Ian Carey & Wood Metal Plastic

Strange Arts

 Slow and Steady

Trumpeter and composer Ian Carey pays homage to his recently passed visual artist father, to whom the cover and jacket art of the album owes. Leveraging a grant from Intermusic SF, Carey added a string trio to his working quartet, Wood Metal Plastic, comprised of alto saxophonist Kasey Knudsen, bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, and drummer Jon Arkin joining Carey. The string trio consists of cellist Jessica Ivry and violinists Alisa Rose and Mia Bella d’ Augelli. The music is an exploratory excursion into a mix of chamber music, post-bop, and free improvisation. Carey describes it this way, “It’s not dissimilar to some of my dad’s collages, where he may have started with a relatively simple drawing but ended up adding layers and layers of paper packaging and all kinds of found objects. I ended up taking a similar underlying approach, picking different combinations of people to improvise.”

 The bulk of the album is the commissioned five piece “Set for 7.” The first of these, “Chorale,” is inspired by a Bach keyboard suite and features Carey and Knudsen with the strings serving as the chorale underpinning the dialogue, which by turns is straightforward and feisty. “Ostinado” features the bass-drum tandem in a series of start-stop rhythms with plenty of tug-of-war motifs. “Nocturne for Violin” is the solo feature for Rose, a well-versed multi-genre player whose excursion grows intensely with micro shifts in tempo and dynamics.  The epic “Unforeseen (CGBG)” is inspired by Bay Area clarinetist and composer Ben Goldberg who made such vital contributions to albums by Todd Sickafoose and Allison Miller in 2023.  This one plays out in deliberate, dramatic, cinematic fashion with Carey and Knudsen first stepping forward before yielding to alternating calming and dissonant passages from the string trio, before being capped by crisp pizzicato violin runs.  The fifth and final segment is “Alien Anthropology,” refracted bebop that showcases Carey’s trumpet virtuosity and very zany segments from Knudsen and the strings.

The three remaining tracks also involve the septet, the standout of which is “I Still Remember Clyfford Still,” obviously a nod to the standard “I Remember Clifford.” (for iconic bebop trumpeter Clifford Brown) but something altogether different as its ‘gray’ opening owes to the stark black-and-white huge paintings from artist Clyfford Still.  Carey’s sly humor in his playing as well as the ensemble’s is especially ‘out’ here as they splash color after color onto that proverbial canvas. Carey’s unconventional improvisatory approach also takes shape on two of his existing pieces. The opening “Rain Tune” with bizarre sonics mimicking precipitation and the unpredictable series of solos. The strings certainly make their presence prominent on this opening track. “Sink/Swim” does much of the same in terms of water imagery as it accents the bass-drum tandem amidst the swirling strings and loquacious trumpet and alto. Knudsen’s aggressive, twisting solo mid-piece are her finest moments on the album.

If Carey is a new name for you, his cred is considerable. He studied at NYC’s New School under Cecil Bridgewater and Charles Tolliver, and on the composition side with Bill Kirchner and Maria Schneider. He built his improvisational chops working in classes with Joanne Brackeen, Andrew Cyrille, Billy Harper, and Reggie Workman. Since, he has logged considerable experience as both a sideman and leader of various ensembles in The Bay Area. Strange Arts is his sixth album, recorded pre-pandemic before his dad’s passing.

The fruits of that expert schooling and versatile experience on the bandstand are on vivid display here on Strange Arts, strange indeed but remarkably compelling as well.

• Jim Hynes

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