BIANCO BRACKENBURY- Rising Up
Discus Music: Discus112CD
Tony Bianco: drums, bass; Faith Brackenbury: violin, viola
Recorded by March / April 2021 by Tony Blanco at Garden Cottage
Ex-pat New Yorker, Bianco arrived in Europe in the early ‘90s and immediately lit a fuse under the free jazz scene as an in-demand drummer of masterful timing with an inventive way around his drum kit. On this album, his sparkling drumming is well to the fore, but so is his bubbling, frenetic bass playing. He needs to be on top form because Brackenbury, on violin and viola, provides a challenging and refreshing freedom to the jazz violin. On this set, constraints of melody and structure are lifted and there is a riotous energy and enthusiasm in the playing of both members. Having played classical violin, then played folk professionally, Brackenbury has also developed her own voice in jazz and this effortlessly introduces lyrical hooks and phrases that she will revisit and twist in the playing while also pushing boundaries in the music’s structure. As her lines swoop and soar, Bianco’s bass and drums provides a motive force to the music that is both cajoling and responding to the playing, inventing new lines and suggesting new directions.
At times, Brackenbury’s playing was reminiscent of Ornette Coleman in its striving to draw a simple lyricism into an unstructured free-wheeling form. But where Coleman was working at it from violin to the sound, Brackenbury is having to unlearn and let go of imperatives of tone from classical playing or structure from folk music to find a place where each note is not predicated on some learned necessity but becomes a thing in its own space and of its own right.
Having said this about the freedom of the playing, the closing piece (on the download only version of the album) is a 16 minute version of ‘Wichita Lineman’, which begins with the tune played cleanly, clearly and plaintively. A repeated piano line and shuffling drum pattern provide the backing for a series of extemporisations on the theme which drift (but not too far) from melody, chord structure and tempo. In a way, this is more startling and unnerving than the freer pieces here; if only because it reveals an adherence to the written line that the duo have fought against in the other pieces, and makes clear how hard that fight can be (and how triumphantly they win it).
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Discus Music: Discus112CD
Tony Bianco: drums, bass; Faith Brackenbury: violin, viola
Recorded by March / April 2021 by Tony Blanco at Garden Cottage
Ex-pat New Yorker, Bianco arrived in Europe in the early ‘90s and immediately lit a fuse under the free jazz scene as an in-demand drummer of masterful timing with an inventive way around his drum kit. On this album, his sparkling drumming is well to the fore, but so is his bubbling, frenetic bass playing. He needs to be on top form because Brackenbury, on violin and viola, provides a challenging and refreshing freedom to the jazz violin. On this set, constraints of melody and structure are lifted and there is a riotous energy and enthusiasm in the playing of both members. Having played classical violin, then played folk professionally, Brackenbury has also developed her own voice in jazz and this effortlessly introduces lyrical hooks and phrases that she will revisit and twist in the playing while also pushing boundaries in the music’s structure. As her lines swoop and soar, Bianco’s bass and drums provides a motive force to the music that is both cajoling and responding to the playing, inventing new lines and suggesting new directions.
At times, Brackenbury’s playing was reminiscent of Ornette Coleman in its striving to draw a simple lyricism into an unstructured free-wheeling form. But where Coleman was working at it from violin to the sound, Brackenbury is having to unlearn and let go of imperatives of tone from classical playing or structure from folk music to find a place where each note is not predicated on some learned necessity but becomes a thing in its own space and of its own right.
Having said this about the freedom of the playing, the closing piece (on the download only version of the album) is a 16 minute version of ‘Wichita Lineman’, which begins with the tune played cleanly, clearly and plaintively. A repeated piano line and shuffling drum pattern provide the backing for a series of extemporisations on the theme which drift (but not too far) from melody, chord structure and tempo. In a way, this is more startling and unnerving than the freer pieces here; if only because it reveals an adherence to the written line that the duo have fought against in the other pieces, and makes clear how hard that fight can be (and how triumphantly they win it).
Reviewed by Chris Baber
