Chris Speed / Dave King / Reid Anderson / Tim Berne: Broken Shadows Live
Screwgun
As Broken Shadows, saxophonists Tim Berne (alto) and Chris Speed (tenor) partner with The Bad Plus's bass-and-drum unit, Reid Anderson and Dave King, on an hour-long homage to Ornette Coleman, Julius Hemphill, Dewey Redman, and Charlie Haden; as the band name intimates, material by Coleman's the primary focus but pieces by the others are performed too. All four members have connections of one kind or another to the honourees. Berne, for example, was once a student of Hemphill's and shared the front-line with John Zorn on 1989's Spy vs. Spy: The Music of Ornette Coleman album. This Screwgun release isn't the only document of the band's playing, by the way, as the quartet also was featured on one of the six albums in 2019's Season Four box set from Newvelle Records.
Many a live date is marked by evidence of its setting, of course, but the sound quality of this digital-only release, recorded in 2019 at Korzo in South Slope Brooklyn, is particularly raw. It's like one of those sets that's been captured surreptitiously on a tape recorder, with ambient noise—tinkling glasses, bottles clinking, and the like—a constant accompaniment to the band's incendiary playing and the boisterous crowd. If at times the setting's too intrusive—noise from the bar competes for the listener's attention during the unaccompanied bass intro to Haden's “Song for Ché,” for example—it at the very least creates a vivid sense of place.
Sound issues aside, the performances, from a blues-wailing “Humpty Dumpty” at the outset to the low-riding “Dogon A.D.” (the record that got Berne started in music, apparently) an hour later, roar. Anything but a polite tribute, Broken Shadows Live is seething and scabrous, and the audience is as vocal as attendees cheering on boxers at a heavyweight match. Solos are regularly followed by whoops and shouts of appreciation (a clearly audible “beautiful!” is heard when “Song for Ché” ends). The playing is at times rough—the saxophonists' unison voicing at the start of “Humpty Dumpty” could have been more precisely executed, for instance—but there's no denying the at times volcanic energy the four generate, no more proof needed than the tumultuous fireball that is Redman's “Walls Bridges.”
On “Toy Dance,” the vociferous attack of Anderson and King makes it seem as if they're channeling Haden and Ed Blackwell from Ornette's early quartet. A natural inclusion is, of course, his affecting dirge “Broken Shadows,” which features the saxophonists weaving lines around one another, King sitting out and Anderson bowing. For Hemphill's “Body,” the quartet opts for a funky, gutbucket groove, the saxes declaiming joyously and the others serving up greasy swing. Raw Broken Shadows Live might be, but the affection the four have for the material and its creators is emphatically communicated. It would be hard to imagine any jazz musician, for that matter, not thrilled to be playing tunes such as “Humpty Dumpty” and “Ecars” when their singing melodies are so fertile and ripe for reinvention.August 2020