By Lee Rice Epstein
Recently, David Adler took to JazzTimes to exclaim about the large
amount of excellent guitar music composed by John Zorn from 2017–2024,
performed beautifully on a series of duo and trio albums by Julian Lage,
Gyan Riley, and Bill Frisell. At that time, I was already anticipating the
October release of Nocturnes, with a plan to write about his
current leading piano trio with much the same perspective: Can you believe
some of the best piano trio music is going, more or less, unrecognized by
the quote-unquote jazz world? I sure can.
Yadda yadda yadda, Zorn releases a lot of music, insert argument about onus
on critics to keep up, and so on, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam, ad
absurdum, ad astra. This feels like a required insert for any and all
reviews of Zorn’s music for the past 20 or so years, as if we can’t just
accept that he’s working on his own timeline, with a dozen different groups,
interwoven concepts, and new books of music every couple of years. If you’re
not paying attention, that’s on you, in other words; you’re imposing a set
of ground rules he didn’t agree to: record one album, make the press
circuit, tour the festivals, record a follow up two years later, rinse and
repeat, it could be a brilliant career. Or, make the music you want, when,
how, and why you want, with whom you want, call it independent music, a lone
bastion in whatever passes for the wilderness today.
And to get here, beginning sometime around 2021, Zorn and pianist Brian
Marsella made a slight pivot with the go-to piano trio for recording these
works. Up until then, Marsella’s trio with bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer
Kenny Wollesen had been the prime unit. They recorded a two-part set of
music, 2019’s The Hierophant and 2021’s
Meditations On the Tarot
, the took as its prime material the cards of the Tarot deck, and a
rapid-fire firecracker of an album, Calculus, which was released in
2020. This somewhat mini-expedition across parallel paths seems to have set
the table for what came next. The first move was to form a second piano
trio, with Marsella, bassist Jorge Roeder, and drummer Ches Smith, that
would record one book of music drawing inspiration from Baroque and Romantic
forms alongside a series of albums exploring jazz piano through a variety of
lenses. While the second set has so far produced only two albums—
The Fourth Way,
which is influenced by Georges Gurdjieff’s writings, and
Ou Phrontis,
which takes its name from a Greek phrase, meaning something like “who
cares,” that was written above the door of T.E. Lawrence’s cottage home at
Clouds Hill, a place of respite where he felt no pressure, no bounds or
bonds placed upon him—the albums derived from classical forms are already at
number four.
Brief sidebar: in 2022, this piano trio also became the basis for another
new group, know as Incerto, named for its eponymous debut album. That group
adds Julian Lage on guitar and moves through genres and references at a
speed closest to the earliest Naked City albums. The guitar, piano, bass,
and drums lineup reflects some of the mid-1950s Blue Note and West Coast
ensembles, and Incerto expertly revels in that era’s freewheeling excitement
for new sounds. Additionally, Marsella, Roeder, and Smith backed Petra Haden
for Long Songs Live, which saw Jesse Harries penning lyrics to
accompany some of Zorn’s impeccable melodies, a case where even Zorn’s
multitudes contain multitudes. If you ever want to convince the most
skeptical person you know to listen to John Zorn, try one of the sets of
music created with Harris.
With all these ideas in motion, after decades of myriad orchestral and
chamber compositions and settings, Zorn seems to have found fresh
inspiration in the piano trio as a classic jazz ensemble that can take on
classical forms from 1600–1950, give or take a few decades. Where the suite
goes back in some ways to the 15th and 16th centuries, its structure seems
to have been formalized in the Baroque period, where movements like those
appearing in Suite for Piano, emerge: “Allemande,” “Sarabande,”
“Scherzo,” “Passacaglia,” and “Gigue.” Traditionally, each of these uses
different meters and tempi to reflect what are basically dance forms from
Germany, France, England, and Spain. Here, they are infused with voicing and
phrasing that summons players like Hasaan Ibn Ali, Sonny Clark, Kenny Drew,
Freddie Redd, and Elmo Hope. Following Suite for Piano, in rapid
succession the group has released Ballades, Impromptus, and
Nocturnes
, which showcase specific song styles, as opposed to an overarching
compositional structure.
Ballades is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful collections
of songs I’ve heard in the past five years. Roeder’s bass recalls legends
like Sam Jones, Paul Chambers, and Cecil McBee, with his deep tones and
often surprising phrases. Call Smith the Billy Higgins or Tootie Heath of
the band to round out the midcentury touch points, with the melodic
sensibility of Tony Williams and Pete “La Roca” Sims, represented by that
paradoxical balance of gentle surging Smith brings to the album). Within the
ballad form, Zorn crafts 11 songs that use variable tempi, shifting meters,
and some of his most compelling harmonies to great effect.
On Impromptus, the trio approaches a form typically reserved for
solo performance. As a tight, working unit, Marsella, Roeder, and Smith
excel at moving with uniform purpose. Throughout the set, references to
previous Zorn works ebb and flow, with melodic quotes stretching into
lengthy group improvisations. Marsella’s piano playing has developed a
number of unique characteristics he elevates Zorn’s music into a notably
personal performance (it would be amazing to see another piano trio record
any part of this classically inspired series, the opportunities for
individual expression appear broad and well suited to multiple
interpretations). As with the impromptu form in its generally recognized,
albeit slightly out of fashion, style, the trio mixes a number of different
musical structures and contexts. Roeder’s driving bass lines flow steadily
alongside Marsella’s occasionally bright, singsong runs.
Nocturnes, per its traditional style, is a fascinating blend of the
impromptus and ballades, with a warmth and lushness that feels like a
natural outgrowth of the trio’s years of working closely together. In eight
nocturnes over 40 minutes, many of the familiar touchstones for Zorn’s
classically leaning work show their influence, Alexander Scriabin, Claude
Debussy, and the master of the form Fredéric Chopin. Personally, after
spinning these four albums nonstop, I’d add elements of Francis Poulenc and
Gabriel Fauré to the list (for both Impromptusand
Nocturnes
, truthfully), influences that have been less overtly prevalent in Zorn’s
music in the past, but the depth in the piano-bass voicing recalls early
20th century French explorations. Deep into the album, “Nocturne Nr. 6” and
“Nocturne Nr. 7” shimmer, with Roeder playing some gorgeously inventive bass
counterpoint.
I haven’t yet seen what more might be coming in this book of music, though
one can reasonably guess there will likely be an album of sonatas,
serenades, divertimenti, or perhaps a collective of singular forms like
toccata or rondo. Zorn previously composed and released a set of études,
The Turner Études, with pianist Stephen Gosling, which, for those
who want to go deep into Zorn’s compositional language, works almost like a
Rosetta Stone, with its quotes and recursions of various melodic snippets
from previous albums and books of music. With this ongoing book of music for
piano trio, however, Marsella, Roeder, and Smith are playing music that
feels less moored to the past, ironically, instead striking out to a
challengingly melodious future.
Sute for Piano
Ballades
Impromptus
Nocturnes