Crossing Boundaries with Alex Coke & Carl Michel

Every now and then I encounter an album that straddles the boundary between chamber music and jazz. According to my records, the last time I did a deep dive on this genre-crossing was a little less than three years ago, when I wrote about Pivotal Arc, an album of recent compositions by saxophonist Quinsin Nachoff. This time the title of the album is Emergence, and the performance is by a sextet led by Alex Coke, trained in flute but also a tenor saxophonist, and guitarist Carl Michel. As one will see from the above hyperlink, Bandcamp is currently offering this album in both physical and digital forms.

Emergence performers Alex Coke (saxophone), Carl Michel (guitar), Elaine Barber (harp), James Suter (bass), Bob Hoffnar (pedal steel), and Carolyn Trowbridge (vibraphone) (courtesy of Jazz Promo Services)

The remaining members of the sextet account for impressive diversity. Elaine Barber is Principal Harp with the Austin Symphony Orchestra. Bob Hoffnar plays pedal steel; but he has worked with performing Conduction, Butch Morris’ approach to structural improvisation. The remaining two members are James Suter on bass and Carolyn Trowbridge on vibraphone, both involved with adventurous approaches to jazz.

Both Coke and Michel contribute four of their compositions to the album, and one of the tracks is by Hoffnar. Of the remaining three tracks, two involve adventurous jazz composers, John Coltrane (“After the Rain,” from John Coltrane’s Impressions album) and Paul Motian (“Garden of Eden,” from his ECM album of the same title). The remaining track involves another composer associated with ECM, the second of the thirteen Bagatellen by Valentin Silvestrov.

It would (probably?) be a fool’s errand to try to sort out the improvisations from the notated passages while listening to any of these tracks. As Duke Ellington (supposedly?) said, “It’s all music!” For example, the Silvestrov piece was composed for solo piano. On this album the performance begins with Barber playing the music as it was written on her harp; but, as the track progresses, the other players enter, often inventing their own accompanying phrases. It might be fair to say that the music gradually undergoes a transition from keyboard music to chamber music to jazz. Indeed, that idea of transitioning by adding embellishments once the tune has been stated cuts across the overall technique for most (but, depending on the acuity of the listener, not necessarily all) of this album’s tracks.

Like Barber, all of the performers on this album are based in Austin. How often they come together to explore repertoire is anybody’s guess. Prior to Emergence, they released Emissary during the pandemic in October of 2021. What happens next is anybody’s guess!