During Chilean trumpeter Benjamn Vergara's visit to Chicago in 2016 he joined forces with multi-reedist Keefe Jackson, pianist and ARP synth player Jim Baker, and drummer Phil Sudderberg to record this album of collective free jazz, a mix of lyrical and abstract playing that references bop and the modern Chicago creative scene in sublime ways.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2018 Country: USA Packaging: Digipack Recorded at Bel Air Sound Studio, in Chicago, Illinois, on December 13th, 2016, by Todd Carter.
"[...] Chilean trumpeter Benjamín Vergara, whom I hadn't previously heard, visited Chicago a couple of years ago armed with little more than some recommendations from his fellow trumpeter Jacob Wick, a former local. Among the configurations that arose from his stay was an agile quartet with reedist Keefe Jackson, pianist and ARP synth master Jim Baker, and drummer Phil Sudderberg, and the group was so convinced by the rapport among them that they made a recording after playing together only twice. The album that resulted, The Hallowed Plant (Relative Pitch), won't be released until September, but the quartet will reconvene when Vergara returns to Chicago this week. The phrases blown by the two horn men seem to arise from thin air on the album's title track, which is so naturally musical I assumed the group was playing a composition, but Jackson set me straight-everything was improvised. The musicians cover lots of ground together, from loosey-goosey postbop where Sudderberg's inherent swing sensibility brings an infectious propulsion to the multilinear attack: lines switch between abstract smears and abrasions and tart, terse tunefulness. The final part of "This Moves That" illustrates that the quartet can slow things down, delivering the feel of a tender ballad that's pushed along by Baker's austere chords. "La Repentina Ola" provides a much different atmosphere, with Baker moving to analog synthesizer to produce alien sound swells over which the horn players alternate between chatty rapid-fire staccato and sour long tones. But as Sudderberg ratchets up the energy and kinetic motion, Jackson and Vergara follow suit, taking an aggressive approach that's absent on the first half of the album. [...]"-Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader