Artist: Mary Halvorson
Album: Cloudward
Genre: Avant-Garde Jazz
Label: Nonesuch
Released: 2024
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
- The Gate (Halvorson) - 4:33
- The Tower (Halvorson) - 8:08
- Collapsing Mouth (Halvorson) - 5:56
- Unscrolling (Halvorson) - 5:19
- Desiderata (Halvorson) - 6:37
- Incarnadine (feat. Laurie Anderson) (Halvorson) - 4:12
- Tailhead (Halvorson) - 4:35
- Ultramarine (Halvorson) - 8:17
DOWNLOAD FROM FILECAT.NET >>>
- Personnel:
- Mary Halvorson - guitar
- Adam O'Farrill - trumpet
- Jacob Garchik - trombone
- Patricia Brennan - vibraphone
- Nick Dunston - bass
- Tomas Fujiwara - drums
- Laurie Anderson - violin (#6)
Over the last two decades, Mary Halvorson has defined herself as a restless, adventurous, and nearly limitless musician: she's a guitarist, composer, improviser, and bandleader. Like Anthony Braxton or Charles Mingus, her musical appetite for variation in sounds, textures, expansive harmony, drama, and dynamics inside a given enemble is uncontainable; openly reflected in her many recordings. Cloudward was recorded by Amaryllis (Halvorson, guitar; Tomas Fujiwara, drums; Adam O'Farrill, trumpet; Patricia Brennan, vibes; Jacob Garchik, trombone; Nick Dunston, bass), who recorded the album of that title in 2022.
These eight compositions differ somewhat from those on Amaryllis, though they remain easily identifiable as Halvorson's. She offers more blank and interactive spaces on Cloudward. The band breathes collectively in this music. Opener "The Gate" offers a labyrinthine head pairing trumpet, trombone, vibes, and guitar before the melody crosses flamenco, jazz, tarantella, and post-bop with elegant soloing from O'Farrill as vibes, trombone, bass, and drums propel him on. "The Tower" demonstrates the unique personality of Halvorson the guitarist. Accompanied by Brennan's vibraphone, her harmonic invention through fingerpicked engagement details a post-bop conversation and improvisation. Brennan's quotes from "'Round Midnight" add heft and dimension. A gong and sparse drumming introduce "Unscrolling." It's nearly a processional and could have appeared as an outtake from Charlie Haden's Ballad of the Fallen, save for the compelling, warm soloing from Dunston and Halvorson. Immediately following, "Desiderata" is framed by a rock backbeat under Brennan's vibes as horns and guitar entwine to erect a knotty, circular melody. The tenderness in conversation between guitar trills and brass is breathtaking -- nearly cinematic -- before Halvorson delivers a distorted, noisy solo as Dunston supports, bridging funk, avant-rock, and jazz. While "Incarnadine" is a nearly formless exercise in dynamic and texture with circular string and electric guitar lines, "Tailhead" is introduced by a two-minute drum solo before the band wanders through an interlocking minor modal progression that bristles with implied intensity before Garchik delivers a wandering trombone solo that Brennan, Dunston, and, to a lesser degree, Halvorson, anchor, append, and expand. "Ultramarine" is both the set closer and its longest track. It commences with a canny, minute-long upright bass solo before Halvorson's angular, slide-laden avant-Delta-style blues join him and they develop a steamy yet propulsive vamp. Vibes join in a song-like interlude before horns and the rhythm section engage a second melody that walks the line between Americana, Latin folk music, gospel, and soul-jazz.
Halvorson's compositions on Cloudward are impressive. She accounts for individual players' strengths as soloists while counting on them as ensemble players. She grafts and threads striated post-bop harmony, edgeless dissonance, and kinetic drama simultaneously, then blurs the edges expressionistically in crafting a detailed, multivalent, resonant, deeply satisfying whole from seemingly disparate individual elements.
Review by Thom Jurek