Review: Harry Skoler’s ‘Echoes’

Despite the instrument‘s long history in improvised music, the clarinet is often still an outlier instrument in contemporary jazz. Yet, clarinetist Harry Skoler will surprise you with his well-conceived Echoes, the inaugural release on his Red Brick Hill label (2026). The album’s CD jacket is a treasure in itself as Skoler recounts stories and remembrances of the musicians whose names title the nine compositions: Bill Evans, James Williams, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Marian McPartland, Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, Jimmy Giuffre, Lionel Hampton, and Miles Davis.

To fully grasp Echoes’ emotional weight, one must understand the backstory of its creation. Skoler was once regarded by many as a modern-day Benny Goodman. This all began to change in 2018 when, after assuming the role of interim Chair of the Berklee College of Music Woodwind Department, he suffered a catastrophic cardiac issue from which he barely survived. At his doctors’ insistence, he was forced to step back from his duties and tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III assumed his Berklee position by the summer of 2019.

Shortly thereafter, Skoler heeded a therapist’s suggestion “to hold the positive things and negative things at the same time.” He decided he needed to record again and to move in a different direction musically from the four well-received albums he’d releases between 1995 and 2009, on which he mirrored the classic Benny Goodman Quartet format.  He formed a producer partnership with Smith, who suggested that Skoler work with younger musicians. The resulting project was Living in Sound (Sunnyside, 2022), dedicated to Mingus, that included a top-shelf quintet of Skoler, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Christian McBride, drummer Johnathan Blake, singer Jazzmeia Horn, and a string quartet. His follow-up, Red Brick Hill (Sunnyside, 2024), found the leader presenting a fourteen-piece suite he’d composed after reflecting on the trauma that ensued from his family’s manipulative behavior during his teens, after a close friend committed suicide. For it, Smith helped assemble a core group of vibraphonist Joel Ross with Douglas and Blake, and guests Marquis Hill on trumpet, Christian Sands on piano, and Grégoire Maret on harmonica.

In preparing for Echoes, Skoler recalled a story he’d written about sitting alongside Teddy Wilson’s piano as Wilson played an engagement in a noisy, modest restaurant near Skoler’s home in the suburbs of Syracuse, New York. He applauded after every solo, earning several “thank yous” from the maestro. “I realized how much that experience had formed the groundwork for my life in many ways,” Skoler says. “So I decided to write about other encounters with my heroes. Then I composed the raw material, which we scoped out in long, intense rehearsals with local players.”  Skoler is being humble here. One of the great strengths of Echoes is Skoler’s compositions and arrangements. The tributes are essentially impressionistic portraits, memories shaped and refracted by time and the emotional traumas that Skoler experienced both in his youth and in his near heart attack.

An equally noticeable strength lies in the band’s firepower: guitar great Bill Frisell and the telepathic-by-now bass-drum tandem of Dezron Douglas and Johnathan Blake. The ensemble solidly supports Skoler’s structures and saxophone-like shouts, squeaks, and moans that color his improvisations, while also contributing inventive solos.  You will rarely hear a more inspired clarinetist as Skoler pours his soul into these compositions with the help of trusted producer Walter Smith III, who also co-wrote three of the five interludes in these fourteen tracks.

The music on Echoes works well in part because of Douglas and Blake’s familiarity, having played on Red Brick Hill and together in Blake’s own Pentad quintet. Frisell, was brought in by Smith, “to let the sound breathe.” The guitarist was impressed with both Skoler’s sense of tradition and his freer side of playing. Skoler doesn’t try to emulate any of the nine he nods to; he even takes Goodman into free jazz territory. His tone is both pure and conversational. He refuses to be constrained, as if internalizing the aggressive saxophonists that made their mark in the ‘60s, like Archie Shepp. Echoes nicely balances tradition and the contemporary, between through-composed structures and freer improvisation, between restraint and aggression. It speaks to a revitalized and reenergized Skoler, who has seemingly embarked on a new path.

Breaking down the album by track would risk missing the album’s larger picture in which the leader’s personal recollections sets the stage for the music. Consider “Sea of Feeling,” dedicated to Jimmy Giuffre. Skoler once studied with Giuffre at the New England Conservatory back in the early 80s. About him, Skoler writes – “When I listen to [Giuffre’s] free playing on the album Free Fall with Steve Swallow and Paul Bley, there was a paragraph on the back cover that referenced Jimmy’s influences…It was an enormous paragraph that made me feel awestruck…I thought, “I have to ask Jimmy what expression is all about.”…I figured his answer would go on for days…During my next composition lesson with him, I asked Jimmy what expression was all about…Jimmy said, “There’s a sea of feeling. Then you step into it.”

Step right in and listen.  While all the tracks are worthy, don’t miss the Bill Evans, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Teddy Wilson, and, of course, the Jimmy Giuffre tracks. You will be handsomely rewarded.

‘Echoes’ is out now on Red Brick Hill Records. It can be purchased on Bandcamp.