Anna Webber: Clockwise
Pi Recordings

Anna Webber should see her profile rise considerably with the release of this exceptional inaugural release on Pi Recordings. Born in 1984, the flutist and tenor saxophonist has become a New York fixture over the past decade in performing and recording with John Hollenbeck, Dave Douglas, Matt Mitchell, Dan Weiss, and Jen Shyu; she's also, however, issued ten previous recordings as a leader or co-leader, and it's on these that her distinctive compositional sensibility has been most clearly articulated. Along with kindred innovators Steve Lehman, Ingrid Laubrock, and Mary Halvorson, Webber's part of a new generation of cerebral explorers admirably carrying on the forward-thinking ethos of figures such as Henry Threadgill and Anthony Braxton. With Jeremy Viner (tenor sax, clarinet), Jacob Garchik (trombone), Christopher Hoffman (cello), Matt Mitchell (piano), Chris Tordini (bass), and Ches Smith (drums, vibraphone, timpani) as accompanists, Clockwise elevates Webber to an upper echelon as bandleader and solo artist.

What makes it even more striking is that it's not a standard set of originals but rather one rooted in a novel concept, specifically an homage to a handful of twentieth-century composers refracted through the lens of their works for percussion. Webber spent months studying pieces by Xenakis, Feldman, Varése, Stockhausen, Babbitt, and Cage in order to isolate elements that could be developed into original compositions of her own. A major part of the challenge for a project of this kind is ensuring it doesn't become so scripted that the spontaneity of jazz is sacrificed; to her credit, Webber and company consistently locate that sweet spot where a balance is struck between compositions sophisticated in their structures and improvisations creative and inspired. Put simply, these ever-mobile, dextrous performances never play like academic run-throughs, especially when Webber maximizes the instruments' timbral potential in her arrangements. No familiarity, by the way, with the composers' pieces is required to appreciate what she's doing here, though it does enhance one's appreciation of the result.

Inspired by Xenakis's Persephassa, “Kore II,” an arresting head-spinner that weaves flute, trombone, sax, piano, and cello figures into a clockwork design, initiates the set with polyphonic patterns that hiccup in angular, off-kilter manner yet never lose their rhythmic propulsion thanks to Smith's muscular drive. Snaking, high-register saxes wail at the start of “Idiom II” before trombone and drums ground the piece with a tight pulse; the scene set, the horns retreat to leave space for a blustery solo by Hoffman before returning, quieter this time, to advance the exploration less turbulently. A Feldman-Varèse merger, “King of Denmark I / Loper” opts for a loping lurch and pensive thematic statements that gradually swell into dense ensemble interplay and chorale-like climaxes.

March 2019