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180
Riverside
Drive, NY NY 10024
MONO
エンボス黒厚紙ジャケット地に貼り紙
Reviews:
“Roswell Rudd
assembled the newly formed New York Quartet for an afternoon recording session
at Bell Sound Studios in midtown Manhattan. They were joined by a small,
youthful appearing individual, the poet Amiri Baraka. Their engineer was the
late Art Crist, an accomplished pianist. I was introduced to Lewis Worrell,
Amiri Baraka and John Tchicai. The group was short lived. I heard them again 40
years later, when they reassembled for a concert at the South Street Seaport in
New York City,
opening for Sonic Youth at the invitation of Thurston Moore. Lewis Worrell, who
had vanished from the scene, was replaced on bass by Reggie Workman.”
“Alto
saxophonist John Tchicai co-formed the New York Art Quartet in 1964 out of the
ashes of the New York Contemporary Five. Enlisting trombonist Roswell Rudd (who
arranged some of the latter group's book), the NYAQ was initially to include the
Five's rhythm team of bassist Don Moore and drummer J.C. Moses. However, once
drummer Milford Graves sat in, the group's pan-rhythmic die was cast. A number
of bassists past through the ensemble in its short life ? in addition to Lewis
Worrell (featured here), Steve Swallow, Eddie Gomez and Reggie Workman occupied
the bass chair. On the heels of the present album, they recorded once more for
Fontana (the
excellent and boppish Mohawk, with Workman) before disbanding until a brief
reunion at the start of the millennium.
One of the
things that always set the group's ESP date apart from contemporary brethren is
its inclusion of a poem, “Black Dada Nihilismus” by Amiri Baraka(LeRoi Jones),
which is woven into the group's fabric. ”Nihilismus” is a beat follow-up to
Eliot's “The Wasteland” in the clothes of mid-60s New York, “cool” as dead,
disheartened and disaffected with no place in any artistic or racial community,
yet somehow affirming singularity as solitude. In a way, the inclusion of
Baraka's (Jones) poem perfectly mirrors the in- betweenness of the group, who
certainly had grand claims as to their music as art-music, creative and
experimental, but whose approach to that very artfulness was always brusque and
extremely “street.”
The horns sit
out for “Nihilismus,” which is propelled by the thrum of Worrell's bass and
Graves' telepathic burbling accents, a true
collective music-poetry exploration that soon erupts into Rudd's “Sweet.” Rudd
and Tchicai are in loose unison on the easy-tempo theme, Graves in a continual hum of activity often at odds with
the front line. Somewhat analogous to Anthony Williams, whose dissection of
meter acted as the fulcrum for a number of groups at the time, Graves is defiantly in his own orbit. Rather than
providing a canvas to free the soloist a la Sunny Murray, Graves is impulsive and either ignores or counteracts the
soloist with non-isometric phrases, creating tension through non-unison
collectivity. Yet there's propulsion and swing by dint of disparity, a pulse
that's kinetic even if it's multidirectional. Tchicai's “No. 6” grooves
mightily, even if Graves' dense patterns aren't
countable by traditional means.
Graves' counter-melodic approach to rhythm isn't the only
way in which the ensemble moves at odds. Rudd and Tchicai are a curious foil, a
clash of slushy tailgate, buzzing and vocal, with cool-toned, acrid and poised
alto. Tchicai, who studied with the late Steve Lacy, has more in common with the
free-associative burble of Lee Konitz than Dolphy or Ornette. Cooking through
contradiction, the New York Art Quartet cut some of the most powerful music in
the free jazz underground.” (eBay)
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