Ellery Eskelin
Vanishing Point
The music you are listening to was completely improvised. It was recorded in one six hour session. There was no rehearsal. There were little if any preliminary discussions other than "show up and let's play".
Of course I've played with these musicians before, just not all together at one time and place. But I knew it would work and in fact it was a pretty easy judgment call to make. All of the musicians are consummate performers on their respective instruments and all are imaginative improvisers able to make unique, personal musical statements in practically any setting.
As soon as we played the first pieces in the studio I knew that this project was going to be everything I had hoped it could be. The sound of strings and vibraphone, rich and deep, almost seems the perfect sonic setting for a tenor saxophone. I'd never done a string oriented project before, after all most jazz is horn-based using drums and bass as accompaniment. The use of strings is usually an afterthought for the purpose of enhancing the sonic pallet and they are not often employed in any interactive way. But it was just this type of interaction that we explored here that reminded me that the saxophone shares many characteristics with the string family. The early saxophone playing style (from around the beginning of the 1900's) was based in some measure on a string conception. In fact, this was also a time when violinists often doubled on saxophone in small dance orchestras. In my own way I've made a conscious attempt to model my phrasing on the modern classical string quartet in an attempt to capture the sense of movement and polyphony that is created when more than one instrument is playing. So this project was a natural for me.
I had originally intended to write music for this recording but postponed the idea in order to write music for "Ramifications" (hatOLOGY 551) instead since that instrumentation seemed to be calling me more strongly at the time. Upon returning to the string idea I realized quite quickly that with the musicians involved I might actually get to the core of what I was hearing (this aforementioned interaction) much more quickly, efficiently and purely if we were to improvise the entire program.
As noted in the liner notes to "Ramifications" this project is the followup to what came out of a series of duo and trio improvisations that I produced at the Internet Cafe in New York City some years ago. I discovered quite a bit in those improvisations and to date had not documented that type of playing with the possible exception of "Dissonant Characters" (hatOLOGY 534) with drummer Han Bennink or bassist Mark Helias' trio project "Come Ahead Back" (Koch). Both of those CDs captured much of the texture of open improvising but still relied to some degree on tunes and composition. I find that when the music abandons that last small degree of composition a surprisingly strong shift in orientation and attention results. Awareness of the overall form is heightened and perception of the musical details shifts to the relationship of those details to the whole rather than to any written material.
In many ways the music we've documented here comes across as quite "compositional" to my ear in as much as changes of texture, transitions, development and particularly the improvised "counterpoint" (meaning that the musicians are able to hold their ground and contrast each other's ideas as opposed to simply mimicking them) are concerned. There's always an ear for where we started, were we've been, where we're going and where we might end up.
As compared with some of my other more overtly "jazz" recordings I expect that the inevitable comparisons with classical music will be made with respect to this one. Obviously hearing strings in a "non-tonal" situation and without drums will conjure the easy comparisons. But that's OK with me. I've always loved classical music and this is my chance to operate about as closely to that sphere as I am ever likely to get. But it was not my intention to make a classical recording nor am I interested in the comparisons much beyond that. I've always thought of myself as a jazz player and as all the musicians involved in this recording have strong jazz backgrounds so...whatever...
One note of special interest, despite the fact that these pieces are credited to me all of the improvisations on this recording are in fact the result of equal input from all the musicians involved with only minimal direction from me.
When I listen back to the music perhaps the one feeling I get throughout all of the pieces is best expressed by the title of track number four, "Inquiétante Familiarité ". This phrase refers to the phenomenon that Freud described as a "strange nearness" (or "unheimlich" in the German). A strange familiarity or perhaps a familiar strangeness. Improvisation often has this quality for me. Taking what you know into the unknown...making the familiar unfamiliar...bringing the unfamiliar near...seeing things as if for the first time...
Ellery Eskelin
New York City
April 2001
Ellery Eskelin
Vanishing Point
Ellery Eskelin tenor saxophone
Mat Maneri viola
Erik Friedlander cello
Mark Dresser bass
Matt Moran vibraphone
1. Scatter Brain 5:45
2. Horizon Blue 10:28
3. Terra Firma 5:17
4. Inquiétante Familiarité 6:34
5. Transient 5:17
6. Still Life 4:05
7. Signal Drift 5:54
8. Paradigm 7:51
Total Time 51:11
Recorded on December 16th, 2000 at Avatar Studios, NYC. Engineered by Jon Rosenberg. Produced by Art Lange. Mix and CD master by Peter Pfister. Liner notes by Ellery Eskelin. All selections by Ellery Eskelin published by Tuhtah Publishing/Suisa.
thanks to: Mat, Erik, Mark, Matt, Jon, Peter, Art, WXU, Rolf Fehlbaum/Vitra, Philippe Méziat, Paul Lindemeyer and Michelle Van Natta.