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| aRT: ScienSonic Records- |
I recently received a new album from the multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson released on his self-produced ScienSonic label. I have always been impressed by the music that comes out of this inventive spirit. Being one of the most accomplished musicians I have ever met, Robinson is also a thinking musician who has dedicated his life's work to both proficiency and expansion. He is a master practitioner and a collector of some of the most unusual and diverse instruments you might find in the business. He has often been awarded top acknowledgement on such instruments. His collection includes a contra-bass saxophone, bass clarinet, Theremin, C Melody saxophone, baritone saxophone, various trumpets, a bass marimba and F Tuba to name just a few. His main instrument is the tenor saxophone. His multi-instrumental musicianship can be found on his many works as a section member and soloist in Maria Schneider's award-winning orchestra, and with the Charles Mingus Big Band, the Vanguard Jazz Band and the Sun Ra Arkestra not to mention some European orchestras. His work has also been been found in groups that have included Joe Lovano, Ron Carter, Marshall Allen, Paquito D'Rivera, Chet Baker, Teri Lynne Carrington, and Ella Fitzgerald to name a few. His most recent album Tenormore was released in 2019 and I named it one of my best of releases for that year.
Scott is the proverbial mad scientist of jazz. He is always searching and exploring. Expanding the tonal palette that he uses to create his music is just one of his many pursuits, the quest to finding the perfect note. He has been playing music with two other unique musical explorers since the late eighties- drummer/percussionist/educator Pheeroan akLaff and distinguished Phycology Professor and bassist Dr. Julian Thayer- so it surprising that these guys never released an album of their music until now!
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| Scott Robinson and Julian Thayer (Photo credit unknown) |
Brooklyn born Dr. Julian Thayer is an accomplished bassist who initially pursued a musical education at Berklee in Boston before following his muse, receiving his PhD from NYU in psychophysiology. His distinguished career as an educator included faculty positions at Penn State, University of Missouri, Ohio State University, University of California Irvine and as a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon and many European and Scandinavian institutions. Thayer has used his awareness of the therapeutic phycological and physiological aspects that music can have on our physical and emotional well being. He believes music can be vital to calming the heart rate variability (HRV) of our inner clockwork. To this end, Thayer has continue to be involved with like-minded musicians like akLaff and Robinson as well as artists like George Garzone, Jimmy Cobb and Terrell Stafford, to make music that can be adventurous, beautiful and uplift the listener.
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| Pheeroan akLaff (photo credit unknown) |
Detroit born Pheeroan akLaff is a progressive drummer/percussionist and educator who currently teaches at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. His percussion work has been mostly seen with some of music's more Avant Garde and free jazz players in the business like saxophonists Oliver Lake, Sam Rivers, Henry Threadgill and Anthony Braxton, trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and pianists Cecil Taylor, Mal Waldron and Andrew Hill. He believes that music can be a source for giving back to society and a vehicle for making change. There is a spiritual side to this man's music and his connection with the spiritual is woven into the way he interacts to his fellow bandmates when he plays. His intuition operates on another level, raising the art of percussion to an truly interactive art.
aRT consists of twenty improvisations all recorded at ScienSonic Laboratories on January 25th, 2024 as is a piece of art in itself. A beautiful cd package, "Abstract Sculptures Looking at Abstract Paintings, and, if the Truth Be Known, Vice Versa" a piece by Richard M. "Gorman" Powers, ca. 1991, adorns the cover and the inside artwork on this album. Scott takes his art seriously and that carries through into his packaging of the recording.
The music feels spontaneous, with titles that beckons you to attend a visual art gallery. It is twenty different aural pieces of art being presented here, but you are being invited to listen to these creations with an open mind, where the synapses of our brain are being encouraged to make the leap from the aural to the visual. We are asked to suspend our reality for just under one hour that it takes to listen through this demonstration of artistry and free association. If you allow it, you can be immersed, taken away by the creativity and aural images that they create. The titles predominantly include the word abstraction. "Abstract Painting" and "Abstract Sculpture," "Abstraction in Blues" and "Abstract Interlude," and unless you don't yet get the immersion thing there is "Abstract Dance" too.
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| aRT: akLaff, Robinson and Thayer @ Holyoke Media, Holyoke Mass June 2024 |
There's the intro, a brief invitation to the show. There are warbling sound sheets that lead to some shimmering cymbal work, and a probing saxophone that leads into a resonant arco bass line that comes to life. Some percussive accents all being added to the picture by akLaff, like colors by a skilled artist's brush on an open canvas.
The music continues, the next piece adding what sounds like a darting Tuba by Robinson and toms and snare skins being pounded in time by akLaff, as the musicians create their version of a choreographed piece of art, "Dancing About Painting." Thayer's string bass is again bowed like a sighing creature introducing a counterpoint to Robinson's bellowing Tuba, a preposterous creature that waddles through the scene with a boisterous authority, and akLaff's intuitive percussive accompaniment together makes this one piece titled "Electrabstraction."
I can't do these pieces justice by allowing my insufficient word descriptions to faithfully capture for you what it is like to experience these free flowing, inspired improvisations for yourself. There is science here, as well as performance artistry and deep spiritualism. You can play this album multiple times and I can assure you that there is a peace and tranquility that emanates from this music. These guys want to transport the listener for a little while to a place where only music like this can. There are cymbals, and gongs, bells and a Chinese transverse flute. There are Sarrusophones and contrabass saxophones, bass marimbas, an alto clarinet, and a string tremoloa. And of course there is a tenor saxophone, a theremin, a string bass, a drum and cymbal set, and and F Tuba. I am sure I missed something on this list, but most of all there is a superb sense of purpose, a sense that this music is healing, spiritual, evocative, exploratory and most of all creative. What more you could possibly ask for? In these times of stress and doubt, supporting sincere art created with conviction and sensitivity like this is surely worth our support.