My philosopher of reference — Frank Zappa — liked to mock corporate jazz stylings. He did so by naming a live record Make A Jazz Noise Here after the clichéd vocal utterances typical of some pusher of worn-out standards, as well as dedicating vicious lyrics to top-rank session men in a jazzy song named "Yo Cats" ("You have made it, you are cool/You have been to the Berklee School/You give clinics on the side/Music has died and no one cried").
Zappa did, however, show great respect for artists like Archie Shepp, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor. I have no doubt that he would have highly valued the improvisational skills and intense commitment of this free-flowing triumvirate, consisting of John Blum on piano, David Murray on tenor sax, and Chad Taylor on drums. Peculiarly, right after having conceived the preceding paragraph yours truly realized that this recording from 2022 — the trio's very first — occurred on December 21, Zappa's birthday.
Beyond the genre-hopping serendipitous digressions this writer is fond of in a somewhat unhealthy way, we need to understand how the reciprocation between three instrumentalists belonging to different generations is so fluid and functional that it appears to be the fruit of a unified creative act. One possibly rooted in another era, at least in spirit. Because, at the end of the day, the aura surrounding The Recursive Tree is that of a classic 1960s free jazz album, even if the music born from Blum, Murray and Taylor is contrapuntally more advanced.
In particular, Blum stands out as a catalyst for composite harmonic juxtapositions. These usually stem from brief reiterative concatenations gradually transitioning into stacks of Nancarrow-esque arpeggios that sound as incisive as they are insightful; the whole is bolstered by the pianist's signature vibrancy. An approach that is best described as "interactive soliloquy" is what Murray brings to the table. Heartfelt phrases and rapid-fire tone sequences that never allow for silence are delivered across the entire set. Still, he manages to combine tortuous and concise playing inside a significant flow the listener can hold onto. In such a setting, Taylor's polyrhythmic flexibility can only become impressive. As the minutes pass, the drummer reveals himself as an increasingly important component, creating — upon necessity — turbulence and (relative) quiet as a crucial link amidst the trio's expressive dynamics. He does this by cleverly utilizing the colors of skins and cymbals, and by generally offering a technically reliable, self-effacing support.
In a nutshell, we are holding a record with a mathematical term on its title, but which has nothing to do with the cold logic of numerical computations. The combined pneumas of Blum, Murray and Taylor provide assurance of excellence, their remarkable originality enhanced by experience and penchant for the unconstrained.
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