Darryl Harper: Chamber Made
Stricker Street Records

With Chamber Made, clarinetist Darryl Harper blurs the boundaries between jazz and classical and in so doing carries on the work done by Duke Ellington, George Russell, Gunter Schuller, The Modern Jazz Quartet, and others, all of who shared the conviction that the walls separating the forms are more permeable than believed. If anyone's capable of bridging the gap, it's Harper, a Philadelphia native who's Associate Professor in the Department of Musicat Amherst College and leads a number of outfits, including The Onus (with bassist Matthew Parrish and drummer Harry ‘Butch' Reed), Into Something (with pianist Kevin Harris) and the C3 Project, an octet whose multimedia focus encompasses dance, video, and poetry. Harper's also played with acclaimed figures such as Regina Carter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Roscoe Mitchell, Dave Holland, and Uri Caine. The energy he brings to academic work amplifies his thoughtful and historically aware approach to music-making, which helps makes him an even more vital artistic force in the studio and on stage than he might be otherwise.

Adding considerably to the forty-four-minute album's appeal is variety. Whereas two tracks feature The Onus, another's a solo clarinet piece and two multi-movement works feature a clarinet quartet and clarinet with string quartet, respectively. In featuring a clarinet-bass-and-drums unit, The Onus tracks are the ones closest in spirit to jazz, with guitarist Freddie Bryant's “Kaleidoscope” opening the album sinuously and Stevie Wonder's “Cash in Your Face” ending it as memorably. The trio's playing on “Kaleidoscope” locates that sweet spot between loose and tight, attributable no doubt to the history the three share. Harper glides acrobatically across an ever-evolving backdrop, Reed punctuates the music with inventive commentary, and Parrish elevates the performance with a dynamic solo that calls to mind the great Fred Hopkins.

Shifting gears, “Kaleidoscope” gives way to Ryan Truesdell's three-part Suite for Clarinet and String Quartet featuring Harper and the Wistaria String Quartet. True to the album theme, the playing of Sarah Briggs (violin), Kaila Graef (violin), Wayne Smith (cello), and Delores Thayer (viola) gravitates in a jazz direction much as Harper's inclines towards classical. Genre boundaries collapse throughout the work, making it one that defies easy categorization. The movements are notated, but there's also room for interpretation, and consequently the performance feels as if it's lifting off the page into a freer zone, the impression bolstered by Harper's playing in particular. Consistent with the multi-movement structure, the parts possess different characters, the hushed “Branches of Night,” for example, exuding the kind of creeping anxiety the insomniac feels at 3 AM and “Fire and Flowers” enlivened by nimble, dance-like gestures.

Harper essays “Silence,” a suitably restrained setting for solo clarinet by Xavier Davis, with aplomb, voicing its quiet episodes authoritatively and soloing as strongly. The piece also serves as an effective prelude to Brian Landrus's Spatial Décor, like Truesdell's a three-movement work but this one scored for clarinet quartet and featuring Harper, Alec Spiegelman, Kenny Pexton, and, on bass clarinet, Landrus himself. Less sounding like a standard string quartet than The World Saxophone Quartet, the work comfortably oscillates between notation and freer playing, the personalities of the individuals coming through and lending the performance character. It's the ensemble passages, however, that recommend the piece most when the polyphonic blend of the voices generates such a texturally rich sound.

November 2022