Just Due: Marilyn Crispell/Harvey Sorgen Duo at IMA

The old saying, “good things come to those who wait”, suggests that patience and persistence will eventually lead to reward. It actually happens sometimes in the jazz world, as veterans blossom to master-status and get their just deserts. Pianist Marilyn Crispell, who celebrated her 79th birthday on March 30, is enjoying such a moment in time. On April 2 at the Institute For the Musical Arts in Goshen, MA, she and drummer Harvey Sorgen gave 55 of us a profound lesson in the art of invention.

Crispell’s career - deeply touched by Anthony Braxton, Reggie Workman and the Creative Music Studio – has brought grants and accolades throughout the years, along with some high profile concerts and recordings. But in the last twelve months she has been awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship, and a Jazz Legacies Fellowship, a prestigious lifetime achievement honor bestowed by the Mellon Foundation and the Jazz Foundation of America. She’s also on the April cover of New York City Jazz Record. The laurels are starting to accumulate.

Her long time musical partner Harvey Sorgen, 69, has also amassed an impressive musical resumé. In addition to his work with Ahmad Jamal, Karl Berger, Joe Fonda and Bill Frisell, he was Hot Tuna’s drummer throughout the 1990s. Hot Tuna would tour with the Allman Brothers, and Jaimoe would insist Sorgen sit in with Gregg, Duane and the band. In those years he also got  a chance to play with Carlos Santana and Bruce Hornsby. When Sorgen was in high school he participated in a workshop by drummer Jack DeJohnette which consisted of two hours of non-stop playing. His mind was blown and his life-path revealed. DeJohnette became a mentor and was instrumental in getting Sorgen to move to Woodstock, NY in the mid-80s. They remained friends and neighbors until his passing in October. He was wearing Jack’s shoes at the concert.

It was impressive to see these two seasoned musicians shape a concert. The evening contained a multitude of moods, swinging from gorgeous, tear-welling melodies to seismic rumbles that shook the room. Like Hiromi and Zoh Amba, Crispell generates a volume of sound out of all proportion to her physical stature. After the concert, people reported seeing the piano shudder. For the most part, the music was composed on the spot, with melodies by Paul Motian, Arild Andersen and Crispell used as fleeting signposts. Sorgen’s use of Hang drum added a soothing, mellifluous dimension. Pronounced “hong”, the instrument was developed in Switzerland about 20 years ago, and consists of two steel shells bonded at the rim, creating a hollow, resonant chamber. Sorgen gently played the instrument with his hands, producing a subtle, but resonant sound. Crispell’s ringing response simulated a choir of bells.

At Charlie Mariano’s suggestion, Crispell spent the summer of 1977 at the Creative Music Studio (CMS) in Woodstock, NY, where she still lives. “You were living and eating and hanging out with the guiding artists in this country motel setting,” Crispell recalled in JazzTimes. “People would be up all night making bonfires and playing outside on the lawn with musicians from all over the world. It was a very important human experience and I met many of the people I ended up playing with,” including Roscoe Mitchell, Don Cherry, Wadada Leo Smith and Oliver Lake. Another of those musicians was Anthony Braxton. Crispell, Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway played in his quartet from 1983-1995, touring the world, making records, and reaching a wider jazz world. She also met Anthony Davis at CMS and performed in the premiere of his opera, X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X with the New York City Opera.

For the past eight years she’s toured the world with Joe Lovano’s Trio Tapestry and continues a 30 year musical relationship with the Swedish bassist Anders Jormin. Trio Tapestry has three ECM records to their name, while Crispell and Jormin recently unveiled Memento, also on the Munich-based label. Crispell’s long relationship with ECM founder Manfred Eicher has given her a larger audience, and her 1997 ECM debut, Nothing Ever Was, Anyway: The Music of Annette Peacock, featuring Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, has been followed by a half dozen important solo, duo and trio releases.

Crispell is becoming more selective in what she says “yes” to these days. She and Sorgen had just played the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, and were heading to Portland, ME to play a concert in Paul Lichter’s Dimensions in Jazz Series. Relationships are important determinants for her, and there were lots of friends in IMA’s big barn. Michael and Rosemary Lategano, who are active in A Place For Jazz, made the trip from Albany. Jazz Shares member Richard Murphy has known the pianist for decades, and Sorgen’s partner, Donna was there, and they made new friends, too. To be in an intimate setting with such an important musician felt special. And the music Crispell and Sorgen gave us filled our hearts and minds with wonder.

