HENRY GRIMES - The Tone of Wonder
Uncool Edition
Henry Grimes - solo bass and violin
Everywhere in the creativity of Henry Grimes, there is balance. A stasis that comes not from aesthetic quietude or finality, or of old certainties iterated, but from the musician and poet's ability to constantly and spontaneously adjust and evolve his art.
It is this ability, to be efficiently and assertively in the now, but also at once in all the other places temporal and harmonic an improvisor, that made Henry Grimes the go-to bassist for so many break-through ensembles in the late 50s and 60s. For so many change-moment ensembles, like those of Sonny Rollins with Don Cherry, Grimes was the continuum. He was key to their possibility. He did not proffer a language clogged with redundant historical distinctions between the conservative and the radical, the old or the new, just a sense of immense knowing, of the immensity of possibility in the field when it is opened and owned by all equally.
Tone of Wonder, recorded when Grimes was Uncool - Artist In Residence in Switzerland in 2013, features two improvisations, both of which include sections on solo bass and violin. The longer first piece, Cyclic Passions, occupying about two thirds of the total recording, with Soul Recall coming in at just under 30 minutes.
Solo bass recordings are not a new phenomena but remain rare, with the general consensus being that the first solo bass recording in jazz or improvised music traditions, was Journal Violone by Barre Phillips in 1968. Solo recordings of any sort, especially in improvised music raise many questions as to the very nature of improvisation itself. When the single source input of ideation is that of the only player, what is improvisation anyway? What informs its progression, and how can that differ from any other notion of composition? Is solo improvisation a kind of minimalisation - the exploration of a single element or aspect of the varied materials usually open to ensemble improvisation, or the exploration of the physical and sonic potential of the instrument and technique of its performer?
Grimes addresses this space - which, in general terms, is so full of its own issues as to be almost impenetrable - with customary clarity, wealth and measure of resource. Much time is spent on bowed bass, when the laminar flow of lines creates an almost etude-like structure, reminiscent in part of Bach or Britten's solo cello suites, rich with myriad fragments of melody, brief rhythmic inventions, and creating a real sense of counterpoint and ensemble playing. There is a kind of immensity about the entire project, from its improvisations to its high quality recording that is almost overwhelming in its delivery.
The title of this recording was taken from the opening stanza of a poem by Henry Grimes, one of two featured in the folded card sleeve of the CD. The poem, Third Tense, states:
The prancing of sensations
through the mists of dancing solitude
makes the mind of pitch
prognostic of the tone of wonder
Grimes's poetry is like his music, it mindfully and with intent inhabits many different realms simultaneously. In this poem he is somewhere there with the English Metaphysicals and the work of
Emily Dickson: aware of the joy and rhetorical power of ideas expressed with restrained authority in a precious but unimposing framework of supporting metre. But in his solo bass improvisations there is nothing so firmly prognostic. Ideas emerge and are explored before being set aside and new departures opened. The gems, of which there are many in these improvisations, are left for the listener to stumble upon, to unearth in their hiding places, perhaps in the same paradigmatic many as their creator - who both makes and finds in the same moment. Such is the truly great improvisor's art.
Grimes' passages for plucked bass are generally more emphatic on this recording than the bowed improvisations, but in the second of the two pieces here, Grimes establishes a momentum of ideas on plucked bass that are then extended with the bow to great effect, giving perhaps this recordings stand-out moments. But that is splitting as many hairs as there are on Grimes' proverbial and much employed bow.
Tone of Wonder as a title says it all. This CD is a fitting testimony to the work of one jazz music's truly great musicians.
Reviewed by Peter Urpeth
Uncool Edition
Henry Grimes - solo bass and violin
Everywhere in the creativity of Henry Grimes, there is balance. A stasis that comes not from aesthetic quietude or finality, or of old certainties iterated, but from the musician and poet's ability to constantly and spontaneously adjust and evolve his art.
It is this ability, to be efficiently and assertively in the now, but also at once in all the other places temporal and harmonic an improvisor, that made Henry Grimes the go-to bassist for so many break-through ensembles in the late 50s and 60s. For so many change-moment ensembles, like those of Sonny Rollins with Don Cherry, Grimes was the continuum. He was key to their possibility. He did not proffer a language clogged with redundant historical distinctions between the conservative and the radical, the old or the new, just a sense of immense knowing, of the immensity of possibility in the field when it is opened and owned by all equally.
Tone of Wonder, recorded when Grimes was Uncool - Artist In Residence in Switzerland in 2013, features two improvisations, both of which include sections on solo bass and violin. The longer first piece, Cyclic Passions, occupying about two thirds of the total recording, with Soul Recall coming in at just under 30 minutes.
Solo bass recordings are not a new phenomena but remain rare, with the general consensus being that the first solo bass recording in jazz or improvised music traditions, was Journal Violone by Barre Phillips in 1968. Solo recordings of any sort, especially in improvised music raise many questions as to the very nature of improvisation itself. When the single source input of ideation is that of the only player, what is improvisation anyway? What informs its progression, and how can that differ from any other notion of composition? Is solo improvisation a kind of minimalisation - the exploration of a single element or aspect of the varied materials usually open to ensemble improvisation, or the exploration of the physical and sonic potential of the instrument and technique of its performer?
Grimes addresses this space - which, in general terms, is so full of its own issues as to be almost impenetrable - with customary clarity, wealth and measure of resource. Much time is spent on bowed bass, when the laminar flow of lines creates an almost etude-like structure, reminiscent in part of Bach or Britten's solo cello suites, rich with myriad fragments of melody, brief rhythmic inventions, and creating a real sense of counterpoint and ensemble playing. There is a kind of immensity about the entire project, from its improvisations to its high quality recording that is almost overwhelming in its delivery.
The title of this recording was taken from the opening stanza of a poem by Henry Grimes, one of two featured in the folded card sleeve of the CD. The poem, Third Tense, states:
The prancing of sensations
through the mists of dancing solitude
makes the mind of pitch
prognostic of the tone of wonder
Grimes's poetry is like his music, it mindfully and with intent inhabits many different realms simultaneously. In this poem he is somewhere there with the English Metaphysicals and the work of
Emily Dickson: aware of the joy and rhetorical power of ideas expressed with restrained authority in a precious but unimposing framework of supporting metre. But in his solo bass improvisations there is nothing so firmly prognostic. Ideas emerge and are explored before being set aside and new departures opened. The gems, of which there are many in these improvisations, are left for the listener to stumble upon, to unearth in their hiding places, perhaps in the same paradigmatic many as their creator - who both makes and finds in the same moment. Such is the truly great improvisor's art.
Grimes' passages for plucked bass are generally more emphatic on this recording than the bowed improvisations, but in the second of the two pieces here, Grimes establishes a momentum of ideas on plucked bass that are then extended with the bow to great effect, giving perhaps this recordings stand-out moments. But that is splitting as many hairs as there are on Grimes' proverbial and much employed bow.
Tone of Wonder as a title says it all. This CD is a fitting testimony to the work of one jazz music's truly great musicians.
Reviewed by Peter Urpeth
