Open Loose * * * *
at The Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham
Review by Peter Bacon
For a display of the full technical arsenal used by the 21st jazz musician, this New York trio would take some beating.
Double bassist Mark Helias adds strong use of harmonics, bowing, and a hammer-on/pull-off technique more commonly used by rock guitarists. This last gives him the ability to play counter melodies in both left and right hands which sometimes sound remarkably like the bubbling tunes of the African thumb piano.
Tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby shares Helias's mastery of harmonics, and adds an amazing variety of timbre. While most saxophonists are happy to find a tone they are happy with that constitutes their voice, Malaby's personal style lies in picking a particular tone for a particular note, and constantly shuffling his pack of tones and how he attacks them. He will overblow and honk multiphonics, or thin the sound to a sweet alto, explore the highest reaches above the instrument's natural range or spit out staccato stabs of sound.
Drummer Tom Rainey is one of jazz's most striking individualists - his slipping, sliding, stuttering style is also constantly on the move. He doesn't just play double time; he will throw in a few bars of one-and-a-half time just for fun. The title of this trio is nowhere more graphically displayed than in the movements of the lanky Rainey behind his compact kit.
If all this were just undirected virtuosity, it would be pointless. Mark Helias's complex and thorough compositions are not brief "heads" for the players to improvise upon, but are, taken as a whole, a rich and varied musical landscape the players are free to explore using all their talents.
It is a land of original harmonic and melodic hills and valleys, demanding some mind-boggling speeding up and slowing down to negotiate its tricky corners.
The high proportion of musicians in the audience was indicative of the standing these three players hold in their art form, but their strikingly original music was no less accessible to us regular punters.
