Label: Not Two, 2004 Catalog No: MW 755-2 Format: CD
Tracks:
1. Channeling [10:55] 2. Weather [18:49] 3. Times Change [13:20] 4. A Love Supreme [11:27]
Line up:
Joe Giardullo - soprano sax
Recorded:
live at club RE, Krakow, Poland on April 24, 2004
Review:
Solo soprano saxophone albums in so-called free improv are surprisingly
frequent these days (think Alessandro Bosetti, John Butcher, Stéphane Rives,
Michel Doneda...) but in jazz they're still relatively rare, probably because
the musicians concerned don't exactly relish being compared to Steve Lacy, whose
work still remains something a benchmark in the genre, albeit an idiosyncratic
one. In fact the distinction I'm trying to draw is a rather silly, maybe even
nonexistent one, insofar as three of the four pieces on offer on Weather are
marked as Joe Giardullo "compositions" (though they sound pretty open and
improvised to me). The fourth track though is most definitely a composition, and
a well-known one too: Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" (rather sloppy titling, that:
in fact it's "Acknowledgment"). Giardullo, taking advantage of an intimate
acoustic and attentive audience in Cracow's Klub Re (home base for Not Two's
Marek Winiarski), seeks to lift Coltrane's work gingerly down from the
ridiculously high pedestal on which it's been placed over recent years and
return it to the domain of the personal, the introspective. It's a lonely
business, playing solo, especially if you happen to choose a theme that everyone
in the room knows well enough to imagine the harmony of (which is probably why
the vast majority of solo horn albums don't contain cover versions). Joe
Giardullo might be pleased to read – though I'm sure he knows it already – that
I hear hardly any Lacy in his work at all, either in terms of structure – he's
far more rhapsodic and given to flights of fancy than the clinically precise
(though never cold) Lacy – or sound. Lacy's sound, like John Coltrane's on the
instrument, was fat, round and rich, while Giardullo's is leaner, more fragile
and feminine and content to explore the cracks, especially on the beautiful
title track, which sustains interest effortlessly over nearly 19 minutes: no
mean feat. There is, though, another reference when it comes to soprano sax
playing, in the form of Evan Parker, particularly his legendary circular
breathing outings, and hearing Giardullo try his hand at the same sort of thing
on "Times Change" – albeit using harmony that sounds more like Phil Glass –
leads to a twinge of regret. Not much of a twinge though, as it's still a fine,
coherent and impressive piece from an album well worth hunting down. (Dan
Warburton, bagatellen.com)
*****
Recorded during Giardullo's tenure as an artist-in-residence at Warsaw's
Contemporary Arts Center, Weather features Giardullo solo at Krakow's Klub Re.
It is in many ways difficult to get past the precedents for a solo soprano
recording; Steve Lacy's Monk-with-trills and Evan Parker's breath-defying sound
sculptures are an obvious reference point. Yet Weather equally paints a picture
of Giardullo that owes little to predecessors; fast runs and wide vibrato might
on paper belie an adherence to the post-Ayler tradition that Joe McPhee mines,
while the lengthy pinched tones are a drawn-out soliloquy on Lacy at his most
metallic. Giardullo is getting into something else, as in "Channeling , taking
phrase fragments that might belie historical starting points and bending them,
twisting an AACM-inspired arrangement into an investigation that takes
specificity as its primary ingredient, a nursery rhyme spun into lengthy
harmonics. The title track begins with a Lacy-esque movement, though Giardullo
quickly takes a detour into sharp, biting tones and multiphonics amid huge
voids, sonically condensed yet spread out in a way that isn't quite like any of
his straight-horn kin. Weather is microcosmic and rather than harping on a
phrase fragment, Giardullo will take the fragment and break it into even smaller
parts, delving into what makes the sound and the mechanics of the instrument
create that very phrase. (Cliford Allen, AllAboutJazz)
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