In an interview with Ethan Iverson on his Do the M@th blog, writer Ben Ratliff related an anecdote that Paul Motian once told him. “Hank Jones said to [Motian] one day, after they’d been playing, ‘I know your secret.’ [Ratliff] said, ‘Oh yeah? And what do you think he meant?’ And [Motian] said, ‘I don’t know!’” Whatever it was, the great pianist must have taken it to his grave. How Motian did it, how he could play completely free yet with a strong time feel, how he could conceal a kernel of vibrant, almost hungry humanity in his most desolate compositions, the way he could shatter the beat yet still swing (was J. Dilla a Motian fan?)–all remain a mystery. Danish guitarist Jakob Bro and woodwind legend Joe Lovano, the co-leaders of Once Around the Room: A Tribute to Paul Motian (ECM, 2022), might not know the secret, but they have both participated first-hand in its reenactment.

The guitarist worked with Motian during the last five years of his life while Lovano played saxophone for 30 years in the drummer’s trio with guitarist Bill Frisell, a band that grows increasingly influential with time. Bro and Lovano recreate the trio’s unsettling, streetlamp-in-the fog sonic signature here, but they thicken the spare textures favored by Motian by stirring three bassists, Larry Grenadier and Thomas Morgan with electric bassist Anders Christensen, and two drummers, Joey Baron and Jorge Rossy, into the mix.

The unusual instrumentation creates a Brownian motion in sound that owes as much to late-‘60s Miles Davis as it does to Motian’s groups. On Lovano’s opener, “As It Should Be,” the viscous, tectonic swirl of the basses around a pedal-point E recalls the tangle of Dave Holland and Harvey Brooks on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970). So does the way that the drums, initially low in the mix, rise from a simmer to full boil at the climax.

Less on-brand is the collectively improvised “Sound Creation,” which wanders into Charles Lloyd territory, especially when Lovano trades his tenor for tarogato than quickly changes his mind. Even at its most abstract, Motian’s music had a steely sense of purpose.

And that’s the starting point for “Drum Music,” the sole Motian composition and the high point of this 38-minute recording. After some clattery throat-clearing from Baron and Rossy, Bro and Lovano attack the marcato theme with determined ferocity. Bro’s trippy, pedals-driven solo recalls the soaring grit of Bill Frisell’s early recordings on ECM. Lovano takes up the guitarist’s challenge, roughing up his tone for a vehement solo. Baron and Rossy throw wild punches in a short drum tussle that is broken up by a defiant reprise of the theme.

Here and elsewhere on Once Around the Room, Lovano summons a hortatory fervor not always present in his recent work. On “For The Love Of Paul,” his sound widens into a thrumming vibrato as if to accommodate a level of emotion that an unadorned tone couldn’t quite contain.

His ballads, too, have uncommon tenderness and purity of expression. Bro’s “Song To An Old Friend” has a melody so pretty that it could have been lifted from a bedroom pop song, and Lovano’s upper-register tenor drifts with hopeful dreaminess over the simple accompaniment. This is his best recording in some time.

With the drummers laying out, Bro’s “Pause” ushers the album to a serene conclusion on a cloud of floating, suspended-time atmospherics. It’s almost a benediction that says, “Don’t worry, Paul. Whatever it was, your secret is safe. “

Once Around the Room: A Tribute to Paul Motian is now available on ECM Records. It can be purchased in our Amazon Affiliate store.

Tracklist:  1. As It Should Be; 2. Sound Creation; 3. For the Love of Paul; 4. Song To An Old Friend; 5. Drum Music; 6. Pause.  

Personnel: Joe Lovano (tenor saxophone, tarogato), Jakob Bro (guitar), Larry Grenadier (double bass), Thomas Morgan (double bass), Anders Christensen (electric bass), Joey Baron (drums), Jorge Rossy (drums).

Photo credit: Aquapio Films Ltd/ECM Records