jazz.pt / Ponto de Escuta
tilting curvaceous | patrick brennan s0nic 0penings (Clean Feed)
António Branco
April 4, 2023
jazz.pt has just heard tilting curvaceous, which marks the return of saxophonist, composer and improviser patrick brennan and his ensemble s0nic 0penings – here in quintet format with Brian Groder, Rod Williams, Hilliard Greene and Michael TA Thompson – to the Clean Feed catalogue.
While still in his hometown of Detroit, patrick brennan joined a group formed around bassist Ubadah Bey McConner for weekly sessions of collective improvisation. The music he heard during that time would also mark him forever, in particular a performance by Archie Shepp with two drummers at the musician-run Strata Concert Gallery, which left a deep impression on him. Based in New York since 1975 – where he started working as a bassist for almost a decade – it was after his instrument was seriously damaged that he decided to dedicate himself solely to the saxophone. Since then, he has built a solid and multifaceted path, exploring concepts based on the overlapping of polyrhythmic cells. Initially developing these concepts modularly in extended formations and enhancing free collective improvisation in real time, he later started to adapt them to smaller groups and solo presentations. (editorial note: these ideas were originally worked out with small & mid size ensembles)
brennan spent most of the 1990s living in Lisbon, participating in the more adventurous jazz and improvised music scenes in the Portuguese capital with trips to Essaouira, Morocco to experience the music of Gnawa culture and eventually develop the Sudani Project with M’allim (master) Najib Soudani and drummer/percussionist/vocalist Nirankar Khalsa. He put many of his ideas into action with his long-lived ensemble s0nic 0penings (founded in 1979) in different contexts and instrumental configurations, especially in recordings made in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since 2014, he has also led another ensemble, transparency kestra, and has maintained a fruitful collaboration with guitarist and sound manipulator Abdul Moimême (who had once been a tenor saxophone student of his), an example being the 2019 album terraphonia. In fact it was Moimême who mixed and mastered tilting curvaceous, which marks this return to the catalog of the Portuguese label sixteen years after muhheankuntuk (which is a name used by the Lenape for the Hudson River).
In a revealing December 2019 interview with the online magazine Perfect Sound Forever, brennan explained how he understands the relationship between composition and improvisation: “If one conceives of composing as an action, or, in other words, as choosing among sounds in the assemblage of a sonic image, everyone’s composing. What we call an improviser is therefore not at all “not-composing” but composes within circumstances that happen to differ radically from what a composer to score, or tape, or digital file, or algorithm is doing.” He added, “But the relations are even more complex than that. There’s the instant thought, but there’s also the slowly gestating thought & their symbiotic interdependence, that the instant depends on experience & preparation while it reciprocally informs & shapes other evolving long term conceptions in progress.” (In this regard, we shouldn’t forget his book Ways & Sounds (Arteidolia Press, 2021), where he addresses some of the formal implications of music’s internal social interactions for composition and listening.)
In this tilting curvaceous, patrick brennan expands upon compositional “what ifs” and the plasticities of rhythm section dynamics, working 14 possibilities from the base material (melodically encoded polyrhythmic cells) and developing it in multiple directions. On the shoulders of giants like Ellington, Monk, Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Henry Threadgill and others, he constructs specific sonic and conceptual environments for collective improvisation, a kind of sonic lego from pieces that can be combined in infinite ways. This time, his partners are Michael TA Thompson on drums, Hilliard Greene on double bass, Brian Groder on trumpet and fluegelhorn, and Rod Williams on piano; they all decisively contribute their own sensibilities and approaches to the music’s ensemble sound.
From the saxophonist we hear a fractured idiom that plays with approximations and departures regarding jazz language and various types of jazz. In tilting curvaceous 01 the low notes of the piano introduce a motif that’s seconded by drums and double bass with the other instruments entering the scene soon afterwards in a headlong dance (with a superb final statement by the drummer). 02 is more solemn, with pungent saxophone. Fast and intense, 03 reveals the winds in frenetic motion supported by the effervescent rhythm section. In 04 it’s the piano that’s in the eye of the hurricane; In 05 it’s especially important to carefully follow the drummer’s moves and the dialogue between the sinuous trumpet and saxophone. 06 is introduced by a boisterous saxophone until it settles into unisons with the trumpet from where they both engage a compelling dialogue.
On 07, the longest piece on the album (barely exceeding five minutes in duration), we hear Groder’s clear trumpet, a superb solo by the bassist and Michael TA Thompson delicate in his cymbal work but always pulling the ensemble forward. The final part of the piece is dominated by trumpet lyricism. 08 is marked by crisscrossing saxophone and trumpet lines with the rhythmic duo again swinging with the flame up on high. An odd and delicate ballad, 09 never slips into banality; 10 serves as a telegraphic introduction to the next piece, from which the horns step aside at a particular moment to leave the piano-double-bass-drums trio to demonstrate an empathetic relationship. The bassist sets the tone for 12, joined by the saxophone, which launches into free flight. 13 exudes a vintage scent, due mainly to the trumpet, which roves here with purpose and elegance. The album’s epilogue is a solo statement from the saxophonist that seems to say “até já.”