David Dominique: Mask
Orenda Records

Much could be made of the fact that David Dominique's Mask grew out of painful experience, specifically the loss of his father, grandmother, and uncle in an eighteen-month span. Yet while the recording does grapple with grief, the nine-track set veritably bursts with excitement, energy, and purpose, the sound of someone refusing to be cowed by sorrow and instead intent on birthing music of joy and celebration. Yes, there are introspective moments, but Mask is in general more characterized by extroversion and exuberance than anything else. It's also distinguished by Dominique's fabulous compositions and arrangements, not to mention incredibly tight ensemble playing.

The tunes are typically restless, frenetic even, and as such mirror someone dealing with a sensibility fragmented by upheaval in both personal and physical senses (apparently, during the period of the album's composition, he moved across the country three times). It's the sound of someone wrestling with various artistic possibilities and personae, a creative force figuring out in real-time possible directions to pursue. Multiple strands intersect on Mask, from high-wire, quick-change playing of the type practiced by John Zorn and Ken Thomson (see “To Dave Treut,” for instance) to large ensemble jazz of the kind associated with twentieth-century jazz icons. Mask feels thoroughly of its time, yet Dominique seemingly drinks from the deep wells of Ellington and Mingus in a number of pieces, and when those blues-drenched horns (one of them plunger-muted) swell during “The Yawpee,” for instance, it's hard not to be reminded of similar flourishes within The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. There are playful, irreverent moments, too, where one could conceivably hear Dominique's outfit as a 2018 update of John Lurie's Lounge Lizards.

Befitting someone whose currently a professor of music composition and theory at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Dominique's writing is at times complex, but the musicians he assembled for the date are definitely up to the task: accompanying the leader on flugabone (a compressed valve trombone) are Brian Walsh (tenor sax, clarinets), Joe Santa Maria (alto sax, flute), Sam Robles (alto and baritone saxes), Lauren Baba (viola), Alexander Noice (guitar, electronics), Michael Alvidrez (basses), and Andrew Lessman (drums, drumKAT). It's worth noting that though Dominique's the composer and arranger, as a player he doesn't position his flugabone at the forefront; Mask presents ensemble performances where no one instrument is featured more than another.

Representative of the album's style and approach is the opening cut, “The Wee of Us,” which swings mightily despite its intricate design. Across three action-packed minutes, all involved lock into an uproariously swinging tune filled with multiple stop-starts and unison statements. Listen carefully and, when the group's not hammering away on a single chord, you'll hear repeated count-ins from the leader, with Dominique expertly slowing the tempo to gradually accentuate the material's sultry side. The rhythm section powers “Grief” with a slinky, Latin-tinged groove after which horns, woodwinds, and eventually voices entrance the listener with ascending-and-descending themes, whereas later, in a rare move away from jazz, rock'n'roll's the foundation for “Separation Strategies.”

December 2018