Dan Weiss

Even Odds

Cygnus

Dan Weiss is one of the leading drummers in jazz and bandleaders of the first order, highly respected in new and improvised music, both acoustic and electronic. His swath is wide, also embracing Indian classical music, contemporary classical, West African, extreme metal, and atmospheric, emotional cinematic music.  This effort, Even Odds, with its title suggesting gambling, is especially unique. First, it’s not often that one finds twenty tracks on a single jazz album. Second and more importantly, although it is common to have drummers compose music, typically they compose melodies and harmonies for the players and instruments involved with the notion of the drums and rhythm section in support of the piece. On fourteen of these tracks, Weiss flips that script, composing the piece with drum grooves in the forefront and challenging his trio mates to improvise around them. It helps immensely that Weiss has been playing with pianist Matt Mitchell (Anna Weber, Tim Berne, Ches Smith, and many others) and recent Grammy winning altoist Miguel Zenon for the past few years. (this writer confesses to bias for any recording involving Zenon) If you knew none of this and just listened to the album cold, you might react by saying, “Wow, I’ve never heard drums so prominent in a saxophone trio.”  Having read this though, explorative types will be eager to dig in, knowing that much of what transpires is spontaneous and unpredictable.

You may be wondering what about the other six pieces. Yes, those are more through composed conventional trio pieces with the musicians improvising around the written material. In the liners Weiss states, “Prior to the recording, we got together, and I demonstrated the drum grooves and gave them a brief history of where the ideas came from. They listened, recorded the grooves on their phones, and a week later we made the record…the hardest part about the session was picking take one or take two.” The trio composed pieces are interspersed with the fully improvisational ones, which come in a couple of intriguing sequences and there’s symmetry involved in the pairings. “Recover the Mindset” with “M and M,” “Too Many Outs” with “Runner Runner” and “Bribes and Ultimatums” feature first an unadorned Weiss drum track, the latter a response from Mitchell and Zenon to the opener. Mitchell’s chiming piano and Zenon’s exclamations on “Horizontal Lifestyle” which precedes “Vertical Lifestyle” reverses the process with the duo holding court on the first piece while Weiss joins on the latter. Similarly, “Conversing with Stillness” begins with the full trio before Weiss drops out midway, leaving Zenon and Mitchell in a balladic mode. The closer “Nusrat” is a surprise in that Zenon’s melodic lines and the undulating groove suggest a fully composed trio piece, yet it too falls into the “challenge” column. Maybe it’s just the sequencing, but it could suggest that by the end of the session this was a well-oiled machine capable of accepting any such dare. The tune is named for the Pakistani Qawwaii singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and transplants a table rhythm on to the kit.

Generally, one can identify the trio composed pieces just by the length. Although the opener “It Is What It Is” suggests complacency, the sonics ring with tension and agitation.  “The Children of Uvalde” is aptly mournful with Mitchell’s definitively somber chords and Zenon’s alternating whispering and angst-soaked tones. Also in the tender category is another six-minute piece “Fathers and Daughters,” with the tone, by contrast, exuding joy. “Iititrefren” is Wayne Shorter’s “Nefertiti” spelled backwards in a nod to iconic composer and saxophonist. Weiss also naturally pays homage to legendary drummers with “Max Roach” and “Bu.” The former is inspired by Roach’s patterns on Birds” “Klactoveedsedstene” while the Art Blakey piece takes the drummer’s pattern and reimagines it in the vein of a tabla composition. Titles such as “Five to Nine” and “Nineteen to the Dozen” display further exploration of tricky meters.

Throughout the trio courses through shifting rhythmics, dynamics, and emotions. Strap yourself in for an exhilarating ride.

• Jim Hynes

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