Gray Scale (out of stock)
Free Fall takes its name, of course, from the final studio recording of clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre’s trio with pianist Paul Bley and bassist Steve Swallow, and The Point in a Line is their third disc together. This trio joins Vandermark’s Bb and bass clarinet with Norwegian pianist Havard Wk and bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten on a number of compositions and improvisations by members of the trio.
It is important to realize that this band is not entirely in homage to Giuffre—after all, his music retained a wide-open Texas swagger, even as they explored delicate counterpoint and microtonal extended techniques. Free Fall is classically poised in vignettes of contrast, often between the meatiness of bass and bass clarinet and Wk’s peerless piano mobiles, though Vandermark’s “Eulogy for a Typewriter” approaches the sparse canvas of Morton Feldman—surely an exploration of tonal space far from the group’s namesake. — Clifford Allen, April 6, 2008, AllAboutJazz.com.
Gray Scale (out of stock)
Free Fall takes its name, of course, from the final studio recording of clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre’s trio with pianist Paul Bley and bassist Steve Swallow, and The Point in a Line is their third disc together. This trio joins Vandermark’s Bb and bass clarinet with Norwegian pianist Havard Wk and bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten on a number of compositions and improvisations by members of the trio.
It is important to realize that this band is not entirely in homage to Giuffre—after all, his music retained a wide-open Texas swagger, even as they explored delicate counterpoint and microtonal extended techniques. Free Fall is classically poised in vignettes of contrast, often between the meatiness of bass and bass clarinet and Wk’s peerless piano mobiles, though Vandermark’s “Eulogy for a Typewriter” approaches the sparse canvas of Morton Feldman—surely an exploration of tonal space far from the group’s namesake. — Clifford Allen, April 6, 2008, AllAboutJazz.com.