"This sweltering summer," intones poet and orator Mtume Gant, "of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom." This is the opening invocation, the conjoining of season and politics so much a part of our discourse across the decades underneath which root causes still simmer and occasionally surface. Aruán Ortiz's new suite, commemorating Martin Luther King JR.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and growing out of a commission following the 2020 George Floyd murder, opens up swinging but cool at the center. That calm amidst the storm goes a long way toward cementing the music's nuanced success, a calm manifest in many ways on this wonderfully visceral amalgamation.
That central calm does not, it should be noted, emanate from clarinetist Don Byron, nor should it. He's inhabiting a space similar to those of Albert Ayler on the incendiary but politically adjacent Sunny's Time Now, glissing through the emotions rampant as attempts to come to terms with injustice are foiled and rekindled. Cellists Yves Dhar and Lester St. Louis adhere to and offset the foundational rhythms, stark and strong in this recording, from drummer Pheeroan akLaff. Compare it all to the titular piece, a timbrally rich piano chord from Ortiz opening onto swathes of chamber-music color-switching. Byron, Dhar and St. Louis tickle the ear at every turn with contrapuntal lines and circular phrases that jump register only to return. Then, there are the seasonings from Ortiz, the octave punctuations similar to those you might hear on one of the awe-inspiring Ellington discs from the 1930s, especially poignant as they fit gracefully between akLaff's exquisite brush and mallet work. He rolls perfect ascent at 2:50 in light of the pitch Byron is floating at just that moment.
There are so many similarly fraught moments, at varying dynamic levels. Dig the powerful opening moments of "Turning the Other Cheek No More" or the sinewy repetitions grounding, but only barely, the intertwined harmony and melody of "From "From Montgomery to Memphis (to April 4th) before the "New Thing" felicities return as the rising downtrodden claim their places. As if in sympathy, the compositions hail from multiple historical eras, from the jaggedly Monkish to Minimalist-inflected spirals. By the time "No Justice, no Peace, Legacy!" reaches its final gesture, where chant, tone and verbiage conflate in Shamanic tandem, the sense of a journey, visions focused and refocused, is palpable, rounding out a disc both wonderfully satisfying and sadly all too relevant.
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