ramboy 09
€12.00
Michael Moore, clarinet
Marilyn Crispell, piano
Gerry Hemingway, drums, marimba, steel pan
1. Real Goods 7:18
2. Temperamental Annie 5:38
3. Sun House 3:26
4. The Pound Fell Down 10:50
5. The Bigger The Dot, The Better The Fishing 9:18
6. Clue? 4:00
7. Tsurau 9:18
8. Squaw Rock 3:28
All compositions by Michael Moore
Tracks 1-4 recorded live November 28, 1994,
De Singel, Antwerp, Belgium
Tracks 5-8 recorded December 23, 1995,
Nevessa Studio, Saugerties, New York
A searching, intimate trio featuring Gerry Hemingway on drums, steel pan and marimba and his long time collaborator Marilyn Crispell on piano.
"Marilyn Crispell and Gerry Hemingway have often played in
powerhouse Crispell-led trios with bassist - generally either Reggie
Workman or Barry Guy. Here on MGM Trio, Michael Moore brings his
clarinet and a set of originals, and becomes the third member of the
trio. Crispell and Hemingway adjust to him, and the group dynamic is
predominately light, playful and conversational.
Amid the slow, swinging, angular figures of "Real Goods", a
singsong line asserts itself; even as Moore and Crispell thicken
their playing, the essential feeling of swing remains, with Hemingway
keeping it going even as he displaces the beat with drum colors. The
playfulness and singsong qualities reassert themselves in other
pieces - in "Temperamental Annie" and " The Bigger the Dot, the
Better the Fishing", both of which find Hemingway on marimba.
Crispell's playing on this date is as consonant as anything she's
ever recorded, but on this piece her dense dissonances help bring the
music to its tensest moments. On "The Pound Fell Down", she plays
some of her characteristic icy clusters behind Moore's abstract
rubato: this piece, perhaps the most memorable of the date, increases
in density and peaks around 6:30; three minutes later it's Moore's
woodiest clarinet playing against the steel drums of Hemingway - a
sound hinted at earlier but more explicit here, and making for a
pretty ending.
It's Moore who keeps the melodicism explicit; overall, the
results are not unexpected, given his work with the Clusone Trio. As
for Crispell and Hemingway, this date is far from the heaviest one
they've made, but I expect to play it often."
Dale Smoak, Cadence, February 1997
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- Jazz Nu