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Show Mother; This is an advance copy of the review that will appear in the .May issue of DOWN BEAT magazine. IVY JAZZ 2820 EAST 4135 SOUTH SALT LAKE CITY UTAH 84124 801/277-1341 f ecord reviews a static plucking/strumming guitar passage alto tones become a mournful melody with long arches of sobbing tones; a sort of Johnny Hodges revised by Albert Ayler. Presently Braxton is in the midst of a most creative period, which includes a major work, Composition 113 (Sound Aspects 003). All of his recent recordings/are ipso facto important. By now, the two English artists, Bailey and Parker, seem to'haye been accepted by American audiences fox the valuable innovators they are. So these additions to the relatively few of their recordings available on this side of the Atlantic are definitely welcome. And listeners new to the music of these two are urged to seek their earlier Incus solo albums in particular for examples of Parker and Bailey at their most rewarding. -john Htweiler PAUL ELLINGSON PAUL ELLINGSON SOLO JAZZ PIANO VOLUME ONE-Ivy Jazz IJI-E1-2: Universal Flux; Go Down Moses; Little Laura; Night In Tunisia; Continumorphic; Pete Kelly's Blues; The Purples; Without A Song,- CoAt Train; So Long Monk; Key Largo; The Spacial Model; Pow Wow; Sets Of Three; Re:Person I Knew; Extreme Nonfunction; The Lord's Prayer; Artistry In Rhythm; America The Beautiful; Deep Space; I Loves You Porgy; Kurt Sandholtz; Infinite Variety. Personnel: Ellingson, piano. . . • • • It's been 29 years since George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept Of Tonal Organization was published; perhaps the time is ripe for ""a-^iew theorist to sweep the cobwebs from our conceptuajoutlook, to force us to re-evaluate and reorganiz^Qur musical materials, to approach jazz comp$£sition and improvisation from a new, liberating vantage point. And, at its best, Paul Ellingson's theory is liberating. In the long, detailed, provocative album jacket essay which houses this two-record release he. at times, is indeed eloquent. Ellingson writes: "Jazz is nonresolving, infinitely varied, random, suspended, free yet disciplined, an infinite series of unique vertical combinations. Jazz needs literature on the imaginative possibilities of graded polytonality. Any chord can be followed by any chord and any note can be played against any chord as long as there is an imaginative balance between consonance and dissonance." This, I think, is theorist Ellingson at his strongest. At his weakest, he is merely polemical, espousing an absolute faith in making a naive distinction between European music and American music (at times he sounds ringingly Emersonian) all the while naintaining the clear-cut separateness of vetical (i.e. American) and horizontal (i.e. Eu~pean) organizational systems. It's the mark of the polemicist that he sees things in abstract categories of absolute rather than graduations of grey, in ebbs and fluxes, in contractions and expansions. However time will assess Ellingson's contributions, the proof of whicr this theoretical pudding is in the hearing. A piece like Universal Flux highlights his strengths. Ellingson favors rhapsodic, arhythmic music musings. (Ellingson's theory inexplicably overlooks jazz's African tradition.) Chords-and this is the center of Ellingson's posture-are treated as isolated events, shorn oc their contextual meaning. The key center doesn't meander, it's simply never clearly articulated, or at best is equivocal. It takes, I suspect, a player with a stronger melodic sense than Ellingson to bring off music like this. Other pieces, like Uttle Laura are simplistic, like an exercise, as though the player were asking us to genuflect in front of Mother Goose. Ellingson is on stronger ground when he approaches standards like Without A Song and / Loves You Porgy, for vehicles like these have built in melodic strengths lacking in his own compositions. George Russell showed us how to piay through changes. Ellingson's theory, for all its flaws, may just revitalize our Interest in playing on top of them, or-better yet-force us to reevaluate the very way in which we think about improvisation. -jon bdkras MARK HELSAS THE CURRENT SET-Enja 5C41: The Curaent Set; No Passport; Rebound; G^frr/NGS From L C. ; Nuclear One; Eupsis. Personnel: Helios, bass; Tim Berne, alto saxophone; Robin Eubanks, trombcre; Greg Oiby, soprano saxophone (cuts !, 5, 6); Victor Le-s/is, drums; Herb Robertson, trumpet, cornet, ffcge/-horn; Nana Vasconcelos, percjssion, voice (4). • • • • DAY: HOLLAND QUINTET THE RAZO S EDGE-ECM 1353: Brother Ty; Vedina; Razor's Edge; &wes For CM.; Voinx, our Six; Wights V/ajts For Weights; Fig(t T: |