Search - Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Joe Lovano :: I Have the Room Above Her

Musicans Who Listen to Each Other

David Keymer | Modesto CA | 04/22/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Paul Motian, I Have the Room Above Her (5*)

(Paul Motian, drums; Joe Lovano, tenor sax; Bill Frissell, guitar)



This is exceptional music played by experienced and inventive artists --musical brothers who listen to each other intently. The tunes have melodies but you won't be humming them to yourself afterwards. Nonetheless, they are melodic in the best sense of the word. Motian, Lovano and Frissell, all major musicians, have played together so long by now that they fit each other like glove to hand, making intensely musical statements on every cut of this album.



Motian, 75, is amazing. He doesn't eschew rhythm on these cuts but rhythm is clearly secondary. He drops the rhythmic drive that is central to the work of the great bop and post-bop drummers and instead produces a susurrus of displaced and subtle accents. His drumming is a matter of nudging and whispering, sounds wash up against the horns and disappear and reappear again.



What can you say about Lovano and Frissell? Though I have favorites among albums by Lovano, I've never heard him play badly. This is one of his very best, showing to the fullest his intelligent lyricism. His tone, occasionally an issue for me, is quietly gorgeous here. Frissell, playing in a context like this, adds hermetic, surprisingly lyrical solos as well. A+ for all three of them!

Dave Keymer

Modesto CA"

It kinda works...

Olukayode Balogun | Leeds, England | 03/13/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I heard great things about this album when it came out in 2005 but I wasn't so keen when I researched it further. Even though by then I was a fan of both Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell by that time, I thought: a whole album with just a saxophonist, a guitarist and a drummer? With no bass? And no keys? I just didn't think it would work. But the good reviews kept flowing and I finally decided to give the album a try.



In all honesty, it's not that far off from what I imagined. I think it's an acquired taste and will definitely put some people off but it kinda works, in an abstract, free or freestyle jazz kind of way. The absence of a bass player is taken care of by Frisell's expert playing - he could be playing a baritone guitar but it's not specified on the album - and while I've always known that Lovano's sax would blend well with a guitar courtesy of the work he's done with John Scofield, I didn't know it would be this good. In the end, I didn't even notice the absence of a keyboard player. And that is very rare, for me.



As for Paul Motian, for the person whose name is in bold type on the album cover, he seems happy to take a back seat to the other two players. It's not that his drumming is unnoticeable. Quite the opposite. It's just that to me, the overall impression is one where he's supporting the guitarist and sax player and not the other way round - which is probably how it should be anyway?



It's very minimalist in terms of structure. There's not much melody to hold on to, no groove to get into and not much of the usual melody, hook, melody, hook, improvisation, etc, arrangement that many jazz musicians use but producer extraoridnaire Manfred Eicher pulls it all together somehow. It's slowly grown on me and I don't usually go for this kind of stuff. My overall impression is very similar to another Bill Frisell/Paul Motian collaboration, i.e. Bill Frisell, Ron Carter, Paul Motian: way too cerebral for this simple-minded listener.



But I guess it was worth picking up. I can foresee an occasion where I'll be in the mood for something like this, and where I'll probably really enjoy listening to it. I just can't think of what that occasion might be, just now."

Music of a Standard Befitting the Masters Who Made It

W. Dent | Baltimore, MD | 09/09/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I repeat, this is music of a standard (and quality) befitting the masters who made it. This trio was born in 1981. Paul, Joe, and Bill were already active and highly respected musicians at the start! Throughout the twenty plus years these gentlemen have been playing as a trio, each have continued to enjoy residencies in other bands. Joe Lavano held a chair in The John Scofield Quartet from 1989 to 1993, both touring and recording as well as having appeared on a variety of other artist's cd's and performances. Paul Motian, who notably drummed for Bill Evan's first great trio back in the late fifties to 1964, has also played with the likes of Keith Jarrett and Paul Bley and a seemingly infinite cast of jazz greats among whom he is numbered. Bill Frisell has achieved a legendary status on the level of Miles Davis within the jazz world he inhabits. He has appeared with everybody from Elvis Costello to Rickie Lee Jones to Lyle Mays to Paul Bley and on and on and on. In short, these guys have learned and earned their mastery individually.



Their combined skills, influences, and experiences have everything to do with and nothing to do with this cd. In listening to the opening cut, Osmosis Part III, one gets the firm idea that this music has as much to do with the future as it might the past. The lack of a bass and the openness of Paul's drumming allows the space in which contrapuntal interplay achieves one of its' finest hours (the piece is not an hour long by the way...it just a figure of speech). If you were to write out Paul's playing on staff paper, the notation would reveal a linear movement among his limbs, always coaxing the music to it's logical end. Logical for with all of the talk about the avante garde and its' relationship to this cd, the true listener will find perhaps his/her greatest reward in discovering the lyrical, harmonic, and melodic qualities inherent in the music. It is through the spartan landscape of this instrumentation that such a sophisticated panorama unfolds. Although it is not always obvious, the notes chosen and the tones with which they are played by both Lovano and Frisell, reveal some of the most beautiful and emotionally charged tuneage this fan has heard in a while. It is made even moreso by the fact that it isn't obvious. There is something so profound about having the beauty of a piece reveal itself to you suddenly as it unfolds before your very ears. There are quite a few "O wow, I get it!" moments on this cd.



I read somewhere that the music on I Have the Room Above Her is both free and accessible at the same time. I would concur with that analysis in so far as the true riches of this cd must be gained through open ears and mind. That there are riches to be mined I can guarantee without hesitation. At times playful, at others challenging, the music as the last strains of Dreamland fade closing the set, reminds us that the intrinsic value pervading its' walls, is not in focusing on the technique of the players but in the emotions that technique allows them to communicate. And they do that if they do anything on I Have the Room Above Her. They definitely do!"