{"id":5217,"date":"2022-11-07T21:24:43","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T03:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/?p=5217"},"modified":"2022-11-07T21:24:48","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T03:24:48","slug":"once-around-bro-lovano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/once-around-bro-lovano\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Jakob Bro and Joe Lovano\u2019s \u2018Once Around the Room: A Tribute to Paul Motian\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In an interview with Ethan Iverson on his Do the M@th blog<\/a>, writer Ben Ratliff related an anecdote that Paul Motian once told him. \u201cHank Jones said to [Motian] one day, after they\u2019d been playing, \u2018I know your secret.\u2019 [Ratliff] said, \u2018Oh yeah? And what do you think he meant?\u2019 And [Motian] said, \u2018I don\u2019t know!\u2019\u201d 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<\/em> (ECM, 2022), might not know the secret, but they have both participated first-hand in its reenactment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The guitarist worked with Motian during the last five years of his life while Lovano played saxophone for 30 years in the drummer\u2019s trio with guitarist Bill Frisell, a band that grows increasingly influential with time. Bro and Lovano recreate the trio\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unusual instrumentation creates a Brownian motion in sound that owes as much to late-\u201860s Miles Davis as it does to Motian\u2019s groups. On Lovano\u2019s opener, \u201cAs It Should Be,\u201d the viscous, tectonic swirl of the basses around a pedal-point E recalls the tangle of Dave Holland and Harvey Brooks on Miles Davis\u2019 Bitches Brew<\/em> (Columbia, 1970). So does the way that the drums, initially low in the mix, rise from a simmer to full boil at the climax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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