Tasha Warren & Dave Eggar: Ourself Behind Ourself, Concealed
Bright Shiny Things

First things first: the unusual title clarinetist Tasha Warren and cellist Dave Eggar chose for their debut album derives from Emily Dickinson's “One Need Not Be a Chamber to be Haunted”; for the musicians, the poet's words resonated for echoing the feelings of unease and disorientation the pandemic and lockdown brought into peoples' lives. Yet while the six diverse pieces featured on the release were birthed during that discombobulating period, the material more offers a welcome respite from the waking nightmare than lends physical form to it. The pleasures afforded by hearing Warren and Eggar interpret pieces by Paquito D'Rivera, Meg Okura,Pascal Le Boeuf, and others—sometimes with the composers participating—provide a refreshing break from a news cycle dominated by death and despair; that the performances are world premieres makes the recording all the more inviting.

The tapestry the six pieces form is multi-hued and stylistically rich. D'Rivera's associated with jazz primarily, but his African Tales naturally relocates the focus to a far different realm; Martha Redbone's Black Mountain Calling, by comparison, looks to folk music from, in her words, “the hills and hollows of Appalachia” for inspiration. Each piece, while unified by the presence of Warren and Eggar, locates itself on a slightly different spot on the musical spectrum. The album's global span is established by D'Rivera's opener, which he likens to “a crossing caravan of Tuaregs with their passing camels at sundown in Timbuktu” seen from afar. As if indirectly referencing the isolation associated with the pandemic, the piece begins with the evocative sound of Warren solemnly intoning alone before Eggar enters, first coupling with her for a unison statement before separating to engage in conversational to-and-fro. So smooth is the execution, you might not even notice Warren switching between Bass and Bb clarinet during the ten-minute trek; for his part, Eggar tickles the ear with passionate bowed expressions when not plucking to back Warren with a walking bass line.

Up next, Cornelius Boots' Crow Cavern evokes the experiences of an animal life form as opposed to a geographical locale. The fluctuations in mood and rhythm Boots threads through the piece serve as a compelling argument that crows are complex creatures too, capable of aggression, certainly, but also anguish, desperation, and stillness. There are moments where the cry of the clarinet and wail of the cello can't help but give vivid voice to a creature we typically tend to overlook in our daily lives. Thereafter, Redbone joins Warren and Eggar for Black Mountain Calling, the composer contributing vocals and percussion and Chuck Palmer percussion too. Strains of blues and folk commingle within a very personal creation that draws inspiration from the music of her eastern woodlands heritage. In one of the album's most memorable passages, her spirit-channeling voice joins clarinet and cello in a haunting refrain before percussion enters to animate a bluesy chant-like figure.

Flutist and composer Nathalie Joachim is represented by Lalin, which means moon in Haitian kreyòl. The gentlest of the album's settings, the tone of the writing is elegiac and introspective in keeping with a piece written, as Joachim reports, “beneath the moon and stars on my family's farm in the Haitian countryside.” The generally delicate hush of the performance dovetails effectively with the nocturnal calm that sets in when the moon's perched securely on high. Violinist Meg Okura joins the duo for her Phantasmagoria, whose beginning and end were designed to convey her mental state during the surreal early days of the pandemic. Though there are moments of agitation, the piece is anything but frazzled when Okura opts for a serpentine and sometimes swinging through-composed trio piece that, like much of her output, integrates jazz, classical, and world music genres. Pianist Pascal Le Boeuf likewise accompanies Warren and Eggar on his Snapshots, which he began writing while in residence at the historic home of Aaron Copland (interestingly, as a boy Eggar had piano lessons with Copland at that same house). Reflecting on the kindness Copland extended to other artists in his community, Le Boeuf decided to fashion Snapshots as impressions of people who'd helped him too, figures such as Geri Allen, Chick Corea, and Kenny Barron. Gratitude rings forth in the exuberance with which Warren and Eggar render the material and in the celebratory tone of the composer's conception.

June 2022