The Burton Greene Trio — On Tour
Actually, this is a very quiet album, the quietest 'free jazz' I have ever heard. This trio's use of silence, space and restraint borders on the absurd. The performers will hold a dead silence in the middle of a piece for up to several minutes, never using a sudden sound from one of the members as an excuse to startle the listener with cacophany. Unlike so much free jazz, there is no intended pain.
Yet there is no clearly concern for the audience either; structures are whimsical in the extreme. With active disregard for meter and tonality, Greene's piano chromatically spirals from bottom to top of its range. The drummer is entirely occupied with the controlled ebb and flow of circling fills and taps, which stop and start in purely intuitive intervals. The band often sees fit to abruptly dissipate any momentum they've created.
The effect is confusing; there is nothing for the mind to attach to. I do enjoy the intense focus emanating from the musicians at all times; even in the nearly silent moments one can sense they are poised.
To get a moment of real musical pleasure I had to wait until the 3rd track "Tree Theme", but it is quite a moment. Greene finally allows a lilting, melancholic melody, rooted in the multifaceted nostalgic scales of jazz. That he is an exquisite pianist in the traditional sense, capable of expressing great emotion, becomes evident. The piece of course wanders back into dissonance and freeform daydreaming, but maintains a closer semblance of meter than anything else thus far.
The remastering sounds both clear & warm; not overly compressed, sharp or bright. I've never heard the sound of the original release, but the sound of this disk is quite satisfactory.
Conclusively, I don't enjoy much of this disk, but perhaps that is my failing. There is so much space and meandering here that my mind inevitably wanders. These musicians are both technically skilled and very focused, but their intentional move from any conventional musical reference point makes it difficult to interpret what they are doing, especially considering the absence of the catharsis and aggression present in most free jazz. I have no issue with atonality, but when the band seems determined not to let any sense of rhythm cohere, it becomes frustrating. The sense of movement they've created may be original, but it can be unsatisfying. Admittedly, my favorite moment on the album is by far the most conventional bit of jazz. If you're a serious listener of free jazz, or you can actually absorb and enjoy the musical works of people like Morton Feldman, you might enjoy this, but otherwise, it will likely feel like you've purchased a CD with almost nothing on it.