Forms

by Thom JurekOf all the downtown New Yorkers on the jazz scene, especially those who come from the avant-garde, saxophonist Ellery Eskelin is the one who has made the most use of the various forms of the jazz tradition. Here, accompanied by bassist Drew Gress and drummer Phil Haynes, Eskelin makes an overt gesture to his influences on the one hand, but uses his abilities to work out further inside the given forms he's learned. Hence, all the tracks -- with the exception of a phenomenal reading of Duke Ellington's "African Flower" -- are elemental structural pieces designed to express the very form they were composed in, which includes the album's concluding piece, Dizzy Gillespie's "Bebop." But it isn't enough to play exercises, at least not for Eskelin; he has to make creative use of these shapes and extend his compositional and improvisational palette, too. On "Blues," he takes the standard I-IV-V progression and gradually opens it up to include the bopper's take on playing the scales in interval. With "In Three," he uses triplets, triads, and the trio itself as compositional devices, working combinations of the three sonorities to exemplify that an entire composition can be made infinite by a trio with just three of the right notes played by the right three players. On "Latin," Gress and Haynes get to work out their craftiness in polyrhythmic time and irregular intervallic figures as Eskelin seeks folk melodies and modalism to anchor himself in the middle. Finally, with "Bebop," he takes Gillespie's original anthem as far outside as he can, keeping the same changes and harmonies, but turns up the heat and cranks the timbral palette to the outside, stuttering and spewing from his horn as Gress punctures the rhythm with a breathtaking solo. This is Eskelin jazz, folks; it's full of pathos, humor, and musically sanctified soul.