Garden Of Expression (ECM)
Joe Lovano Trio Tapestry
Released January 2021
DownBeat Four-and-a-Half-Star Review
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2021
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The debut album of Joe Lovano’s Trio Tapestry was one of 2019’s most talked-about releases. The trio’s musical concept – the Boston Globe spoke of “utterances of hushed assurance, lyricism and suspense” – is taken to the next level on its second album, Garden of Expression, a recording distinguished by its intense focus. Lovano, a saxophonist whose reach extends across the history of modern jazz and beyond, plays with exceptional sensitivity in Trio Tapestry. And the music he writes for this group – tenderly melodic or declamatory, harmonically open, rhythmically free, and spiritually involving – encourages subtle and differentiated responses from his creative partners. Joe describes their interaction as “magical”. Carmen Castaldi’s space-conscious approach to drumming further refines an improvisational understanding that he and Lovano have shared since the early 1970s. The trio is also an inspired context for Marilyn Crispell’s solos, counter melodies, and improvisational embellishments, and her feeling for sound-colour helps the chamber music character of the group to flower.
The new album also benefits from the recording location, the details of the music optimally realized in Manfred Eicher’s production, made in the highly responsive acoustics of the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano. The trio’s second European tour in November 2019 brought them to Switzerland, and they played a concert in the Lugano studio the night before the recording began. “Having given a full performance there we were very comfortable with the room. The tone there, and the sound and the feeling in that space, built to be a recital room, is amazing. We played forte and really felt it. We played at pianissimo volume, and you heard the music vibrating in the room. And that created a real spiritual delivery on each composition, as we allowed the music to unfold.”
Joe Lovano describes the evolution of the trio as an unforced, natural process. As with Trio Tapestry’s debut album all the music on Garden of Expression was written by Joe. “Each of the pieces is a song of expression where rhythm doesn’t dictate the flow. This is not a band that starts from the beat. The momentum is in the melody and the harmonic sequence. And rhythm evolves within each piece in a very free flowing manner.” Joe draws parallels between the present trio and the music he made, over a period of 30 years, in Paul Motian’s trio with Bill Frisell. “We developed a way of playing and communicating. The pieces would change night after night, as Paul gave us permission to create the music within the music. That study, that conception, has provided a foundation in my own playing and writing up to the newest work with Trio Tapestry.”
The fresh music of Trio Tapestry draws upon a long history of friendships and collaboration. Lovano and Crispell met in the mid-1980s when Marilyn was playing with Anthony Braxton’s group. After Joe jammed with Marilyn’s trio with Paul Motian and Mark Helias at New York’s Village Vanguard they went on to play concerts as a quartet. The potential for further development was evident to both Lovano and Crispell. The association with Carmen Castaldi, meanwhile, goes back to teenage years in Cleveland. “Carmen’s one of my oldest and closest friends. We grew up together. Played in bands together, went to Berklee at the same time and shared lots of the same musical experiences.” These included the revelation of hearing Keith Jarrett’s band with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian at the Jazz Workshop in Boston in 1972, a powerful, formative influence for both musicians. “Being in the room with that quartet opened up a lot of doors for us, gave us confidence in creative music.”
When Lovano, Marilyn Crispell and Carmen Castaldi finally came together as a trio they played totally improvised music: “Our very first concert was without any themes or songs. It was about exploring how we might play together – and the music opened up in such a beautiful way. I sent a tape of this to Manfred Eicher, who was very encouraging.” Joe then set about writing a programme of music to follow up the implications of those improvisations, shaping pieces that might best display the unique qualities of this combination with its “peaceful, non-aggressive delivery”, while also refining a technique he had first broached on his album Tones, Shapes and Colors, playing saxophone and gongs simultaneously. The slowly blossoming resonance of the gongs has become one of the signature sounds of the trio, with overtones shading into silence. “These two recordings – Trio Tapestry and Garden of Expression – are the only the albums I’m on that include real moments of silence from the whole group.” There is a lot of deep listening here. It is also possible to hear Garden of Expression as a non-denominational spiritual album, starting out with the quiet “Chapel Song” which reflects upon Joe’s experience in a Viennese church, listening to the distant strains of an organ. It progresses through “Sacred Chant” which has some of the yearning quality of a Coltrane ballad, before concluding with “Zen Like, where the gongs summon the trio to concentrated meditation.
