The reMission (Sunnyside)
Andy Milne and Unison
Released April 10, 2020
Juno Award Winner Group Jazz Album of the Year 2021
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lB57nbmKC1glKIvRHv2-NjFHlSZlK8_3o
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/4Efu6O9SVYMgJekJDbdCvN?si=-nXD2grIRP2Meewn_d0QkQ
About:
For over a decade, musician friends have urged me to make a trio recording. Early in my career, I dabbled with trios, but I focused mainly on duos, quartets and quintets as I began to develop my voice as a composer and collaborator. In 2017, I faced a life changing health challenge, and I began to reflect on how this might influence a musical course change. The jazz pianist’s venerable formation stared me squarely in the eyes and I realized now was the time.
I need to thank my friends of 30 years, Benoît Delbecq and Ralph Alessi, for routinely dropping the trio hint. They are also responsible for introducing me to John Hébert — our musical rapport ironically set the stage for this group. When I moved to New York City in 1991, one of the things that struck me immediately was the variety of phenomenal drummers on the scene. As I began to think seriously about performing with a trio, one drummer kept coming to mind – Clarence Penn. He and I have known each other since we both moved to NYC but had never performed together. Every time I heard him perform, I found myself fixated by how his sound, time and finesse elevated whatever band with whom he was performing.
My vision for UNISON has evolved since our first performance in 2017. I’ve endeavored to go deeper into honoring my influences and collectively, we’ve been refining our musical interactions, although if I say so, I felt like we started off in a pretty magical place. Some of the music presented here was composed or arranged specifically for this trio, and some found a new home here. Originally, I imagined UNISON might perform mainly jazz standards, exploring the influences that formed my foundation and entrance into jazz (Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Ahmad Jamal.) Like the unexpected joys of an improvisational journey, our collective conversation guided our path towards the intersection of our combined sensibilities — joy, risk & trust. For now, here is where we live.
Andy Milne
Track Listing:
1. Passion Dance (McCoy Tyner) 05:04
2. Resolution (Andy Milne) 06:59
3. Winter Palace (Andy Milne) 04:24
4. Vertical on Opening Night (Andy Milne) 03:40
5. Drive by the Fall (Andy Milne) 07:25
6. Anything About Anything (Andy Milne) 04:19
7. Dancing on the Savannah (Andy Milne) 04:21
8. The Call (Andy Milne) 05:09
9. Geewa (Andy Milne) 03:58
10. Sad to Say (Benny Golson) 06:47
Personnel:
Andy Milne: piano
John Hébert: bass
Clarence Penn: drums
Recorded April 22nd, 2019, at Systems Two – Brooklyn, NY, by Max Ross & Mike Marciano
Mixed by Rich Breen
Mastered by Graemme Brown
Graphic Design & Photography: Jason Wood
Produced by: Andy Milne
Executive Producer: Andy Milne
Review:
Ever hear a disc and wonder why the deep-seated beauty of
some players’ music escapes your radar? Juno Award-winning pianist and composer
Andy Milne’s The reMission, a challenging, tough, terse and ultimately
triumphant recording, is one of those. One of those discs that, after several
uninterrupted listens, has one digging into the discography scrambling to catch
up.
A composer with an agile, far
flung curiosity, Milne has held the bench for Ravi Coltrane and Ralph
Alessi. He’s teamed with Andrew Cyrille, Bruce Cockburn, William
Shatner, Dianne Reeves and Tyshawn Sorey. As a former student
of Oscar Peterson, Milne centered Steve Coleman’s M Base for six
years and has released over a dozen discs under his own name, including six
with the quietly influential Dapp Theory and now the exquisite, first
ever trio release, The reMission .
Deserving of a wide audience, The reMission opens misleadingly with
an ebullient take on McCoy Tyner’s animated “Passion Dance.” The
answer is the diagnosis of a life-threatening disease. The music quickly
becomes a Gordian knot of tonalities (the haunted “Resolution,” the
hushed, insistent interplay of “Anything but Anything”) and at others
a smorgasbord of traditional ley lines (“Winter Palace.”)
Moving classically in every
aspect of the word while stimulating visions of all artists creating, evincing
the concerns and humors of the present day, “Vertical On Opening
Night” is the mysterious travel of the quiet soul and the truth of how it
feels after your diagnosis. It’s the dark suspension of time that
follows, strobe lit by untethered light. And though Milne voices only three of the legion of voices that might
resound in your head at such a time, himself, bassist John Hébert and
drummer Clarence Penn each has something profound to say.
And say it they do, with cutting character and sonorous clarity on “Drive
By -The Fall,” the coiled, free falling “Dancing On the
Savannah,” and the dark, arcing movement of “The Call.” With all
the atonal intimacy and polyrhythmic history of piano trios past and present,
think Paul Bley, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Milne, Hebert and
Penn close out this grand statement with the fragile sturdy joy of “Sad to
Say” and instantly posit The reMission as of one this year’s
finest recordings.
Mike Jurkovic (All About Jazz)
