KENNY WARREN TRIO - In The Heat
Whirlwind Recordings: WR4757
Matthias Pichler: bass; Nathan Ellman-Bell: drums; Kenny Warren: trumpet
Recorded 16th September 2019 by Nathaniel Morgan in Brooklyn
The album opens and closes with variations on the same bouncing bass line, something of a samba in its phrasing that reflected the heat of the summer in which Warren was putting the tunes together. The weather might have been one meaning of the album’s title, but the other comes from the spontaneity of playing in the heat of the moment. There is something of the melange of musical styles of one of the great improvising ensembles, the AACM, in these pieces (and Warren credits Roscoe Mitchell’s approach to composition for inspiring at least one of the tracks, ‘House Plants Off’, track 4, but I hear positive echoes of this inspiration across most of the tracks). Warren’s aim in his compositions is to create tunes for the unusual instrumentation of this trio that sound totally improvised. As he says, “I’ve always been interested in writing music that can be played with the same feeling of abandon that you get from free playing. It’s difficult because as soon as you put a note on paper, you set up expectation in the minds of the players which can pull you away from the moment To write music that sounds improvised you need to know your own instrument and to know the people that you are playing with. Warren wrote these pieces specifically with Ellman-Bell and Pichler in mind and the trio worked hard to get inside the tunes. As Warren says, “…when we jump into a version of a piece, it’s like we’re playing a game of ESP.” I like this description of their playing, not just for the way its captures the telepathy of the trio but also for the Warren’s use of the phrase ‘version of a piece’. .” I guess that a good test of whether or not the players are ‘in the moment’ is whether the listener gets the sense that the same tune played a second or third time would be identical to the piece on record, and for me there is the definite sense that each performance of the tunes would be new discoveries rather than repetitions of the charts. Another intriguing aspect of this trio is the ways in which the three instruments are explored, without reliance of electronics or effects, to produce a wide range of sounds that bounce off and complement each other.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Whirlwind Recordings: WR4757
Matthias Pichler: bass; Nathan Ellman-Bell: drums; Kenny Warren: trumpet
Recorded 16th September 2019 by Nathaniel Morgan in Brooklyn
The album opens and closes with variations on the same bouncing bass line, something of a samba in its phrasing that reflected the heat of the summer in which Warren was putting the tunes together. The weather might have been one meaning of the album’s title, but the other comes from the spontaneity of playing in the heat of the moment. There is something of the melange of musical styles of one of the great improvising ensembles, the AACM, in these pieces (and Warren credits Roscoe Mitchell’s approach to composition for inspiring at least one of the tracks, ‘House Plants Off’, track 4, but I hear positive echoes of this inspiration across most of the tracks). Warren’s aim in his compositions is to create tunes for the unusual instrumentation of this trio that sound totally improvised. As he says, “I’ve always been interested in writing music that can be played with the same feeling of abandon that you get from free playing. It’s difficult because as soon as you put a note on paper, you set up expectation in the minds of the players which can pull you away from the moment To write music that sounds improvised you need to know your own instrument and to know the people that you are playing with. Warren wrote these pieces specifically with Ellman-Bell and Pichler in mind and the trio worked hard to get inside the tunes. As Warren says, “…when we jump into a version of a piece, it’s like we’re playing a game of ESP.” I like this description of their playing, not just for the way its captures the telepathy of the trio but also for the Warren’s use of the phrase ‘version of a piece’. .” I guess that a good test of whether or not the players are ‘in the moment’ is whether the listener gets the sense that the same tune played a second or third time would be identical to the piece on record, and for me there is the definite sense that each performance of the tunes would be new discoveries rather than repetitions of the charts. Another intriguing aspect of this trio is the ways in which the three instruments are explored, without reliance of electronics or effects, to produce a wide range of sounds that bounce off and complement each other.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
