Ellery Eskelin - Forms

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Ellery Eskelin
Forms
Free Jazz, Contemporary Jazz
hatOLOGY 2004

Of all the downtown New Yorkers on the jazz scene, especially those who
come from the avant-garde, saxophonist Ellery Eskelin is the one who has
made the most use of the various forms of the jazz tradition. Here,
accompanied by bassist Drew Gress and drummer Phil Haynes, Eskelin makes
an overt gesture to his influences on the one hand, but uses his
abilities to work out further inside the given forms he's learned.
Hence, all the tracks -- with the exception of a phenomenal reading of
Duke Ellington's "African Flower" -- are elemental structural pieces
designed to express the very form they were composed in, which includes
the album's concluding piece, Dizzy Gillespie's "Bebop." But it isn't
enough to play exercises, at least not for Eskelin; he has to make
creative use of these shapes and extend his compositional and
improvisational palette, too. On "Blues," he takes the standard I-IV-V
progression and gradually opens it up to include the bopper's take on
playing the scales in interval. With "In Three," he uses triplets,
triads, and the trio itself as compositional devices, working
combinations of the three sonorities to exemplify that an entire
composition can be made infinite by a trio with just three of the right
notes played by the right three players. On "Latin," Gress and Haynes
get to work out their craftiness in polyrhythmic time and irregular
intervallic figures as Eskelin seeks folk melodies and modalism to
anchor himself in the middle. Finally, with "Bebop," he takes
Gillespie's original anthem as far outside as he can, keeping the same
changes and harmonies, but turns up the heat and cranks the timbral
palette to the outside, stuttering and spewing from his horn as Gress
punctures the rhythm with a breathtaking solo. This is Eskelin jazz,
folks; it's full of pathos, humor, and musically sanctified soul. by
Thom Jurek AMG

Double Bass – Drew Gress
Drums – Phil Haynes
Tenor Saxophone, Written-By, Producer – Ellery Eskelin

1 Blues 8:19
2 In Three 8:49
3 Ballad 10:28
4 Latin 9:16
5 Fleurette Africaine 10:31
6 Vignettes 10:40
7 Bebop 4:20
Recorded March 27, 1990 at Westrax Recording Studios, New York City.

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