Drummer
Paul Motian, who emerged with the
Bill Evans trio in the 1950s and died in 2011 at age 80, was a masterful performer with a fluid rhythmic sensibility that helped to free up the modern jazz tradition and make it more amenable to open time-keeping and unexpected textures. It's that lasting influence that is the focus of saxophonist
Joe Lovano and guitarist
Jakob Bro's 2022 collaboration
Once Around the Room: A Tribute to Paul Motian. Though separated by a generation, both artists have their own deep ties to
Motian: the elder
Lovano worked in one of the drummer's later trios featuring
Bill Frisell, and
Bro was a member of
Motian's band that recorded 2006's
Garden of Eden. Here they are joined by a cadre of like-minded artists, including bassists
Larry Grenadier,
Thomas Morgan, and
Anders Christensen, as well as drummers
Joey Baron and
Jorge Rossy. Together, they commune over a series of original compositions inspired by
Motian's work. The sole
Motian piece that they tackle is the fittingly titled "Drum Music," a song
Lovano originally recorded on
Motian's 1985 album
Jack of Clubs with
Frisell. Beginning with a roiling drum solo, the song soon gives way to a boppish melody that
Lovano and
Bro play in unison with a guttural intensity. Later,
Bro takes a solo, distorting his guitar sound with fractured, overdriven effects like a robotic sitar.
Lovano responds in kind, spitting out a long volley of notes that sound like paint being scratched off a wall. The originals are no less adventurous, moving from
Lovano's "As It Should Be" with its droney bass and echoey sax and guitar interplay to the spectral group improv of "Sound Creation," where
Bro's crystalline chords and
Lovano's mournful sax lines merge into a wave of shimmering, fractal space noise. Equally compelling is
Lovano's "For the Love of Paul," a bluesy, off-kilter number that combines the rambling free-bop style of
Ornette Coleman with the stop-start phrasing of
Thelonious Monk. There's also
Bro's "Song to an Old Friend," a delicate ballad that has the far-eyed introspection of a
Radiohead song. All of this evokes the boundaryless creative spirit of
Motian. ~ Matt Collar
![The Very Best of John Coltrane [Rhino]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0081227977825_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg "The Very Best of John Coltrane [Rhino]")
