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14 Love Poems
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| Review from All About Jazz:
Despite Patchen’s ties to bebop musicians through much of his career, German reedman Peter Brötzmann was significantly inspired by Patchen’s love sonnets to dedicate a 1984 solo recording to the late poet. Fourteen Love Poems is possibly one of Brötzmann’s most stark solo recordings, made eminently so by its introductory statement - an unaccompanied baritone reading of Ornette’s “Lonely Woman”, building from a low whisper (at the outset almost unrecognizable as its namesake) to an absolutely tortured cry over its five-minute course, one of the most primal and honest statements that Brötzmann has made in his career. It is, in a way, interesting to think about what the saxophonist was reading before he recorded this album; apparently he was keeping a pocket edition of Patchen’s Love Poems (New Directions, 1960) in his jacket as he traveled, which prefigures some of the rhythms and inflections used on this recording that are in fact highly vocal. Bass clarinet “Poem #4” harps on a phrase fragment, a woody repetition of a word and a bent, watery theme that solemnly recalls both Patchen’s gravelly-yet-liquid delivery and “Lonely Woman” while barely approaching the sentiments one usually associates with Brötzmann. “Poem #5” marks the transition to alto clarinet, retaining the Ornette-ish ballad theme as Brötzmann hunts through the grass for a lost ring perhaps. By “Poem #7”, baritone saxophone is again the instrument, yet encountered in a stilted and stark reading, the weary lover climbing stairs as he ambles drunkenly home. The 24 Love Poems rendered here show an entirely unexpected side of Brötzmann’s work. They are not pretty, but torn, anguished snatches of a truly chambered, fist-shaped and sandblasted heart. |
ARTISTS
Peter Brotzmann (solo sax) |
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