple of long blues, and maybe the most striking thing
about this session is how they make disparate material sound not like a musical
smorgasbord but like one big thing, where the blues and free play aren’t polar
opposites but comfortably adjacent. With more years of collective experience than we dare
total up, they hear how jazz is capacious enough to embrace it all at any given moment.
The departure point barely seems to matter. |
