Search - Ran Blake :: All That Is Tied (Dig)

Fascinating

Bazarov | Amsterdam, Holland | 12/15/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"After four decades of record buying, it's still a magical experience - discovering music that wins you over before you even like it.

To my shame, I guess, I had never heard of Ran Blake when Amazon's recommendations computer came up with All That Is Tied. Blake's portrait caught my eye (a face I would sooner have associated with a stern Dutch vicar than with an American jazz pioneer), and the product description seemed interesting. So what the hell, I gave the thing a mouse click.

Playing the disc for the first time, I immediately forgot that stern face and was captured (no, make that mesmerized) by the strangest piano music I'd heard in years. Wasn't quite sure I liked it, but I knew I would play it again and again, and that it would grow and grow. And I did, and it did.

All That Is Tied is devoid of hummable tunes, but rich in melody and harmony. The music is direct, sometimes even harsh, but always compelling and ultimately even soothing as song follows song to form a 55 minute masterpiece.

Is this jazz? Oh yes, unmistakably so. Every song has a marvelous sense of freedom about it, and the gospelly 'Latter Rain Christian Fellowship' will make you bounce in your chair with swing. But there's also an undeniable influence of (modern) classical composers like Ives, Messiaen, and Lou Harrison. Oh, and more than a hint of Bartok, especially the Microcosmos piano cycle.

This is definitely music for late at night, though not quite music to relax by, even if it does get you in a state I could only describe as (oops, big word) peace. It will astound you, perhaps even confuse you, but you will instantly be familiar with it. And now I'm out of paradoxities. Buy this album, it'll be money well spent."

SOLO PIANO OUTINGS BY TWO MODERNIST MASTERS

David Keymer | Modesto CA | 09/11/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Paul Bley. Solo in Mondsee. ECM (2007)

Ran Blake. All That Is Tied. Tompkins Square (2006)



A little late, I'd like to comment on these two solo piano recordings by avant garde masters Paul Bley and Ran Blake. They illustrate the particular excellences of two exceptional composers and pianists as well as the differences between them.



These ten songs by Paul Bley -they are called `variations,' no other title--were reportedly recorded in 2001 but they weren't released until 2007, when Bley was seventy-five. It is the second solo album by Bley since his groundbreaking Open to Love, released in 1972, and Homage to Carla, released (re-released?) in 2001. Bley's modernist credentials are impeccable: he has worked with Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden, Jimmy Giuffre and Steve Swallow, played gigs with Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Charles Mingus and Sonny Rollins, had a founding role in the modernist Jazz Composers Guild, and co-led the quirky fusion band in the early seventies with singer-composer Annette Peacock. His discography runs over 400 albums! Bley is the consummate pianist. His music is both approachable and modern. It is melodic -even lyrical when he wants to play lyrically--and he is a master of tempo. No one uses the pedals better than Bley: the range of dynamics in his playing adds a touch of romanticism to an approach that might otherwise appear austere. To my mind, he's the perfect pianist (well, since Tatum!). I greatly enjoy some, not all, of Keith Jarrett's monumental solo offerings -the Köln Concert and the concerts from Bremen and Lausanne--but next to Bley's exquisite miniatures (the shortest cut on this CD is 2:04 minutes long, the longest slightly under nine minutes), Jarrett's pieces seem like elephants!



How different Ran Blake's style of playing is! On this album, Blake plays twelve short compositions of his own: the shortest runs little over a minute (1:02) and the longest slightly over six minutes. Blake has been more reclusive than Bley, but this is his thirty-fifth recorded album. He was seventy at the time he recorded it. (Of interest only to me, he was born a year and ten days before I was.) I associate Bley with his longtime collaborator, singer Jeanne Lee, and -on one glorious album, Masters from Different Worlds (1994)--the ardent tenor sax player Clifford Jordan. Rhythm has never been Blake's bag but dynamics are. When I think of Blake's moody compositions and playing, it is the space I remember. The piano stops, chords linger, then silence, then he moves on. This is an awfully limp description but what Blake achieves by deliberateness and the sparing use of silence is to make you weigh each chord as he plays it.



Two first-rate pianists and composers, two excellent albums, both worth buying. The songs on them do not lose interest with repeated listenings."