Prolific and always creative Goldberg's albums set the pace for new music in jazz. Though improvisation is at the heart of this music the compositions careful structures invite the expeditions into those other realms. There are several releases from Goldberg this year and all are very much worth enjoying.
The music of Ben Goldberg seems to come from a place outside of time—or maybe it comes from several times simultaneously. Maybe it's the instruments he chooses; while the clarinet family has been on the comeback trail in jazz for a quarter century, it's a sound that invariably invokes the New Orleans of a century ago. That's especially true when Goldberg picks up the mellow, woody, Albert-system E-flat instrument on "Cold Weather." That tune's sweet melancholy wobbles perilously close to Hoagy Carmichael, but by way of "Pannonica" by Thelonious Monk, another composer who had a soft spot for sentimental old tunes.
If you're interested in a nostalgia trip, you don't choose guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Tomas Fujiwara to be your traveling companions, and the tension they create between the retrogressive and the transgressive gives Everything Happens To Be. a low-key charge. On paper, Goldberg is following in the great tradition of hiring the All-Star rhythm section of the moment. They are certainly that and as the cooperative Thumbscrew, also one of the formidable bands of the last decade. But Everything Happens To Be. isn't a Thumbscrew+horns date.
Goldberg has worked with Halvorson and Fujiwara as The Out Louds, and with Formanek in a variety of settings. Tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin is a long-time Goldberg collaborator who shares the leader's affection for putting new wine in old bottles. His big tenor sound, slippery but warm, hearkens back to players such as Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Gene Ammons and fits right in on the almost-vaudevillian bounce of tunes such as "21" and "To-Ron-To." If you've always wanted to hear Halvorson strum four-to-the-bar, Freddie Green-style, cue the latter, which seems to be based loosely on "Sweet Georgia Brown." It ends in a collective, New-Orleanean tangle that resolves into something like a 21st-century updating of the Benny Goodman Sextet with Charlie Christian and Georgie Auld. It takes iron control to play this loose. But then there are knottier compositions such as "Fred Hampton," a lilting, 6/4 tune where Halvorson spins a songful line only to smudge it with a pedal effect, as if to say let's not make this too pretty. Yet beauty is never far away on Everything Happens To Be., though it seldom arrives in conventional fashion. Take "Chorale Type," which starts in church and detours to a middle-school gym where Goldberg and Halvorson circle each other warily like seventh graders at their first dance. The almost 10-minute cut ends in the mosh pit with Goldberg getting his metal on via a stomping bass line on contra-alto clarinet over Fujiwara's slamming 4/4. The exception is another chorale, "Abide With Me" which, inspired by Monk's 1957 septet version, is played straight in a single reverent chorus.
There’s a lovely stretchiness to the start of this album, as Ben Goldberg and his bandmates tug and squish the phrases of “What About” as if they were so much musical taffy. Goldberg’s clarinet leads the way, declaiming the melancholy lines with cantorial gravity as Ellery Eskelin’s tenor follows at a not-quite antiphonal distance.
Below them, the rhythm section loosely sketches the rhythmic and harmonic lines, with Michael Formanek’s bass gently pushing the beat as Mary Halvorson’s delay-leavened guitar invariably lingers behind.
But then, after a lyrical solo by drummer Tomas Fujiwara, whose fluttering brushwork has been the glue holding the ensemble together, the other four musicians return with a new melody — this one presented as a neat and tidy chorale, with Goldberg and Halvorson playing in such close unison you’d swear they were a single instrumental voice.
Those varied ways of playing together describe this album in a nutshell. Although the recording is firmly centered on Goldberg’s writing, the joy of the playing derives from the many different approaches these five take with the tunes. It can be playful, as on “Fred Hampton,” where Halvorson’s guitar disrupts the gently crepuscular melody with shimmery, burbling distortion; it can just as easily be delivered deadpan, as with their church-perfect rendition of the Henry Francis Lyte spiritual “Abide With Me.”
Mostly, though, it stays between extremes, playing off organized structures while ensuring the structure never entirely organizes the playing. “Chorale Type” is impressively ambitious, offering well-harmonized ensemble playing, group improvisations, an unaccompanied bass solo, a playfully conversational guitar and clarinet duet, plus an eloquent, semi-straightahead tenor solo.
For “Tomas Plays The Drums,” the theme is stated in a loose, Ornette Coleman-style unison as Fujiwara plays freely; for “To-Ron-To,” the horns and guitar repeat a giddily lilting riff built around a mispronunciation of that Canadian city’s name. In both cases, the setup is followed by collective improvisation that takes the band somewhere else entirely.
And this is of course what makes Goldberg such an important presence in today’s creative jazz. His ability to locate his own work within the ongoing evolution of jazz and improvised music, and to find colleagues past and present who are also part of that development, is crucial to the lasting power of his artistry. Nowhere is this more evident than Everything Happens to Be, his latest release, featuring a star-studded lineup of musicians who have worked with Goldberg in recent years. The power-trio of guitarist Mary Halvorson, drummer Tomas Fujiwara and bassist Michael Formanek are here, and they’re joined by saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, who makes up the fifth member of the quintet. While Goldberg has done work with each of the four in different contexts, this is his first opportunity to bring all of them together on the same project. And it’s Goldberg’s remarkable sensitivity in knowing the distinctive strengths and dispositions of each musician that allows him to create an ensemble that works so well together.
While there are plenty of moments of collective conversation here, at the heart of the album are Goldberg’s compositions. Typically folksy in character, they have a winsome charm that will win you over on the first hearing, but a deeper appreciation will take place on subsequent listens, as one comes to perceive the logic behind Goldberg’s songcraft. Strong melodies always prevail, but there is always enough freedom to allow each member of the quintet to make their distinctive contribution. It might be Eskelin’s earthy tone on “Chorale Type,” almost sounding at times like he’s playing a baritone sax rather than a tenor, so deep does he go into the lower register; or maybe it’s Halvorson’s otherworldly licks on “21,” adding just the right degree of oddity to offset the tune’s jaunty playfulness; or perhaps it’s Goldberg’s own lyrical flights on the Monk-like “To-ron-to,” a fitting reminder of his prodigious talent as a clarinetist. Formanek’s nimble fluidity also finds an outlet, as his brilliant support on the album’s title track demonstrates, and Fujiwara gets his own moment to stretch out on the appropriately titled, prog rock-flavored “Tomas Plays the Drums.” Goldberg knows each of these musicians so well that it seems almost effortless for him to find ways of synthesizing their individual voices into the collective product.
In the end, it’s Goldberg’s ability to draw together so many different strands of the jazz tradition that most stands out here. The distance between Louis Armstrong and Ornette Coleman is closed dramatically on a piece like “Cold Weather,” which moves somehow from New Orleans swing to untethered freedom, all in the span of a few minutes. Goldberg’s cross-stylistic facility lends a certain timelessness to this music; after a while one simply stops trying to analyze it in favor of simply savoring its beauty. In this light, the brief closing coda, “Abide With Me,” serves as a reverent reminder that at the heart of Goldberg’s music lies the unmistakable power of melody. That he has found four colleagues here who fundamentally share that conviction renders this release the perfect vehicle for his creative efforts.
Comments