Label: Clean Feed Records
Release date: 05/19/2019
Production: Jazz Cerkno & Cene Resnik
Album length: 55.43 min
Genre: free jazz
Rating: 9.5 /10
Cene Resnik, the Slovenian tenor saxophonist, played the 23rd edition of the Jazz Cerkno festival in 2018. With help from the Slovenian Ministry of Culture and the excellent support of the organizing team at Zavod Jazz Cerkno, the Portuguese label Clean Feed Records decided last year to release a live recording of the acclaimed Slovenian jazzman’s performance. For the occasion, Cene called up pianist Giorgio Pacorig and drummer Marko Lasič. That’s how Free Stellar Trio ended up on stage, and they were joined on stage by none other than Rob Mazurek, the legendary Chicago king of the cornet, who this time played the entire gig on piccolo trumpet. Resnik had talked with this legendary figure of the Chicago jazz scene several times before the show about how they’d love to play together on stage someday. The chance finally came in Cerkno.
Free Steelar Trio and Rob Mazurek walked onto the stage with no plan whatsoever. They played a good 55 minutes of music and just one single track (Age Of Chaos). Resnik says the title matches the (sorry) state of the world today, though let’s be honest, no style, however free-jazzy or avant-garde, can match or top the boundless, mindless chaos we’re all slaves to.
Let’s put the grumbling aside for a moment and get to the music. Resnik, who swears by the organic, classic sound of his instruments, first thought about using an electric piano instead of a piano, but in Cerkno Pacorig sat down at the piano. Maybe the reason he considered the electric piano is that Joe Zawinul himself once taught Resnik. Tenor sax and piccolo trumpet create a phenomenal sonic contrast, and Resnik pretty much won the hand right from the start with a royal flush. Still, the key to this extremely interesting adventure, a musical journey that, alongside its pleasing musicality, is mostly driven by the engine of free jazz, is simply the fact that the band walked onto the stage without a plan. That’s not new anymore, but every lineup of musicians creates its own distinct musical experience with this approach, and every gig is a one-off, unrepeatable event.
Rob Mazurek tipped the scales several times that night, as Free Stellar Trio had to get on the same wavelength fast with the language of the piccolo trumpet, which was a unique challenge and a brand-new experience for Resnik, Pacorig and Lasič. The (Native American-style) cries around the half-hour mark of the show, combined with piccolo trumpet bits inside Resnik’s solo (on tenor sax), are just one of the added values of Rob Mazurek’s remarkable insight and sparkling spirit. Resnik, too, is armed with the finesse of countless articulations for coaxing sounds out of the tenor sax, breathing into every single note a feeling, an impression, an emotion that is born with each note played and echoes with it into eternity. That takes a great deal of refinement, softness and total relaxation, which come to the surface especially in the parts where the tenor sax is completely alone, or intertwines with just one other instrument.
In such a loose musical setting, the musicians feel completely unbound. Their genius comes to the fore, the natural talents of the individuals, who through repeated spontaneity reflect the moment and shine in full glory and uniquely. But through all of this you have to juggle very skillfully with intuition, with instinct, and at times with extreme deliberateness and concision. Looseness and slackness don’t mean you can cause actual chaos and a “collapse” of the system, even though the album occasionally wants to suggest exactly that. The mutual “feeling out” and sensing of the building blocks of sound is masterful. One musician takes the initiative (improvising) and develops a spontaneous motif, the rest of the crew joins in, and then the lead instrument hands the scepter of improvisation to another, and so the story unfolds unbridled from the first second to the last, in the glow of total jazz freedom.
The musicality is outstanding too, with the crew constantly and skillfully calibrating the heavier parts, the ones with concrete solo free-jazz outbursts or completely loosened-up forms of improvisation. The piece is also built so that the band members pass the solo initiative around. One after another they step into improvisational passages, with remarkable flexibility and conciliation between them. Incredible chemistry and intuitive playing. Marko Lasič’s contributions are essential in widening and deepening the sonic landscape and contrasts. The interaction of the sound’s building blocks makes full use of the available sonic space and blends the sonic pastels in a truly phenomenal way.
“Age Of Chaos” brings exceptional cohesion, an extraordinary symbiosis in the one-of-a-kind coexistence of four building blocks of a unique story of free-jazz vistas, which were born a year after the Cerkno show once more, this time at Kino Šiška in Ljubljana. But in a considerably different form. It’s an absolute original in the gorgeous galaxy of free jazz. With this kind of interpretation and approach, every birth of this lineup mirrors itself as a new story. One of a kind, in other words.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Age Of Chaos
Lineup:
Cene Resnik – tenor saxophone
Rob Mazurek – piccolo trumpet
Giorgio Pacorig – piano
Marko Lasič – drums
