The Crux: Selected Solo Wind Works 1989-1992

by Thom JurekIf only this were a double or triple or quadruple CD. If only this were the complete works for New Winds. Crux is an appetizer, a signpost in the life America's most intimate composer and improviser. From his New Winds projects to his involvement in the group Semantics to his solo concerts, these works are the result of a career-long fascination with the solo concert, the solo as a means of discovering the depth and breadth of your creativity and putting it out there for others to hear. Rothenberg's playing, particularly on the alto saxophone, has been deeply influenced by his nearly two-decade-long study of the Japanese shakuhachi flute and its attendant form of meditation music "Honkyoku." From his early recordings where his saxophone pieces were filled with fluttering, galloping skeins of notes come a more spare -- though certainly not underactive -- approach to exploring tonality and timbre. Works such as "Sokaku Reibo" reflect the open, methodical mannerisms of the shakuhachi, as it pursues its own limited scale and makes it rich in tonal and vibrational variation. Rothenberg has taken these attributes and combined them with the circular breathing technique and adapted them for alto with stunning results. His shakuhachi piece, "Do Omoi," is a reflective work from the meditative tradition, but includes Western accents and scalar considerations in a slow cascade of arpeggios that are more about duration and space than dynamics or structural architecture. Also showcased here are the dedication pieces based on stylistic influences. There is the title track and "Epistrophical Notions," both mirroring the different sides of Thelonious Monk's music as it reaches out from jazz and meets Rothenberg's idiomatic compositional concerns and touches Monk's "Round Midnight" and "Epistrophy" for confirmation of the balance -- he passes the tests. There is also a work reflecting the deep funk of James Brown. Though it isn't a funk piece, it creates a revolving door repetition around a pair of figures and time signatures that are formulaic figures for Brown and his horn section. The piece, "Maceo," is dedicated to the saxophonist himself, the primary architect of the sound of the Fabulous Flames. In all, Rothenberg offers a startling array of his compositional motifs and his tendency to allow, even in the most rigid of his works, the place for improvisation for them to be current and new each time they're performed -- if only by the composer himself. This is easily one of Rothenberg's most important works; if only there were more.