In their second album the trio of saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, bassist Christian Weber and drummer Michael Griener revisit the music of jazz tradition through the modern ears of the free improvisation, alternating the music of Jelly Roll Morton, Scott Joplin, Harry Edison/Count Bassie, and Russell Robinson with original group compositions, a fascinating contrast in time and style.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2019 Country: Switzerland Packaging: Jewel Case Recorde at Centre du culture ABC, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, on March 2nd, 2018, by Alex Huber.
"At any given time in the past few decades, saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, bassist Christian Weber and drummer Michael Griener have been members of genre-defining trios across Europe and the US, proving just how vital jazz is today in its historical form as well as in free playing styles. In the trio Ellery Eskelin, Christian Weber and Michael Griener play free music and traditional jazz. They do not melt down the playing styles, but alternate, contrast and deepen them.
With the new album The Pearls they present the second studio record after their critically acclaimed release Sensation of Tone. Ellery Eskelin writes in the liner notes:
"In jazz we talk about playing time and playing free. Playing time usually means expressing a steady pulse and playing free usually means not adhering to a steady pulse. Either way there is still the sensation of movement, time. In making this recording I was struck by the ways in which time can simultaneously be so exacting, so malleable and so multi-dimensional. In these performances you'll hear free improvisations (with no preconceived forms or steady time pulse) as well as renditions of classic compositions from an earlier musical form directly addressing time, Ragtime."
-Intakt
"It's interesting that Ellery Eskelin chose time as the subject of his liner notes essay for this release, because his music has always had a feeling of timelessness about it. His discourse ranges from concrete sundials to wrist watches and atomic clocks to the abstraction of music's swing and stop-time improvisations. Without diving too deep into a philosophical argument about whether time moves only irreversibly forward, the saxophonist, Swiss bassist Christian Weber, and German drummer Michael Griener, proceed to time travel from the present to 1914, with a skip into the 1920s and 40s.
Much like their previous release Sensations of Tone (Intakt Records, 2017), the traditional sax/bass/drums trio dives into pre-WWII jazz. While their takes on Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, J. Russel Robinson, and Count Basie & Harry "Sweets" Edison remain faithful to the original scripts, don't expect Lincoln Center Jazz to come calling these three anytime soon. Rather than mimic Joplin's "Magnetic Rag," Eskelin energizes it, playing with period sounds and musical gestures. Same for Morton's "The Pearls." Griener coats his drums with brushes and Weber's bass states the melody with Eskelin before he takes a solo that would have fit naturally on a bandstand in 1914. From ragtime to swing, the two minute cover of Basie and Edison's "Jive At Five" retains the elegance and nimbleness of the original supplemented and amplified by the "to-die-for"-Lester Young' lushness of Eskelin's tenor tone.
Just as easily as the trio time travels backward, they come back to a free jazz future. "ABC," "Le Fˇe Verte," "Rue Jardiniˇre," "Il Gatto," and "Black Drop" explore another set of time rules. Strict time keeping is cast aside, but not at the expense of expression. And why notŃthe trio has an assorted bag of emotive tools that undoubtedly strike the ear with the same surprise and wonder as the those first encounters with jazz in the early 20th century."-Mark Corroto, All About Jazz