Cover of the album being discussed
This coming Friday, Adhyâropa Records will release Dissolve, a three-part suite by Richard Nelson performed by the fifteen-piece Makrokosmos Orchestra, which Nelson conducts, along with playing guitar. This is one of those cases in which those looking for this album on Amazon.com are likely to be disappointed. Fortunately, Bandcamp has created a comprehensive Web page, which is currently taking pre-orders for both the physical and the digital versions of the album. “For the record,” as they say, the list of the performers (on both the Web page and the album booklet) has fourteen entries (along with three “guest artists” on one of the tracks). Nelson is on that list, so I am not sure where there is a fifteenth performer!
To be fair, there is nothing new about an “orchestral” approach to jazz. On my shelf, Nelson’s CD sits right next to two CDs from about 60 years earlier, the two Blues and the Abstract Truth albums that Oliver Nelson recorded at the Van Gelder Studio for Impulse! Records. Then, of course, there is the substantial “book” of compositions and arrangements by Gil Evans, much of which involved his partnership with Miles Davis. So, at least in some respects, Dissolve is the latest everything-old-is-new-again phenomenon.
Nevertheless, I have now listened to Dissolve several times; and I have no trouble taking it on its own terms. To be fair, however, I am not sure to what extent the track titles, “Dissolve,” “Float,” and “Cohere,” had any influence on my listening. For the most part, I simply wanted to focus on what emerges from the interplay of a large number of instruments. (This is basically the strategy I brought to listening to the Blues and the Abstract Truth albums.) So I expect that there will be more to pique my interest on my subsequent visits to this new album, which definitely deserves credit for both ambition and the fulfillment of that ambition.
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