Clarinetist Ben Goldberg and trombonist Ryan Keberle have launched their latest projects from the impressive pads of poets Dean Young and Langston Hughes, respectively. Goldberg’s Good Day for Cloud Fishing is as quirky as Young’s disarming poetry, and the poet gets to comment on the music. Hughes’ wish for America finds a receptive ear in Keberle, whose The Hope I Hold offers a musical vehicle for the poetry.
Ben Goldberg
Good Day for Cloud Fishing (Pyroclastic Records)
A review
My friend the poet Mark Weber has performed his work in collaboration with improvising musicians many times, but there’s a problem with the arrangement, he says. The musicians get to improvise freely and bounce ideas off one another, while the poet, leashed to composed material, can begin to feel something like a prop.
On Good Day for Cloud Fishing, composer Ben Goldberg (Bband contra-alto clarinets) has found a way around this issue. Introduced by a friend to the electric poetry of Dean Young, Goldberg was so taken with the material that he composed 12 pieces, each inspired by a different poem. Then, he took trumpeter Ron Miles and guitarist Nels Cline into the studio to record the pieces. Also in the studio was Underwood typewritist Young. He was not told which of his poems inspired the music he was hearing, but he was asked to improvise a new poem to each of the pieces in real time as he listened to them.
This adventure has been packaged into an attractive clamshell box that includes a CD, a 16-page booklet with notes from the participants and studio photos, and 12 square white sheets of card stock, each with the poem that inspired the music on the front, and the musically inspired poem on the back. The poetry and the music stand on their own and can certainly be enjoyed without reference to each other, but taking them together adds a layer of play and rumination.
The music, as Goldberg describes it, is modular. “Parthenogenesis,” for example, opens with a slow, bibulous blues, followed by a lively, almost trad ensemble, and closes with a modern trio section. The improvisational skills of the three musicians make for always adventurous but always balanced music. Just listen to how the horns shape themselves to the guitar at the end of “Because She Missed a Test, She Introduces Me to Her Boa.” What ears these guys have.
Stylistically, the album covers a lot of ground, from two chorales (“Demonic Possession Is 9/10ths of the Law” and “An Ordinary Day Somewhere”) to slow-slung funk (“Ant Head Sutures”) to guitar madness (“Surprised Again by the Rain,” which hints at the violence at the event horizon of a black hole). Composed sections seem to account for a fair proportion of the proceedings, and there are some notably beautiful lines (the blooming melancholy of “Surprised Again by the Rain” and the opening clarinet on “Reality”). You may have some difficulty distinguishing improvised and composed sections.
In a season that has already seen a couple of compelling releases wedded to literary inspirations (La misteriosa musica della Regina Loana and The Book of Longing), Good Day for Cloud Fishing is another welcome exercise in creative arts. Intoxicated by language, Goldberg in turn intoxicates us with music.
Ryan Keberle and Catharsis
The Hope I Hold (Greenleaf Music)
A review
At the heart of The Hope I Hold is Ryan Keberle’s eponymous five-part political/social justice chamber suite for his longtime working band, the jazz quintet Catharsis: Keberle (trombone, Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Korg Minilogue, piano, vocals), Camila Meza (vocals, guitar, guitar FX), Scott Robinson (new to the band on tenor sax), Jorge Roeder (acoustic and electric basses, bass FX, vocals), and Eric Doob (drums). Well, not literally at the heart, since the suite opens and closes the album, bracketing five additional tracks, one with the quintet and four with the trio of Keberle, Meza, and Roeder.
Once again, we have a literary starting point, with Langston Hughes’ 1935 poem “Let America Be America Again” inspiring the suite and providing the lyrics for three of the five parts. The fact that Hughes’ words still ring so relevantly in our ears tells us that we yet have a long way to go to realize the dream that lays sleeping within the Declaration of Independence, unknown even to its writers. Keberle’s suite does not shy away from that sad reality but also finds cause for hope.
The suite’s pieces are tightly arranged and richly orchestrated and have the feel of a much bigger unit. If you consider that Keberle and Meza together account for the equivalent of five musicians, given his tripling on trombone, keyboards, and vocals, and her doubling on guitar and vocals, it’s easy to see how that happens. Meza’s wordless voice adds another “horn” to the mix, just as Keberle’s trombone adds another “voice” (check out his solo on “Fooled and Pushed Apart”). Keberle makes use of cross-cutting rhythms, with a strong Brazilian influence on both “Despite the Dream” and “Fooled and Pushed Apart,” and edgy counterpoint throughout. Despite a funereal air that flames into a conflagration, “America Will Be” commits to the struggle. The suite closes the album with “Epilogue/Make America Again,” a hymnlike prayer for peace.
The trio tracks have a free-er feel, with the musicians stretching out a bit. High points include Meza’s dancing and lighthearted “Para Volar”—her guitar work throughout the album is a revelation—and the operatic “Zamba de Lozana,” by the Argentinian folksinger Cuchi Leguizamón.
Keberle’s suite offers passionate and articulate support for a state of mind that has been terrifically difficult to maintain over the last three years. He reminds us that holding tight to hope will allow us to stay afloat in these turbulent times and catch the winds of peace and justice again.
© 2019 Mel Minter