Don Byron at the Unterfahrt jazz club in Munich, Germany (photograph by OhWeh, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license)
Almost exactly a month ago the Zürich-based Intakt Records released a debut album that reminded me of why that label has become one of my favorites for adventurous jazz modernism. The debut is that of the duo that brings veteran clarinetist and saxophonist Don Byron together with Cuban pianist Aruán Ortiz. Since Ortiz is about fifteen years younger than Byron, their performances arise from not only a meeting of minds but also an imaginatively productive bridging of generations. At the same time it is worth noting that Byron was born on November 8, 1958, meaning that the release of the new album, Random Dances and (A)tonalities, could be taken as an “overture” to his 60th birthday.
The title is clearly a playful one, which sets the overall tone for the listening experience without necessarily requiring literal interpretation. Thus, the oldest track on the album goes all the way back to Johann Sebastian Bach with the second movement from the BWV 1002 solo violin partita in B minor, the “Double” variation on the Allemande of the first movement. Whether or not the Double is as danceable as the music in the first movement is left for an exercise for the listener. Byron plays this as a clarinet solo, which is true to the notes set down in the score but definitely has its own way with both phrasing and rhythm, making the music more suitable for modern dance than Baroque tradition!
At the other extreme of the time-line, the final track is a joint composition by both Byron and Ortiz; but it is also a “spiritual collaboration” with a third composer. As a latter-day reflection on a major bebop tradition, “Impressions on a Golden Theme” is an invention based on what Frank Tirro calls a “silent theme.” That theme is the tune “Along Came Betty,” composed by saxophonist Benny Golson, whose last name is cryptically encoded in the composition’s title. This is a case in which the theme could not be more “silent,” with only the most perceptive beboppers likely to mine it from the fragmentary nature of the Byron-Ortiz “impressions.” Indeed, one might be forgiven for taking those impressions as reflections on Anton Webern, rather than Golson! Even if there is a clear sense of progression in Ortiz’ accompanying chords, this is one of those tracks for which the “A” in the album title does not have to be hidden with parentheses.
By the time Byron was coming into his own, of course, he had progressed quite some distance from bebop traditions. Indeed, he was studying with George Russell at the New England Conservatory of Music at a time when the Third Stream “school” was seeking out ways in which jazz practices could build on the Second Viennese School and its calculated efforts to depart from the need for a tonal center. Third Stream never got very far, but Byron found his own voice by negotiating the influences of both Russell and Gunther Schuller (also at the New England Conservatory). As a result, any intimations of Webern among the “(A)tonalities” of this album are far more than merely coincidental!
Ortiz, on the other hand, cites Byron himself as a significant influence as he was finding his own modernist approaches to jazz piano. As a result, there is a certain evolutionary quality that emerges as one listens to side-by-side tracks of compositions by Byron and Ortiz. Furthermore, three tracks reflect on key pianists from the past, each with his/her own unique approach to modernism. The jazz influences come from Duke Ellington (“Black and Tan Fantasy”) and Geri Allen (“Dolphy’s Dance,” citing yet another jazz player not afraid of atonality). However, there is also a performance of one of the movements from Federico Mompou’s Música callada (silent music) collection. Mompou tended to be unabashedly tonal; but the first volume (of four) of Música callada was published in 1959, long before anyone in “serious music” was talking about “minimalism,” the most salient quality of Mompou’s rhetoric.
Taken as a whole, this new album is impressive for how much ground it covers; but the content is so rich that every track will continue to disclose new discoveries, even after several listenings.
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