Jazz Quad
patrick brennan | s0nic 0penings – tilting curvaceous
Leonid Auskern
May 6, 2023
Alto saxophonist, composer, writer (author of Ways & Sounds, 2021) patrick brennan has been a prominent figure in New York’s avant-garde jazz scene for more than forty years. The s0nic 0penings project was founded by him back in 1979, and all this time has served to promote the ideas of free jazz and collective improvisation from patrick brennan. In addition to the musical avant-garde, patrick is also close to world music, he is known for his interest in Gnawa music and collaboration with its performers. But today we present a new album within s0nic 0penings called tilting curvaceous.
This album was recorded in a quintet format, in which patrick invited like-minded colleagues who are passionate about free improvisational music. Trumpeter Brian Groder became the second wind voice in the quintet, and the rhythm group consisted of Hilliard Greene on double bass, drummer Michael T.A. Thompson and pianist Rod Williams. I would call brennan himself not so much the author of the music of this album, but the author and initiator of the musical ideas that formed the basis of the fourteen improvised tracks. All of them are called the same: tilting curvaceous and formally differ from each other only by sequential numbers. I deliberately used the term “formal” because each track here is a special microcosm created by the combination of instrumental voices and dynamics from interaction. brennan himself defines them as “groove patterns” or “cells”. Agreed, these definitions by themselves are not very informative. Music, especially musical improvisational abstractions, is generally difficult to describe in words. Perhaps the reaction to this album and brennan’s work from António Branco will help: “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.”
Is that any clearer? Well, then there is only one way out: you just need to listen and enjoy brennan’s creative fantasy in No. 2, the dialogue of two wind instruments in No. 3, the percussion in the literal and figurative sense of the finale of No. 1, Williams’ excellent work in the longest, eight-minute track No. 10, Greene’s spectacular bass intro in #12. Every new sound on any of the tracks pushes the limits of what is possible – thanks to patrick brennan and his colleagues for that.