Andy Milne and Unison

Time Will Tell

Sunnyside

Pianist and composer, Andy Milne follows up his 2021 Juno Award winning Jazz Album of the year for Group, The ReMission (2020), (covered on these pages) with Time Will Tell, rendered by his same Unison trio of bassist John Hébert and drummer Clarence Penn.  While the previous album was themed on his cancer diagnosis, treatment, and recovery (per the title), this also centers on a life changing set of events, his birth family history as Milne is an orphan and has long engaged in such a pursuit.  These attempts proved futile until 2018 when the gift of an Ancestry.com DNA test from his wife, singer La Tanya Hall, provided a breakthrough. The match led him to his first cousin, and then an escalating series of discoveries finally led to his birth mother.  As you might expect, this music is searingly emotional.

Opener “Purity of Heart” features frequent collaborator, tenorist Ingrid Laubrock, with whom Milne recorded the 2022 album Fragile. She has considerable chops as witnessed first-hand by this writer in her appearance with Myra Melford’s Fire and Water ensemble at Big Ears 2024. Laubrock also graces three other tracks. “Beyond the Porcelain Door” begins with steady, chiming piano before the saxophone enters with short emphatic bursts, then retreats to the former with Hébert’s arco bass coloring the mysterious sonic palette to connote the unknown journey with Laubrock making poignant statements in her return stints. Like a few of the pieces here, it seems like two compositions in one. “Kumoi Joshi” also shifts tempo and tone.

 Milne also augments his trio sound by inviting koto virtuoso Yoko Reikano Kimura to perform on four compositions. These two also share history together. Milne’s curiosity about Buddhism as a college student led him down the path of listening intently to Japanese string music, mostly the koto. He created the multidisciplinary project Strings & Serpents, which featured a piano duo, a koto duo, and an animated film. This led to him inviting Kimura to join Unison for a gig. Milne loves the complementary and opposite sonic qualities the instrument has with the piano, by turns delicate and wild. She first appears in the dramatic “Lost and Found,’ adding an eerie element to this minimalist, pensively deliberate piece. On “Beyond the Porcelain Door,’ “Kumoi Joshi,” and “Lost and Found Reprise” she teams with Laubrock and the trio, making it effectively a quintet.

“Kumoi Joshi” reveals a wide range of koto playing from the gentle to the energetic, including a solo from Kimura. Laubrock’s playing shifts between contemplative and anguished, to signify the painful moments along Milne’s quest. The pianist is similarly undulating, and liquid in his rendering. “The Lost and Found Reprise” adheres closely to its predecessor with the middle section becoming animated and expressive while the beginning and closing sections remain melancholy.

 Four trio pieces are positioned among the quintet offerings. Penn wrote “Papounet,” the title being his children’s term of endearment for their grandfather.  This one has riveting trio interplay with the bassist and drummer pushing Milne into percussive, lively mode, only to return to album-centric searching style as the tune evolves and ceases abruptly. “No Matter What” also conjures moments of excitement threaded with the pondering, thoughtful ones. Hébert’s ballad, “Broken Landscape,” offers the widest canvas for the bassist to paint with his robust plucking set against Penn’s sensitive brush work in concert with Milne’s shimmering pianism, often gleefully expressive here. The project closes with Milne’s “Apart,” a suspenseful piece triggered by the bass intro and fluttering cymbals preceding Milne’s ringing, melancholy single notes, and block chords.  Like the others, it threatens to shift tempo and tone but never does, remaining in the contemplative zone, commensurate with the bulk of the music here. Even though Milne has made some discoveries about his family origins, his search clearly continues. He effectively brings the listener into his personal quest.  This is mostly close-your-eyes, transportive, dreamy fare.

• Jim Hynes

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