Music as Spiritual Practice: James Falzone at Wistariahurst Museum

Music can be used to uplift us spiritually and to sell products. It can be used to urge us to make love and to make war. This malleability is what makes music so ubiquitous and such a powerful force in our lives. James Falzone, who gave a solo concert at Holyoke’s Wistariahurst Museum on March 20, understands the power of sound to transform us. Playing clarinet, flutes, shruti box and piano, Falzone filled the marble Music Room with vibrations both beautiful and troubling. On March 23 at Amherst College, he gave a superb lecture on the critical role the arts play in a liberal arts education. Together, these two events painted a compelling case for the importance of music in our lives.

Falzone is Associate Dean and Professor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle University. His appearance in the Valley was part of his solo barnstorm through the Midwest and northeast United States. The 54-year old musician and scholar is no stranger to western Massachusetts. Jazz Shares has presented his clarinet septet (The Renga Ensemble), his world music quartet (Allos Musica Ensemble), his duo with bassist/vocalist Katie Ernst (Wayfaring), and his quartet for three clarinets and voice (Pneuma). Taken together, they paint a portrait of a consummate musician and an evolved human being.

Falzone began Friday’s program from the back of the room, and made his way to the stage playing a wooden flute from the indigenous Paiute people of the Great Basin (western U.S.). This sacred wind instrument slowed our breath and put us in a spiritual frame of mind. Throughout the evening, he produced the loveliest sound from his custom-made Backun clarinet, and when combined with drones from his shruti box, a traditional Indian bellows-driven instrument, the room - and the 35 bodies in it - were bathed in mellifluous vibrations of wood and reeds. Given the system collapse around us, we were grateful for the respite. Linda Tumbarello, who at one point had stood up and to watch from the side, reported that 90% of the audience had their eyes closed.

These moments of harmony were juxtaposed with unusual clusters of tones, untethered floating meters, and sounds best described as screeching and scrapping. Falzone rubbed elephant bells on the piano strings to produce a whirling buzz. With clarinet in hand, he walked the aisles, repeatedly returning to a shrieked note at the end of each melodic phrase. His penny whistle work referenced Indian music and mournful Celtic refrains alongside some piercing overblowing. Taken together, the concert’s alternating periods of tension and release produced a kind of yoga high, the feeling of having been on a journey.

Like a worship service, Falzone’s recital took you someplace. He became a Christian in high school, and served as music director at Grace Chicago Church for 16 years. Since moving to Seattle, he has offered monthly improvised, contemplative solo clarinet music at Saint Mark’s Cathedral.

“I think of improvisation as an embodied spiritual practice, not unlike prayer or yoga or tai chi,” Falzone said in an interview with the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in 2016. "In any improvised practice you’re constantly reacting to the present by making sense of the past. That’s exactly what I do on the bandstand: I play a gesture, a note, a phrase—and that becomes my past. Then I stand in a new now. I play a few more notes, and that becomes the past. There is a new now, and the process continues. Embedded in the whole process is the acceptance, even the celebration, of risk and imperfection.

"The sense of learning and growing in the midst of decision making is, to me, a beautiful metaphor for the spiritual life. The continuous cycle of moment-by-moment living resembles the life of faith. Improvisation is infused with freedom—openness to what is possible in any given moment. The freedom of improvisation can also happen in a worship service, when there’s a sense that the pastor, musicians, liturgists and worshipers are fully present, ready to listen and react to whatever God has brought to that moment.”

Pop Gets Complicated: John Hollenbeck's GEORGE

“John Hollenbeck likes to blur the distinctions between the knotty virtuosity of jazz and the broad appeal of pop,” wrote Jude Noel in Pitchfork in a review of Letters to George, the 2023 debut release by Hollenbeck’s quartet, GEORGE. 

At the Institute For the Musical Arts in Goshen, MA on March 17, we heard his genius for doing just that. Together with Anna Webber (tenor saxophone/flutes), Sarah Rossy (voice/synthesizers) and chiquitamagic (synthesizer/voice), the drummer John Hollenbeck gave us an hour of finely crafted, high energy music that received palpable approval from the 55 of us gathered in the barn. Webber (Vancouver) and Rossy (Montreal) were born in Canada. With Hollenbeck now a Canadian citizen and teaching at McGill, and chiquitamangic living in Toronto, GEORGE is very much a product of the Great White North.

