Gordon Grdina (photograph by Lee Hutzalak, courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz)
Last February, back when the distribution of new recordings was still a relatively routine affair, I wrote about the debut album of Gordon Grdina’s Nomad Trio on Skirl Records. I emphasized the imaginative ways in which Grdina divided his attention between guitar and oud, resulting in music that could be taken as much for both Western and Arabic classical styles as for highly adventurous jazz improvisation. Today is the scheduled release date for an album of the Gordon Grdina Septet by Irabagast Records, owned by saxophonist Jon Irabagon, who joins the septet playing both tenor and sopranino saxophones. The other players come from two of Grdina’s other groups, East Van Strings (violinist Jesse Zubot, violist Eyvind Kang, and cellist Peggy Lee) and his trio with Tommy Babin on bass and Kenton Loewen on drums.
As might be guessed, current public health conditions have had an impact on the usual release processes. As of this writing, the best way to obtain a copy of the new album, titled Resist, is through its Bandcamp Web page. While Bandcamp usually distributes albums in both physical and digital-download versions, only the digital album is currently available (at least as of this writing).
The album begins with its title track, which is over 23 minutes in duration. All of the remaining four tracks last less than ten minutes, and the second track is only slightly longer than one minute. Through my initial listening experiences, I have come to think of those four latter tracks as different aspects of reflection on what has unfolded over the course of the title track.
That title track, in turn, can almost be approached as a suite of movements that unfold without interruption. For the most part the movements are distinguished by instrumentation; and instrumentation, in turn, tends to guide both thematic and rhetorical styles. Thus, when Grdina adds his guitar to the polyphonic fabric unfolded by his East Van Strings colleagues, one can sense a presence of the ghost of Béla Bartók, a faint presence but nevertheless a distinctive one. Irabagon, on the other hand, evokes a different spirt from the past, most likely the reed-work of Eric Dolphy at its most revolutionary and (consequently) most disquieting.
This then brings us to the back-story behind the title of both the album and the opening track. All of the selections on the album were originally composed for a concert given at the 2016 Vancouver International Jazz Festival. (Grdina is based in Vancouver.) That timing would have placed the performance between the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the 2106 presidential election in the United States that would bring Donald Trump to the White House. It was as if any ideals of a world united by shared values were being undermined by the eruption of nativism at its most hostile. Grdina chose to resist these trends by those means best available to him: making music.
As a result, one can say that the prevailing rhetoric of the album is dark but determined. Musicians have exercised their skills in the name of resistance for centuries. When I was young I was exposed to music of resistance to both slavery and the exploitation of blue-collar workers. By the time I was an undergraduate, the scope of resistance had shifted to the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the broader concept of a military-industrial complex. In other words I am hardly a stranger to Grdina’s agenda; and, with the reinforcement of my own background, I can only wish more power to him.
No comments:
Post a Comment