Tom Collier’s Solo Marimba Album on Summit

from the Amazon.com Web page for the recording being discussed

Someone at Summit Records was kind enough to send me a copy of The Color of Wood, a marimba album that was released at the beginning of last month. This is a solo album, of sorts, of fifteen tracks performed by percussionist Tom Collier. The Amazon.com Web page offers a useful description of the content:

While marimba albums are quite common in the classical world, only a scant few jazz marimba albums have been released over the years making "The Color Of Wood" a very unique recording in the jazz canon. While many of the tracks on "The Color Of Wood" were made in one single pass, several other compositions incorporated two, three, or four overdub passes to enrich the sound and artistic intent of the music. In any case, the music was performed entirely on marimba by a single performer (except for the use of a tambourine also played by Collier on one track).

My knowledge of the marimba owes much to Jack Van Geem, formerly Principal Percussion and Assistant Principal Timpani for the San Francisco Symphony and currently Chairman of Percussion Studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM). My most recent experience of listening to him perform was in that latter capacity, when he gave a Faculty Artist Series recital in the SFCM Sol Joseph Recital Hall in November of 2019. This marimba recital was one of those occasions in which what they eye saw frequently informed what the ear heard.

The fact is that a skilled performance on this instrument can unfold a rich tapestry of polyphony even without overdubbing. (At the SFCM recital there was no overdubbing; but, when the polyphony got really rich, Van Geem was joined by Raymond Froehlich, another former SFS percussionist, on a second marimba.) Collier’s tracks on The Color of Wood serve up that same wealth of polyphonic rhetoric. While it will probably not be very difficult for most listeners to identify when a track is the result of overdubbing, that technique serves primarily to provide Collier with a “ground bass” against which he can take greater liberties in unfolding improvisations.

Almost all of the tracks are relatively brief. Five of them are collected as a suite entitled Five Reflections on Wood. Those “reflections” are preceded by the title track, which begins the album. All but three of the tracks are Collier originals. His sources for those three tracks could not have been more eclectic: Freddie Hubbard (“Little Sunflower”), Hank Williams (“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”), and Ray Charles (his version of “Crying” by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson). “Little Sunflower” is one of those instances of overdubbing a “ground bass,” while “Crying” comes across almost as if it were a vocal solo.

The album notes claim that three different marimbas were used to make this recording. Personally, I would have liked to know which instruments were involved with which tracks. It would be interesting to reflect on when the instrument inspired the performance and when it is the other way around (when the approach to performance led to the selection of the instrument). Mind you, if one gets too  cerebral about listening to this album, one might miss out on some of the fun!