Point of Departure, Moments Notice
patrick brennan s0nic 0penings|tilting curvaceous |Clean Feed CF613
Marc Medwin
June, 2023
One of Thelonious Monk’s greatest compositions – and aren’t they all great? – is “Evidence.” Its groove is as infectious as its rhythmic language of displacement and discovery is complex, rhythmic intricacy that it would be too simplistic to call syncopation, but there’s so much more. The fact that it grew out of “Just You, Just Me,” not to mention the various traditions birthing that standard, adds another layer of reference and connection; layers of communal discourse similarly inform tilting curvaceous, philosopher, composer, and saxophonist patrick brennan’s most recent s0nic 0penings project. It’s as if “Evidence” was placed under a microscope, each of its implications stretched beyond recall and, via metempsychosis, transported to another plane of existence, each of the work’s 14 parts an homage and an implication..
I have no desire to stretch the parallel beyond credibility, but listen to Rod Williams’ piano octaves in the opening section. Even more than that, observe the enforced entropy immediately following, those punchy melodies scattering rhythmic fragments in all directions and only regrouping with Michael TA Thompson’s stunning rolls and high-hat exhortations. No, it isn’t Monk, but it rechannels those confluences that defined his innovations, updating them to our own more complicated era. As bassist Hilliard Greene and trumpeter Brian Groder inhabit brennan’s melodic universe, they perform the complex but enviable task of enhancing the allusion while marking the distance separating this aggregate from the histories it celebrates..
brennan’s is music of extreme dynamism supporting a vision somehow both grandiose and accessible, one fostered by each musician. His ensemble is often as disparate as his forms are diverse, each miniature unpredictably witty in a unified context. The fifth part opens with a monumental piano and arco bass drone which leads directly into a melody as beautiful as its staggered statement is unsettling, but the little form fragments around a malleted TA drum solo of delicate forcefulness only to reappear without Williams. Rhythm and meter are just as fractiously treated, occupying some sort of borderland of being and non-being. The fourth part lets the rhythm section loose on theme and groove; the 13th part stabs and punches at figures similar to the whole work’s opening, but every time it appears that something approaching conventional groove is in the offing, the notion is shattered, or nearly shattered, with all the excitement of a band in full simpatico mode, equal parts synchronized and adventurous as they slide in and out of time. Within these iterations, group members don’t so much solo as elucidate aspects of the overarching form. Groder steps into the spotlight to tear up the seventh part, and one of Greene’s most beautiful moments on disc opens the twelfth, a gliding soliloquy of slow communion gradually enhanced by his bandmates.
The best is saved for last. Is that the theme that brennan plays to end the disc? It certainly begins on the same note as the first part and consists of similar melodic components. Leaving all that aside, it sizzles with excitement, earthy exuberance amidst the rhythmically arhythmic drive toward a goal simultaneously clear and elusive. brennan offers an absolutely complete statement of bold intent and a precis of all that has gone before. It caps a disc of extraordinary group focus and playing equally inventive and concise, giving the impression that every single note is inevitable in its incisiveness. Every s0nic 0penings disc is well worth hearing, but this one is very special. Not merely another document of a group in transition, it’s a joyous culmination