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Crossroads
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| In 1981, cellist David Eyges teamed up with drummer Sunny Murray and reed king Byard Lancaster for what was, at the time, a monumental date. While Dave Holland and David Darling -- as well as a few others -- had realized the cello's potential for jazz expressionism, no one was using it quite like Eyges: as a blues instrument as well. As the title implies, Eyges was deeply interested in the blues roots of jazz, particularly those of the Delta, not St. Louis. On the title track, he uses the cello pizzicato riffing on E, soloing and filling Lancaster's melody lines with gutbucket single- and triple-note runs. On "Tree Life," he creates a serial figure for the cello's lyric, bowed over long single-note lines divided into quarter-tones as Lancaster uses the blues scale against an Eastern modal scale. What develops is an interplay based on dynamic tension and chromatic restraint. Everything is kept in shades of gray as the feeling in the tune establishes itself in the same way Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" did -- which Eyges quotes in his solo. The disc closes with "Cast a Long Shadow," with its languid pace and glistening blues phrasing, and "Loquacity," a showcase for Murray's aggressive, dancing style that pushes the rest of the trio into a corner that they work out of methodically if not expressively. It's a small game piece that ends a fine set, and an auspicious debut album. |
ARTISTS
David Eyges (cello); Byard Lancaster (alto and soprano saxes, flute, piccolo); Sunny Murray (drums) |
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