Greg Sinibaldi is the first experimental musician from Seattle I ever met. We were both artists in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts about seven years ago. At the time, I was living in Amsterdam. At the ACA, we joined several other musicians and worked with the flute master, Robert Dick. There were also painters and poets working with other masters of their crafts. I made some great friends at this place, and when I moved to Seattle, Greg was the first person I made contact with in order to get into the music scene. In my time living in Seattle, I've really come to see that Greg is my favorite saxophone player in town, and probably one of my favorite alive. In Ascendant, Greg alternates between playing bass clarinet and tenor saxophone.
I actually met Jesse Canterbury in Ellensburg, Washington while I happened to be passing through in the early days of moving to the state after being in Europe. He was playing with the Tom Baker Quartet, and that was a show I found to be quite inspiring. I've seen Jesse play many times since then, and we've had the chance to play together on occasion before he moved to the San Francisco area. He's a very fine clarinetist with a great ear and feel for improvisation as well as written music. In Ascendant, Jesse alternates between bass clarinet and clarinet..
Ascendant was recorded in the Dan Harpole cistern at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Washington. The cistern was used while Fort Worden was an active military base and drained sometime in the 1950's. Since then it has regularly been used to record music because it has a unique architecture and a forty-five second reverb.
Reverb is in essence, an echo. The actual physics and nature of reverb is more complex, but a succinct way to say it is that reverberation is created as sound bounces off a surface and travels back to your ears. With large spaces and a variety of surfaces, the resulting reverberation can vary greatly. Musicians have been taking advantage of their performance space and natural reverb since the beginnings of music. Cathedrals, large buildings, caves...these places all can have very interesting architectural characteristics and varying reverb times. Computer musicians often artificially emulate these sorts of spaces in order to create their synthesized reverbs. There are also hardware built devices that create reverb. These are commonly used by rock bands and in recording studios. Reverb is so vital that many recording studios keep their recording space acoustically devoid of reverb so it can be created and added to each new album that is to be recorded.
For this album review, I will give a brief review track by track and conclude with an overall review of the album.
Wade
This track has a simple melody and counterpoint that really transforms because of the space. Two bass clarinets play a melody that might not be so memorable when played in a regular concert venue, but the added reverb makes it much more interesting. I actually find the melody to be reminiscent of Percy Grainger. I'm not certain, but I assume both Greg and Jesse are familiar with his music and have played it in many concert bands. Grainger's music is also intended to be played in concert halls with a nice reverberating space. The way this melody builds and the way the counterpoint compliments it is exquisite. With a lot of widely spaced open harmonies, this slow melody is soothing and pastoral.
Second Thoughts
Opening with a series of trills that create a wash of sound, Greg's tenor sax seems to come out of nowhere. The saxophone tone is extraordinary. Starting lower in the register and moving higher, Greg's instrument captures a full range of sound possibilities in this space. By playing in a style somewhere in between a classical saxophonist and a jazz saxophonist, Greg's saxophone tone is unique and interesting. This is a fresh sound to my ears that are more familiar with hearing the saxophone in a jazz combo situation. Greg is always looking for different ways to incorporate his saxophone, and I actually don't think I've ever heard him play in a traditional jazz setting.
Two or Three Back and Around
A powerful opening that can only be Jesse Canterbury and his clarinet(s). By playing two clarinets simultaneously, Jesse creates great dissonances and harmonies with himself. Harsh strong attacks with strikingly loud dynamics permeate through this track. This more than any other track sounds like a duet (trio?) between Jesse and the cistern. The use of two clarinets throughout this piece thrills me. Because they are both being played by the same player, blend and intonation is flawless between the two. The harmonies and dissonances that Jesse creates sound more like very clear multiphonics from a single instrument. With a soft ending akin to a continuous drone, this track ends leaving me with a desire for more.
Beside Ourselves
Back to duets, this time with tenor saxophone and bass clarinet. This is the first piece on the album that has a real strong sense of rhythmic drive, the two instruments compliment each other well. Both Greg and Jesse have an uncanny knack for blend so their ensemble playing is like listening to an organ with many different stops open. This track more than any other is played as a jazz standard. The driving melody is played together, and then one player plays an accompaniment part while the other plays what I assume is an improvised solo. The strong bass notes that recur really fill the recording and the space.
