Volume 28 Issue 4 | February - March 2023

elegant and wry minimalist feel, which made
it altogether memorable. When Svensson
died in a scuba-diving accident his legion of
fans was aggrieved. And now, with the music
of Home.S, it’s time to raise his indomitable
spirit once again.
This music, says his wife who produced
this disc, was composed and recorded on his
home computer in the spring of 2008. Eva
Svensson reminds us that her husband had
an all-consuming passion for astronomy and
reminded us about his 1998 From Gagarin’s
Point of View with e.s.t.. Svensson was also
a classicist and, in homage to him, his wife
decided to name each of the nine tracks after
the Greek alphabet. And she did right by her
husband.
All the music on Home.S is played – and
hummed, and harmonized – slightly off key.
Somehow this adds to the music’s haunting
appeal. It makes you feel as if Svensson is
omnipresent in the nine fluttering charts
from Alpha to Iota not only in body, but not
unsurprisingly, as a memorably blithe spirit.
Some tracks – Alpha and Gamma – end
abruptly, as if Svensson’s train of thought was
interrupted. However, the eloquent music
does coalesce around Baroque ideas that
spring from dense contrapuntal gestures, as if
Bach’s Goldberg Variations was on Svensson’s
febrile mind.
Raul da Gama
Amber
Lori Freedman; Scott Thomson
Clean Feed CF606CD
(cleanfeed-records.com)
! In a mundane
word, amber is
just a fossilised
tree resin with a
prescient glow.
However, in the
hands, tongues and
lips of clarinetist
Lori Freedman and
trombonist Scott Thomson Amber is a manysplendoured
metaphor redolent of golden
colours and tones that define more than
merely their duelling instruments. With the
repertoire on this album, the music of Amber
evokes a kind of Romance language with
which to connect with the very heart of the
music continuum.
From start to finish both clarinetist and
trombonist create a high-spirited and lyrical
palimpsest featuring some truly beautiful
writing and daring improvisation. With
each variation the two musicians penetrate
aspects of amber with strength, precision and
charming, idiosyncratic virtuosity.
You’ll be made to forget that works like
Sesquiterpenoids, Glessite, Succinite and
Labdanoid have anything at all to do with
nature, aglow with resins and hydrocarbons
that have formed over centuries since
the before the Neolithic Age. Instead you
will be dazzled by each piece; an idiomatic
meditation suggestive of a proverbial melody
imbued in amber.
Listening to Freedman’s and Thomson’s
performances you would not stop marvelling
at how two artists use their musicianship –
albeit uncommonly ingenious – to reflect the
vitality and many-layered originality of this
music. And how bellowing B-flat and bass
clarinets and growling trombone can turn the
artists’ metaphor into music with a sensuousness
and voluptuous beauty all its own. Bravo
to both for this visionary music.
Raul da Gama
Alive at the Village Vanguard
Fred Hersch; esperanza spalding
Palmetto PM2208CD (orcd.co/
aliveatthevillagevanguard)
! If you knew that
you were going to a
concert that paired
Fred Hersch with
esperanza spalding,
you’d be fairly sure
that sparks were
going to fly on stage.
Throughout his career Hersch has been one
of the most imaginative musicians whose
pianism bristles with almost insolent virtuosity.
Spalding, better known as a virtuoso
contrabassist, has also begun to dazzle
listeners with her puckish voice which she
has wielded to seduce and dazzle audiences
in a manner that combines musicality and
ingenuity far beyond her young years.
Together the two musicians become a
formidable duo that explores music on Alive
at the Village Vanguard with virtuosity,
refreshing charm and borderless scope. If you
find yourself believing that Sheila Jordan and
Steve Kuhn created a seemingly unreachable
standard when it comes to the piano-voice
duet you will surely be in for a wonderful
surprise. Hersch and spalding have not simply
reached, but cleared the proverbial bar with
space to spare.
Spalding may not tell jazz stories about
Charlie Parker with the kind of veracity of
Jordan, but she (spalding) makes up for everything
with her airborne delivery. She effortlessly
propels song lyrics into airy parabolic
trajectories infusing them with luminous
tone textures along the way. A case in point
is the epic version of Parker’s Little Suede
Shoes. Meanwhile with Girl Talk, she seems
to have the audience eating out of her hands
as she weaves a marvellous yarn. Hersch is
agile and brilliant throughout.
Raul da Gama
No Hugs
PJ Perry; Bob Tildesley; Chris Andrew; Paul
Johnston; Dave Laing
Cellar Music CM062022 (cellarlive.com)
! While new waves
and variants of
COVID-19 give the
pandemic a feeling
of endlessness, one
positive thing to
come out of this
prolonged period of
chaos is an abundance
of lockdown art. While the world was
standing still, and even the most careerfocused
individuals were suddenly baking
sourdough in their pajamas, many musicians
opted to spend their extra free time practising
and composing. This is what stalwart
saxophonist PJ Perry was doing, and the eight
pieces he composed with collaborator Neil
Swainson now form his latest album No Hugs.
Perry has a unique musical vocabulary that
can function in a wide range of settings, from
smooth to intense and cerebral to soulful. This
is reflected in the entirety of No Hugs, which
manages to sound current and old school
at the same time. After repeated listening, I
noticed that many of the tracks are comparable
medium tempos, but in yet another
display of balance there manages to be ample
contrast and variety between songs.
Too Soon Gone is a rousing opening track
that sets a swinging post-bop tone for the rest
of the album. March of the Covidians gives
listeners a dramatically different groove and
energy, before the album’s beautiful ballad
title track. No Hugs features a short but sensitive
piano intro from Chris Andrew, and
beautiful improvised solos. The tempo picks
up again on The Kestrel, and the remainder of
the album concludes in such a manner that
you’ll be ready for another listen.
Sam Dickinson
The Ostara Project
Amanda Tosoff; Jodi Proznick; Allison Au;
Rachel Therrien; Joanna Majoko; Sanah
Kadoura; Jocelyn Gould
Cellar Music CM021422 (cellarlive.com)
! I listened to this
album in its entirety
several times before
reading Lisa Buck’s
eloquent liner
notes, and I think I
may make a habit of
this order of events
moving forward.
Groups that are formed as “collectives” or
“projects” can often struggle to program a
cohesive set of music or an album’s worth of
material, but not The Ostara Project. From
the track titles to the songs themselves, and
even the album’s design and artwork, there
is an uplifting theme to the seven original
tracks and one arrangement we are presented
64 | February & March, 2023 thewholenote.com