Christopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance
Tonal Conversations

Exuberance, the second full-length studio album from New York-based composer Christopher Zuar, developed in tandem with his burgeoning relationship with animation filmmaker Anne Beal. The hour-long set draws for inspiration from experiences shared by the couple, who met in 2017 at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and are now married, but it's considerably more than a one-dimensional ode to love. The tensions that arise when individuals open their lives to others is very much part of the emotional terrain, as is a constellation of related feelings that includes doubt, hope, fear, and longing. The project, which credits both as album producers, amounts to a road map of their seven years together.

Zuar uses seven interwoven compositions and an orchestra-sized ensemble of nineteen members and five guests to explore the concept, with the final piece a vocal setting that addresses the subject matter through Beal's open-hearted words. Exuberance is thus, in simplest terms, a romantic song cycle scored for jazz orchestra. Pianist Fred Hersch succinctly characterizes its as “a mature statement by a great composer in his prime, performed by a stellar ensemble with passion and care.” The recipient of multiple awards and a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and Manhattan School of Music, Zuar blends jazz and classical traditions as if it's the most natural thing in the world; having musicians of such exceptional calibre on hand to deliver the music is also critical to making that happen.

Conductor Mike Holober helms a collective featuring many top-tier players, among them trumpeter Matt Holman, guitarist Pete McCann, pianist Glenn Zaleski, bassist Drew Gress, drummer Mark Ferber, and saxophonists Jason Rigby, Ben Kono, and Carl Maraghi. Eight brass, five woodwinds, and a full rhythm section compose the orchestra, with violinist Sara Caswell, mandolinist Joe Brent, vocalist Emma Frank, percussionist Keita Ogawa, and hammered dulcimer player Max ZT guesting on one or two tracks apiece. Adding to the ensemble's timbral colours, trumpeters double on flugelhorn, guitar's supplemented by banjo and dobro, and the saxophonists augment their contributions with piccolo, oboe, flutes, and clarinets. Luscious instrumental textures are abundant when the resources are so robust, and of course any recording that includes Caswell already promises to be special, and she doesn't disappoint.

The title of the opening piece, “In Winter Blooms,” alludes to the feelings that emerged when the two first encountered one another after she entered his cabin at the MacDowell Colony and discovered him attempting to capture snow's falling musically. After a single-note piano ostinato evokes the image, the music blossoms with the orchestra's entrance. Zuar favours intricate arrangements, and the one created for “In Winter Blooms” is no exception, but he also knows that an episode featuring fewer instruments, particularly when it counterbalances a complex one, can be as effective. Here and elsewhere, solos, like the one delivered by Rigby on tenor sax, are integrated fluidly into the arrangement without interrupting flow. A slightly more ruminative, even melancholy tone permeates “Moments in Between,” which provides an outlet for a strong flugelhorn solo by Holman.

Beginning radiantly, “Communion” originated out of a trip the couple took to Western North Carolina to experience the beauty of its Blue Ridge Mountains and collect field recordings like the one of katydids heard near the end of the track. Zaleski illuminates the piece with a bright, resonant solo, but it's Caswell who dominates when her violin seethes and soars across the roiling orchestral base to help ignite the ten-minute-plus performance. The folk flavour that seeps into “Communion” is more pronounced in “Simple Machines” when the arrangement includes piccolo, violin, mandolin, and hammered dulcimer and rustic dance rhythms surface. Halfway through, the piece witnesses an abrupt shift with the advent of Caswell's fiddle-like swing and a mandolin solo by her 9 Horses colleague Brent. After opening with sounds of rain and thunder, “Before Dawn” spotlights Zuar's classical writing side in the formality of its intro but then ventures elsewhere, with McCann's scalding electric guitar adding a different dimension to the music.

June 2024