Ugly Beauty
Again, Greg's sax tone is spectacular as the opening for this track. When I listen to Greg play, I hear George Garzone (one of his mentors) of course, but I also hear a strong mix of John Coltrane and Stan Getz. Of course Greg isn't the only tenor player to be influenced by these giants of the instrument, but the effortless way he can call up their sound and influence is fascinating. This track is one that would play well in a concert hall, and it is also reminiscent of what one might hear a saxophone busker playing on the street. The reverb, which does add some nice color isn't particularly necessary in this piece.
If You Look too Close
With an almost jolting contrast to the previous track, Greg plays a tune that reminds me more of the Berio flute sequenza than a Stan Getz inspired saxophone solo. I can picture someone playing this in a concert hall with a computer generated reverb and creating a lot of excitement from the audience. The fact that this is performed inside of a water tower only enhances the experience. Computer programmers and engineers work hard at creating reverb effects that sound this good with a live performer.
Not Forever, Just for Now
This track is a bit infamous to me. When I originally downloaded the album from Bandcamp, I ended up with a track that cut off about a minute early. After contacting Paul Kikuchi, the owner of Prefecture Music, everything got squared away and I got the complete track.
Anyway, the two bass clarinets are haunting in this piece. Greg and Jesse have a great feel for each other's playing. In this track, some of the melodic material does seem a bit stagnant. There's a motif of quickly running notes that gets repeated, but it feels out of place with the slower and more deliberate material. I think if these motifs would have been played more along the tempo of the other material, it wouldn't have jumped out at me so much and drawn me out of the moment.
Web of Lies
This piece really shows off Jesse's dynamic control. As woodwind players, it's much easier to play loudly than it is to play softly. So Jesse's capability to come in at a whisper and keep his dynamics low for so long before bringing up the volume highlights incredible restraint and confidence. At about the halfway mark, he really takes off and plays a cluster of loud repeated notes with the occasional accented note outside of the cluster. The high frequencies really resonate in this space and the amount of sound bouncing from the high register of the clarinet really pleases my ear.
Hold This
The open chordal sound is very Americana. Again, Jesse is playing solo clarinet and using the space and its reverb to create widely spaced and beautiful chords. This reminds me of composers like Aaron Copland (Americana), Benjamin Britten (widely spaced chords), or Erik Satie (ambient). As easy as it would be to make this album one of ambient atmospheric sound, I find it rather astounding that this is the only piece that I could even consider labeling as ambient. It's refreshing to hear long beautiful tone as the penultimate piece on this album. If Jesse is anything like me, I think this would have been the hardest piece on the album to play because of the sparse and open nature of the composition.
Dreaming in Two Million
Finishing the track is a bass clarinet
duo. Beginning in the low register of the instrument, the two
clarinets really rumble in the cistern. With a very linear motion and
strict one to one counterpoint, a high point is reached and the two
clarinets branch out to more individual lines in the high register.
The pitch material in the high register is nice, but the bass
clarinet doesn't resonate as well in this register as the clarinet or
tenor saxophone do. Perhaps it's because the contrast with the low
register bass clarinet is too great. As the track and album end in
the low register, the resonance comes back, but I would have liked to
hear that rumble that was at the beginning of the track one more
time.
Overall, this album is one of my new
favorites. I have always been very impressed with Greg and Jesse and
their musicianship. With such a prominent space and sound, it really
should be labeled as a trio for the two woodwind players and the
cistern. Greg and Jesse took this space, and instead of doing
something easy like creating an album of ambient sustained sound,
they really pushed the limits of sound production in the space.
Certain times in the album, this experimentation isn't particularly
succesful. The bass clarinet doesn't resonate through this space as
it gets higher. Sometimes the material is unnecessary for a 45 second
reverb. But with this experimentation, the listener will get a really
great sense of what the capabilities of this space and some great
wind players can do. The high range of the clarinet is thrilling. The
tenor saxophone is astonishing and unique. The rumble that the low
bass clarinets create will excite you.
In the end, I can't recommend this
album enough. If you have a turntable, you should get it on vinyl (I
wish I had a turntable!). If not, you should head to bandcamp and
name your own price (!) and download this album today.
As always, feel free to give me your
input in the comments section.
Links:
Bandcamp -
https://sinibaldi-canterbury.bandcamp.com/
Greg Sinibaldi -
http://www.gregsinibaldi.com/
Jesse Canterbury -
http://www.jessecanterbury.net/
Prefecture Music -
http://prefecturemusic.org/
Dan Harpole Cistern -
http://centrum.org/dan-harpole-cistern-at-fort-worden-state-park/
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