Thollem McDonas

Infinite-Sum Game

ESP -Disk’

Pianist, comprovisationalist (there’s one for you), educator, and too many other descriptors to mention, Thollem McDonas is new to these pages but is a well-established musician and personality. He has over 40 albums to his credit including six solo piano outings. 17 collaborations (several with William Parker and Nels Cline) and 13 various band projects which he led. A pianist since the age of five, McDonas’ music is most difficult to describe, although on this solo piano album, Infinite-Sum Game, we can comfortably say it touches classical, jazz, free jazz, and whatever lies in between. Throw in experimental. Yet McDonas is diverse enough to have led a punk rock band, Tsigoti, which has issued five albums. He has toured North America and Europe since 2006, performing solo works and collaborating with an array of musicians, dancers, dance companies, and filmmakers. We hear him in a live setting on this project, performed in Palermo, Sicily. Apparently, McDonas spends a fair amount of his nomadic existence in that part of the world as his bandmates in Tsigoti are all Italians.

These 13 pieces run for a full 60 minutes to the roaring approval of this audience who must have at times felt (like I did) that the unpredictable, thrilling nature of his music was akin to a day at an amusement park. McDonas goes in so many different directions, as coined by his term comprovisations. Perhaps it’s best to share some of his words. “… An “infinite-sum game” is the opposite of a ‘zero-sum game” in that all the participants benefit from each other, a symbiosis of sorts, biologically, culturally, financially, politically. It’s the heightened state of mind recognizing that our lives are better when others are also doing well and we put in the effort to facilitate the outcome.”   Granted, he is one heavy cat that unsurprisingly approaches the piano more like a mad scientist trying to wring out every possible sound from the instrument than a genteel concert pianist one would associate with classical or jazz. It makes for fascinating listening. Very little of it is sedate.

You should really stop here and just start listening. For those who want some description, read further although words are not adequate.

Opener “When Only Knows” moves from a thunderous crash and burn to shimmering right hand runs balanced by dense left hand chords with only the vaguest sense of melody.  He is clearly a two-handed pianist, but his left hand is especially fierce and powerful as exemplified again in “From Why We Came.” The minimalist note driven “All the Creatures” allows us to take a deep breath, initially a respite from the previous two, yet it too gets obtuse as he maneuvers through it with a series of rolling arpeggios. Oh! that left hand! The dramatic“Gathering Gatherings” is a series of jabbing lines as he alternates between the keys and pulling the piano strings, which at times gives it an Eastern tinge. After a brief pause, he launches into the aptly named “Fiercely Sweetly,” chaotically sweet on top, densely rumbling on the bottom

“Nomad Sunset” is quieter (certainly a relative term in this context), building on repetitive vamps that he deconstructs and embellishes. “Every Key Every Door” begins with the foreboding dark chords and proceeds to build mystery commensurate with the title.  Minimalist again in nature, space becomes the important partner as if the two are a duet. “The Sunrise Gang” begins like a hundred alarm clocks, each with a different theme, going off simultaneously. Yet, McDonas gathers himself for a series of gleaming runs that soon border on locomotive head banging decelerating to a calm close. “Feel a Drop of Rain for a While” is the tantalizing antidote.

 The balance of the album plies similar turf with his use of dynamics, among his many techniques, keeping one engaged. He treats the piano like a drum kit on “into the When,” and delivers a crazy mix of keys and string plucking in “Unmasking Now” akin to one playing a marimba in a scalar frenzy. (You may not think you are hearing solo piano on this track). “Forever Flow” seems attuned to nature. Close your eyes to picture that rushing stream, continually gaining momentum as it flows downhill. The closing “Symbi Oasis” returns to minimalism and drama before gathering momentum with a series of repetitive figures that take on amoeba like shapes through two different sections to the most abrupt ending. The audience cheers enthusiastically, but as a listener to the recording you will more likely feel exhausted, yet truly appreciative of the thrilling ride, certainly a singular solo piano experience.

 

– Jim Hynes

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