There are also secular influences at work. Lovano spent the summer of 2019 on tour with Diana Krall, and “West of the Moon” here is a response to playing “East of the Sun” night after night with the singer. “It doesn’t sound anything like ‘East of the Sun’”, Joe stresses, “but that was the inspiration. A lot of these new pieces, in fact, were written on the road…”
Between the first and second Trio Tapestry albums a steady artistic growth can be charted. For Lovano “Seeds of Change” was a key piece on the debut, in terms of the approach taken by the trio, and the open form itself, at once a blues, a ballad, a chamber music composition. With “a feel and a flow that was special”, it led directly to the title piece of Garden of Expression, the seeds having taken root. “Between the two albums we have an amazing repertoire now.”
Track Listing:
1. Chapel Song 6:05
2. Night Creatures 6:45
3. West Of The Moon 5:47
4. Garden Of Expression 7:33
5. Treasured Moments 5:03
6. The Sacred Chant 3:14
7. Dream On That 3:06
8. Zen Like 10:41
Personnel:
Joe Lovano: tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, tarogato, gongs
Marilyn Crispell: piano
Carmen Castaldi: drums
Recorded November 2019, at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano, by Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Cover and Liner Photos: Caterina di Perri
Design: Sascha Kleis
Review:
Whereas Sun Ra was fond of saying, “Space is the place,” for the members of Trio Tapestry—saxophonist Joe Lovano, pianist Marilyn Crispell and drummer Carmen Castaldi—a more appropriate mantra might be, “Space is the thing.” Garden Of Expression, the trio’s sophomore effort, has all kinds of space: Space between notes, space to stretch out and space for reflection. Even the audio itself revels in spaciousness, thanks to the reverberant acoustics of the Auditorio Stella Molo RSI in Lugano, Switzerland, where even whispered notes are unexpectedly resonant. A good bit of the album’s airiness can be ascribed to Lovano’s writing. Lean and suggestive, the tunes here tend toward leisurely, wellspaced shards of song, melodic patterns that hang in the air like questions. “Chapel Song,” which opens the album, starts with the saxophonist intoning a simple, prayerful melody, his sound light and breathy, his phrasing strongly vocalized. Crispell’s piano fills in the space between phrases with quietly chiming chords, not so much playing the changes as teaching the listener how to hear the harmony implied in Lovano’s melody. Meanwhile, Castaldi’s drumming—cymbal playing, mostly, with splashes of brushwork and the odd thump of bass drum or tom—is less about keeping time than adding color, as if the accents marked by the stick’s impact were no more significant than the space filled by a cymbal’s sizzle or ring. Clearly, this is a listening band, with the choices each player makes determined, in part, by what others are playing. During Lovano’s solo on “West Of The Moon,” there’s a marvelous dynamic between his tenor and Crispell’s piano where his sustained, legato phrases provoke roiling, Ravelian arpeggios, while his busier patterns are met with long chords, as if each knew exactly what the other was about to do. Then there’s the wonderfully pacific “The Sacred Chant,” a meditation that weaves the three voices together so perfectly that the music sounds less like improvisation than musical revelation, with each player achieving enlightenment through the others. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Garden Of Expression is the emotional range these three pull from this music. From the spare, prayerful asceticism of “Zen Like” to the sprightly post-bop interplay of “Dream On That” and the epic sweep of the title tune, Trio Tapestry suggests a universe of possibilities within its deeply spacious sound.
J.D. Considine (DownBeat)
