Andy Milne and Unison: Poignancy, Jubilation and Conviction on "Time Will Tell"

Andy Milne and Unison: Time Will Tell: Sunnyside Records

Andy Milne is a Canadian pianist born in Hamilton, Ontario who studied at Banff Centre for Fine Arts and with pianist icon Oscar Peterson. He was a member of the enigmatic saxophonist Steve Coleman's group Five Elements and a member of the M-Base Collective. Milne won Canada's prestigious Juno Award for Jazz Group Album of the Year in 2018 for his Seasons of the Being with his Dapp Theory group. He was the pianist in Coleman's bands from 1992 through 2001 and held the piano chair in groups led by trumpeter Ralph Alessi, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, vocalist Cassandra Wilson, and others. He is presently an assistant professor of music at University of Michigan and an Assistant Director of The School of Improvisational Music.

I was fortunate to catch his performance as part of the progressive trumpeter Ralph Alessi's group at a show at Portland's 1905 back in June of 2023. Milne's approach to the keyboard is sensitive, probing, fluid, and inventive. His piano work is individualistic; an amalgam of melodic classical influences that are somehow framed in fearless jazz improvisational explorations all his own. His previous album The reMission, released in 2020, was inspired by his personal experience dealing with the discovery, treatment, and recovery of having had cancer. It was an aural reaction to a life-changing challenge that fortunately had an uplifting result. The album won Milne and his group Unison the 2021 Juno Award for Jazz Albums of the Year by Groups. 

      Andy Milne at the piano at Portland's 1905 June 2023

The pianist's latest Sunnyside album Time Will Tell with Andy Milne and Unison was released on April 26th of this year. He is joined by longtime trio members John Hébert on upright bass and Clarence Pennn on drums. The three have a synchronous connection that fits well with Milne's concept of how a trio should be keen on the elements of texture and groove in their approach to music. Milne, who was adopted, uses the inspiration of his lifelong search for his birth family and their history as the fuel that creates the impetus for most of this music.

Of the ten compositions in this record, eight are written by Milne. One, written by Hébert, "Broken Landscape," is a beautiful vehicle for the trio to share some expressive playing and telepathic interplay. Milne's piano is melodic, searching, and cascading. Hébert's bass tone is warm and resonating and Penn's brushwork impeccably supportive.

"Papounet' is a composition contributed by Penn, the title being a word used by the drummer's grandchildren as a favored name for him. The composition brings its own sense of family and connections to the album's theme. The trio's dynamic synchronicity is on full display on this one, with a highlight dynamic, whirling drum work by Penn.

Time Will Tell includes two guest performers who add their own textural and tonal aspects to this musical palette. The tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, who attended the Jazz Composers Insitute at UCLA at the same time as Milne back in 2012, lends her energy and facility to four of the songs.

"Purity of Heart", the opener and a Milne composition, is a case in point. Laubrock's added wattage, in synch with the trio's inherent, ostinato-driven propulsion is a splendid synthesis. The music has its own heartbeat, an organic drive that flows like a surging life force. Milne's piano illuminates the beauty of this music with his mastery of expression.

Milne's fascination with the sounds, textures, and color of various instruments, as well as his former work on an animated project Strings and Serpents, that included piano and koto duos, made the pianist want to add the second guest artist Yoko Reikano Kimura and her koto to this music. The koto is an expressive string instrument that can produce deeply emotive sounds that can range from soulful anguish to frantic ferocity. Milne skillfully uses the aurally complimentary musical possiblities of the koto and his piano in his compositions.



Unison Trio: Clarence Penn, Andy Milne, and John Hébert (photo credit Kasa Idzkowska)


"Lost and Found", a Milne beautiful composition that possibly captures his own experience with meeting his birth mother, opens with Kimura's koto setting the scene with a sense of soulful mystery and trepidation. Piano and koto do a delicate dance, a minuet-like note-for-note reception. Two entities, cautiously meeting after a long period of estrangement with caution, curiosity, and hopefulness.

"Beyond the Porcelain Door" is a jagged procession of sorts. It shifts in tempo and tone. Like a life that is faced with an unmapped route. Unknown territory and unexpected detours. Laubrock's tenor is out front as the trio navigates the chosen trail which seems a bit tentative. Kimura's koto, Milne's piano, Hébert's bass, and Penn's sticks spell out the steps forward in conjunction.

"Solotude" is a short one-minute and forty-second piano solo exploration. An acknowledgment that sometimes we are on our own.

The eastern-inspired "Kumoi Joshi" opens with Kimura's ostinato koto picking, Hébert's vibrant bass, and Penn's shimmering cymbal work. Laugbrock's soulful tenor opens with the melodic line as Milne's piano maintains the repeating line and the trio creates a swirling hum of energy. Milne offers an inspired chicanery of piano notes that erupt over his trio's powerful cauldron of activity until the music switches pace. Kimura's exotic-sounding koto creates a gauze of mystery and suspense over Penn and Hébert's rhythmic drone.

The album continues with Milne's "No Matter What" an ascending and descending line that opens like an abstract statement of direction with unexpected shifts and jagged fluctuations. The trio shows an uncanny athleticism, following each other precisely, empathetically, like three musical siblings joined at the hip.

Milne reprises "Lost and Found," this time opening as a sensitive solo piano piece for the first almost two-minute mark. The fetching melody starts out lyrical and introspective before Milne changes the tone and pace of the music. The rhythm section maintains the syncopated rhythmic feel before Laubrock's tenor enters with a plaintive and romantic sound. In it, I hear some fleeting similarities in the melody line on Sting's "Fragile." Listening to Milne's thoughtful solo, there is no similarity in the slightest, just bubbling inventiveness. He, Hébert, and Penn lock into the ether, they make the art of the trio truly a collaborative thing of beauty.

The album's closing composition, "Apart," I suspect is a reference to being sometimes separated from our families by life's often perplexing curveballs. Hébert's opening bass intro is sensitively offered before Milne's emotive piano lines ring out with beauty and hope. Andy Milne can be a joyous player. He and his trio play with an inherent sense of poignancy, jubilation, and conviction that rings through the music that they play.