Search - Anthony [1] Coleman, Greg Evans, Tilt Brass Band :: Pushy Blueness

The disc Anthony Coleman was destined to make

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 02/23/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

""You can't get there from here"--a sentiment that almost perfectly applies to this fine recording.



According to the wonderfully informative liner notes by Coleman accompanying this disc, this is music that the artist has been seeking to record for many years. According to him, he got majorly sidetracked. Which, strangely, probably makes this music so evocative.



Coleman, long a staple of the NYC Downtown scene, as he honed his improv chops, mixing with the movers and shakers of that not inconsiderable aesthetic arena, perhaps, willy-nilly, prepared himself for music that bears slight resemblance to cutting-edge jazz aesthetic regularly on offer in that milieu.



What we've got here is chamber music, although of a type not likely to be heard anywhere else. For one thing, the musical soundscape varies wildly--everything from solo piano to brass ensemble to guitar/percussion duo to a trio of multi-instrumentalists that play, all told, eight different instruments. For another thing, Coleman seems to have a compositional strategy that melds serial composition to free improve, and everything in between.



One of the more striking moves he makes is to create a rather dense sound palette from which various instruments fade, giving way to hidden voicings that organically emerge from the decaying sounds. Another intriguing approach he takes is to juxtapose seemingly unrelated motific elements, only to have them mysteriously come together in the midst of vast harmonic sweeps.



This is music of immense suggestiveness, evoking mystical visions of huge consequence. The artist he reminds me most of, although sounding little like him, is Peter Garland. Both are able to wrench maximum feeling from (purposely) limited musical expression. Both exhibit a friendly iconoclasm in their approaches. Both create music of such profound emotional depth as to almost reduce listeners to tears of gratitude.



Highest recommendation."