Over the years, Hollenbeck has had two primary outlets for his compositional energies: the 25-year old Claudia Quintet, which Jazz Shares presented in 2017, and his 19-piece Large Ensemble, which has three Grammy-nominated recordings to date. GEORGE is the first new band he’s put together in 17 years, and it’s a keeper. The band formed and practiced remotely during the first year of the COVID pandemic, and the four players did not meet in person until January 2022, when they assembled in a Montreal studio to record Letters to George. Now, with Rossy replacing Aurora Nealand, the band is touring in support of their latest effort, Looking For Consonance, recorded in 2024 and just now being released.

chiquitamagic (Isis Paola Giraldo) gave birth to her daughter eight months ago, so GEORGE is reconvening after a year apart. They assembled at Webber’s house in Greenfield for a day of rehearsing before hitting the IMA “stage”, no written music in sight. Their performance in Goshen kicked off a tour that will take them to New York, Philadelphia, New Haven and Boston.  

With its kinetic edge and avant leanings, the music brought to mind Jim Black’s AlasNoAxis; with its catchy, groove oriented compositions, I heard echoes of Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth; and with its synth-laden pop tendencies, I thought of Kneebody. But despite those references GEORGE is its own thing, thanks to the brilliance of its leader. Hollenbeck’s drumming was crisp and compelling, and he played with a rock-like directness. In fact, his technique was so precise it took me a while to be able to concentrate on other elements of the music.

Welcoming back return visitors like Hollenbeck advances our project building regional bonds with the larger jazz world. But for me, there’s a thrill in being introduced to musicians for the first time. Born in Bogotá, chiquitamagic is part of the notorious KNOWER house in L.A., and she tours and has recorded with Justin Brown and Ambrose Akinmusire. Her own music touches on EDM, cumbia, funk, experimental, choral and jazz. Check out this video. chiquitamagic stood between two synthesizers, which she played simultaneously. Her left hand handled the bass chores, laying down a super funky line on “George and Dee”, and summoning space-age smears in support of “Georgist”. Her role is critical to the band’s sound, and I can see why Hollenbeck put the group on hold until she could rejoin.

Like chiquitamagic, Sarah Rossy is not coming from the jazz world, proper. Despite being a finalist in the Ella Fitzgerald International Voice Composition, Rossy was a singer-songwriter who performed hundreds of concerts throughout Quebec and Eastern Canada. In 2017, her practice expanded to include interdisciplinary movement and visual projections. Mentorship with Meredith Monk, voice and movement research in Berlin, explorations of ethnic heritage at the Arabic Music Retreat, and multiple residencies at Banff Centre were all formative experiences. Her Lebanese roots shone on “Nassam Alayna-Lhawa”, a classic love song associated with longing for the homeland. Her vocals were restless and ethereal, and made common cause with Flora Purim’s groundbreaking work with Airto throughout the 1970s. On Silvio Rodriguez’ “Unicornio”, her voice entwined with Webber’s flute to produce diaphanous clouds fit for an angel.

Folks are still buzzing about Webber’s Nonet concert at the Iron Horse in January. (The Intakt recording will be released later this year.) Although she has pulled back on her commitments at the New England Conservatory, she still seems busy as a bee, with upcoming concerts in Belgium, Canada, Boston, New York and Amherst (Max Johnson’s Sextet at the Drake in June.) As we’ve heard with Shimmer Wince, her Simple Trio and Nonet, Webber is a first rate composer/conceptualist. So it was great to hear her in service of Hollenbeck’s vision, her mentor and Simple Trio-bandmate. Her tenor playing was meaty and straightforward, different from the complicated excursions we associate with her own projects.

I was lucky enough to have encountered Hollenbeck’s debut recording, no images, when it was first released in 2001. It includes “The Drum Major Instinct”, a brilliant 25-minute piece that weaves Martin Luther King’s sermon with an improvising ensemble of Hollenbeck and three trombones. That it was conceived during his final year at Eastman tells you all you need to know about his talent and intent. Throughout his career, Hollenbeck has made music that is distinctive, highly musical and made with skill and integrity. We are more than happy to bear witness.