Lina Allemano Four: Pipe Dream
Lumo Records

As intrepid Canadian trumpeter Lina Allemano splits her time between Toronto and Berlin, it's safe to say the travel restrictions imposed by the COVID pandemic hit her especially hard. And consistent with that, the central piece on Pipe Dream, her seventh album with her longstanding acoustic quartet (eighteen years!), addresses it directly in the multi-part suite Plague Diaries. One need only scan its movement titles—“Longing” and “Trying Not To Freak Out,” two examples—to derive a clear sense of the despair and uncertainty that she, like so many others, experienced during the period's earliest days. Such a shutdown would prove especially challenging for Allemano, who leads five projects and manages her label Lumo Records. Sitting still is clearly not her nature. Yet despite those limiting conditions, she was still able to write and in the initial months of the pandemic used that opportunity to create the material for the suite, a so-called “musical diary” whose four movements are each introduced by an unaccompanied solo from the individual members. That gesture adds to the work's distinctive design whilst also accentuating the isolation all four musicians struggled with.

Recorded in Toronto in February 2021, Plague Diaries and the other pieces, “Banana Canon,” “Pipe Dream (on Prokofiev Theme),” and “Dragon Fruit,” are described as exemplifying Allemano's ‘orchestral' compositional aesthetic and the group's chamber-jazz sensibility. Rather than doing something crude like alternating between classical-influenced notated sections and improv-driven jazz parts, she's instead deftly woven improvisations into compositions whose structures convey the richness of classical writing; it's also possible to view each quartet member as representing a distinct section of a symphony orchestra. The material poses daunting challenges, but she, alto saxophonist Brodie West, double bassist Andrew Downing, and drummer Nick Fraser meet it handily, their many years together obviously a key factor in their ability to do so. That Downing bows to a far greater degree than most acoustic bassists also strengthens the classical connection.

The sophistication of Allemano's concept is evident the moment “Banana Canon” opens with repeating march rhythms and overlapping parts. Here we already see the cleverness of her writing in the way the musicians' patterns coalesce; remarkable too is the way the four execute with a loose, free-form abandon without losing sight of compositional form. The interplay between her and West is particularly striking, but in truth the dynamic performance flatters all four. The classical connection works its way into the album directly in drawing on Prokofiev for the title track. An undercurrent of foreboding permeates the writing and performance, that darkness consistent with the bleakness of the pandemic's early days. Again we hear the four eschewing standard moves for unconventional ones, with Fraser, for example, exchanging jazz swing for punctuations more redolent of an orchestra's percussion section. “Dragon Fruit” exudes the drama of a spy novel, its ominous, blues-tinged theme sounding vaguely like something Ornette Coleman might have written. As soloists, the front-liners, often heard entwining their expressions, consistently dazzle, and there are moments when Allemano's blustery attack calls to mind that of fellow boundary-pushers Don Cherry and Lester Bowie.

Fittingly, it's she who's up first as a soloist in the suite, her assured, acrobatic turn flowing seamlessly into the frantic, full-group declamation “Longing.” After West establishes a mood of reflective calm in his spotlight, “Trying Not to Freak Out” follows though with fluidly overlapping patterns that abruptly transition into stop-start disruptions, such chaotic gestures consistent with the pandemic's disorienting impact. “Hunger and Murder” has the feel of a dirge and elegy, this part perhaps having been written with the monumental death toll wrought by COVID on Allemano's mind. Fraser introduces the final part, “Doom and Doomer,” with a furious solo that sets the scene for an equally vicious group statement. Talk about inspired—the energy of the performances throughout the release is explosive.

April 2023