Cloudward (Nonesuch)
Mary Halvorson
Released January 2024
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About:
Brooklyn-based guitarist, composer, and MacArthur fellow Mary Halvorson’s new album, Cloudward, features eight new compositions by Halvorson, performed with her sextet Amaryllis; the improvisatory band that performed on her critically praised 2022 albums Amaryllis and Belladonna comprises Halvorson, Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Nick Dunston (bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums), Jacob Garchik (trombone), and Adam O’Farrill (trumpet). Labelmate Laurie Anderson also is featured on the album track “Incarnadine.” The dual 2022 releases’ acclaim included being named Jazz Album of the Year in DownBeat’s annual Critics Poll. Halvorson and the ensemble will tour internationally following the Cloudward release, including February and March dates in Maryland and New York, as well as at the Big Ears Festival as part of Nonesuch’s 60th anniversary celebration.
Halvorson says, “All of the music on Amaryllis was written in 2020, during the thick of the pandemic, in one of the more bizarre time periods I’ve experienced in my life. While composing for Amaryllis, I expanded upon certain musical concepts I’d developed in my life up until that point—the ones that felt fruitful—and left others behind, hitting the reset button and attempting to build from scratch. Two years later, after the release of the first album, I was still writing music for Amaryllis.
“All the music on Cloudward was written in 2022, mostly in the fall and winter, when things started moving forward. Life felt like a creaky machine starting up again,” she continues. “Air travel, however chaotic, had resumed, and we were once again cloudward. Performances and tours and recordings were happening after a long hiatus and with a renewed sense of gratitude. This band, for me, was quite simply working, both musically and personally, and the main thing I felt while writing the music was optimism.”
The Guardian said Halvorson’s 2022 double release “shows how far this singleminded original has come, and affords a glimpse of how far she may go. Both sessions confirm how years of jaggedly lyrical solo and ensemble improvising and a quirkily subversive affection for mainstream music have now nurtured a composer of unpredictable but warmly expressive character… These are new landmarks in Halvorson’s already inimitable discography.” Pitchfork said, “Amaryllis and Belladonna are distinct statements; one could hear either album on its own without a sense that something is missing. But they are most powerful when taken together, like a landscape and its reflection in rippling water.”
Halvorson has released a series of critically acclaimed albums, from Dragon’s Head (2008), her trio debut featuring bassist John Hébert and drummer Ches Smith, expanding to a quintet with trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson and alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon on Saturn Sings (2010) and Bending Bridges (2012), a septet with tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and trombonist Jacob Garchik on Illusionary Sea (2014), and finally an octet with pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn on Away With You (2016). She also released the solo recording Meltframe (2015), and most recently debuted Code Girl (2018, 2020), a new ensemble featuring vocalist Amirtha Kidambi (singing Halvorson’s own lyrics), trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, saxophonist and vocalist María Grand, bassist Michael Formanek, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara. One of New York City’s most in-demand guitarists, over the past decade Halvorson has worked with such diverse musicians as Tim Berne, Anthony Braxton, Taylor Ho Bynum, John Dieterich, Trevor Dunn, Bill Frisell, Ingrid Laubrock, Jason Moran, Joe Morris, Tom Rainey, Jessica Pavone, Tomeka Reid, Marc Ribot, and John Zorn. She is also part of several collaborative projects, most notably the longstanding trio Thumbscrew with Michael Formanek on bass and Tomas Fujiwara on drums.
Track Listing:
1. The Gate 04:32
2. The Tower 08:08
3. Collapsing Mouth 05:55
4. Unscrolling 05:19
5. Desiderata 06:36
6. Incarnadine 04:12
7. Tailhead 04:35
8. Ultramarine 08:16
All songs written by: Mary Halvorson
Personnel:
Amaryllis Sextet
Mary Halvorson: guitar
Nick Dunston: bass
Tomas Fujiwara: drums
Jacob Garchik: trombone
Adam O’Farrill: trumpet
Patricia Brennan: vibraphone
with
Laurie Anderson: violin (6)
Recorded March 27 & 28, 2023, at Sear Sound, NYC, by Chris Allen
Produced and Mixed by John Dieterich
Mastered by Scott Hull
Art and Design by DM Stith
Review:
Halvorson plays in a dizzying array of set ups. So, it’s a pleasure to see how she’s maintained and nurtured the band that so illuminated 2022’s extraordinary Amaryllis. While the writing for that sextet occurred in the thrall of Covid lockdowns, Cloudward marks a leap forward into a new, more intuitive world. Unlike Amaryllis, Cloudward was thoroughly road-tested, so there’s an intimacy, a confidence this multi-gifted band has in its relationship with this often complex, yet ever-accessible music.
Where Amaryllis had reams of polyphonic sections with all the band playing simultaneously, many of Cloudward’s songs have a cell like construction. This allows more space for individuals and for each section to declare itself before it segues into a greater whole. For example, ‘The Tower’ starts with a Halvorson solo echoed by a long delay (a solo that’s a duo with its wraith-like sister). Then, almost un-noticed, Brennan, picks up the shimmer before the horns gather around the theme. It’s a stunning piece that wears it complexities lightly, at once an ensemble song, yet there’s a clarity and separation for each of the voices. If that sounds too technical, there’s also a passion underwriting each number, notably expressed by Garchik’s trombone as he hi-jacks the raffish ‘Tailhead’. The only carp is there’s less of Halvorson’s guitar to the fore, although she goes super-nova on ‘Desiderata’, the only cut with distortion, and it’s all the more hell-breaks-loose for the contrast. Another triumph for Halvorson as composer/arranger and guiding spirit.
Andy Robson (Jazzwise)
