This is another fascinating combination between the
legendary German reedist Peter Brotzmann, here playing tenor saxophone, bass
clarinet and taragato and an unheralded and unexpected musician, in this case Heather
Leigh a pedal steel guitar from the United States now living in Scotland. It is
a great combination, one you may not initially think would work, what with the
pedal steel normally associated with country music and the blues, but like
another steel player, Susan Alcorn, Heather Leigh is really making a bold and
powerful statement and holding her own with one of the heaviest of the
heavyweights of freely improvised music. The music is an unbroken twenty eight
minute stretch, and it unfolds like a suite, with Brotzmann at turns blustery
and raw which is how we know him best, but how we might not be prepared to hear
him is as a thoughtful, patient and thoroughly empathetic partner that is
allowing the music to build to scale, whether that needs blasts of deep dark
tenor saxophone, eerie moans of bass clarinet or the haunted exoticism of the
mysterious taragato. Leigh is a sympathetic and thoughtful partner, engaging
Brotzmann offering up new musical textures that allow for collective
improvisation and conversation on a very high level. The album is short, but it
is really as long as it needs to be, it retains the sound of surprise
throughout, allowing new vistas and possibilities to open up in the way the
individual instruments meld and clash and the way the individual people
interact and improvise. It shows that one can never stop learning, never stop
exploring, because when you continue to search with passion and deeply hewn
emotion, the next state of grace could be right around the corner.
Ears Are Filled With Wonder - amazon.com
(
album excerpt) (
live clip)
