Brimingham Post, UK

ELLERY ESKELIN TRIO
MAC
Thursday 5th June


The first time that Baltimore-born tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin played in Birmingham, he only managed to pull in a minuscule gathering. Nevertheless, that gig was a revelation, a uniquely poised admixture of improvisation and composition.

At the time of that 1997 Custard Factory adventure, Eskelin was virtually unknown over here. Two years later, his trio played the same venue, with word-of-mouth drawing in a very healthy crowd. Tonight, Eskelin's moving across to the MAC, once again partnered by
accordionist/sampler Andrea Parkins and drummer Jim Black. They're nearing the climax of a three-week European tour, promoting Eskelin's new Arcanum Moderne album. So far, they've visited France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Poland.

The album is part of a series that's being sponsored by the Swiss HatHut label, with eight recordings already notched up since 1998. It's an immediately impressive release, striking out with a more groove-based posture, even if representing a strange manifestation of said hip-wiggling motion. The disc's middle contents head completely the other way,
cruising around in an abstracted, texture-washing zone. The whole set's given extra weight by its extremely upfront recording quality, highlighting the full substance of Black's bass drum attack in particular.

"The pieces are a bit longer, so there's a little bit more open improvisation" says Ellery. "I always like to balance the equation, play the things off each other, the open parts to the written ones. Sometimes, we try and make a seamless blend, and other times I try to make it pretty explicit. I lay things down on an intuitive level, and maybe if I'm lucky, I can look back on them over time and trace some kind of a thread of development."
Eskelin imbues his solos with a rich thread of jazz history, still loving the catarrh burr of his tenor forebears, clearly influenced by blues screamers and smooth serenaders alike. He's out there on the sonic frontiers, but believes passionately in the potential equal status of all musical forms. So, there's no aura of elitist experimentation, no cerebral distancing.

Andrea Parkins feeds her accordion through distorting and delaying guitar effects pedals, also using her keyboard to trigger an array of samples which can make her sound like a bassist, an organist or simply a pianist. At other junctures, she's impurely a noise-maker.
Meanwhile, Black's a master of timing and space-leaving, completely in tune with the texture and sound of his skins. As well as being steeped in free improvisation influences, he's obviously a creature who listens to funk, rock and all things electro-danceable.

Eskelin has now been living in New York City for 20 years, and unlike some composers, he finds it easier to write while he's at home. "I have to really create time to do it, because it's something that's not easy for me to do simultaneously with much else. I have to have a project and a deadline, really. Deadlines seem to spur the most creativity as far as writing is concerned. I can't have too many loose ends in my life. I have to be completely settled, which isn't always an easy state to achieve."

Ellery uses the old-fashioned methods, writing with a pencil and paper, using a keyboard. "I don't play the piano well at all, I just use it to find things that I'm hearing. What I write on the page is usually not terribly complex. Any of the complexity usually comes in the performance of the ideas. I think of myself as a writer for improvisers, creating a certain strategy for each piece, to make it a little different to the last one."

As the trio has been playing together for nearly a decade now, they've built up a formidable rapport. "There's less need for me to fill the page up with lots of information. It seems like the more we've played, the less I need to write. I like to set up scenarios which have a little bit of uncertainty to them, where it's not completely clear how we're going to accomplish the particular goal of a piece. The most challenging thing, I find, is just adapting to the different performance venues. Some of the rooms can be quite acoustically challenging. We played a couple of the bunker-type clubs in Germany, that are underground, quite hot and humid, so that affects the physical aspect of playing instruments. It's not as if we have a music that must be played a particular way. We're really flexible to the room, in as much as the room should be considered almost part of your instrument. You have to find a way to make what you do speak, in any kind of room, be it a large concert hall or some tiny, tiny little bar. That can be challenging, but I think it's a positive challenge..."

Eskelin doesn't devote himself entirely to this trio. He's been playing in the bands of Gerry Hemingway and Daniel Humair, as well as working in duo form with Han Bennink. This makes up an impressive trinity of American, French and Dutch drummers. "It's interesting that there's a cross-pollination between European and American musicians that's going
both ways, now," Ellery muses.

Eskelin's next album will add singer Jessica Constable to the trio setting. Originally from Derby, she'd been settled in Toulouse for a decade, and is now living in Paris. Ellery is also planning to co-lead a band with fellow saxophonist Dave Liebman, with both of these projects set to generate a wealth of new music.

The Ellery Eskelin Trio will be probing the MAC acoustics, tonight at eight [box office: 0121-440 3838]...

MARTIN LONGLEY