Gjerstad/ Edwards/ Sanders - The Welsh Chapel

Gjerstad/ Edwards/ Sanders
The Welsh Chapel
Cadence Jazz records

The impulse to codify is as old as the human condition. Reductionist appraisals make the world intelligible and manageable. In the realm of music labels inextricably link to forms. But as with anything as tenuous as organized sound labels are also a limitless source of contention. Take free jazz and free improvisation for instance. It’s now widely acknowledged that the former begat the latter, but the exact boundaries and differences between the two are as blurred as a lens smudged with fingerprints. Recognizing the futility of such taxonomic pursuits Norwegian saxophonist Frode Gjerstad dispenses with descriptors and simply plays. His music straddles the regions of both free jazz and its European offspring, often drawing on the more absorbing features of both forms to create a style of expression that is beholden to neither.

Gjerstad’s egalitarian approach carries over to other aspects of his art. Witness his willingness to play with just about anyone and to actively seek out like-minded souls even if it means traversing daunting distances. Gjerstad also shoulders the responsibility of recording his music by lugging the accoutrements of a portable recording studio with him whenever he travels. His strong documentarian ethic is to thank for this recently released travelogue. Spending a summer day in London with John Edwards and Mark Sanders, two frequent confreres of Evan Parker, Gjerstad set his microphones up for a five-hour stretch that yielded just over an hour of highly integrated improvisation.

Gjerstad’s preferred configuration of saxophone, bass and drums is a context brimming with precedence. This historical baggage partially mars the opening segment as the trio traffics in a fairly standard free jazz blowout. Still, even though the surroundings have an air of familiarity, the ebullient energy released succeeds in surmounting some of the thematic stasis. Gjerstad’s lively alto phrasings ricochet and rebound off the stout, but pliable rhythmic canvas cooked up by his mates. Edwards shaves off thick strumming slabs while Sanders works up a choppy lather on his skins, and each finds the space to expound as the saxophonist lays out at various points.

The disc’s second segment marks the welcome entrance of Gjerstad’s clarinet (uncredited on the tray card) in a flurry of soaring upper register exclamations. Later segments allow the trio to expand further beyond the earlier self-imposed strictures, experimenting with syncopated counterpoint with positive results. Edwards is particularly impressive on bow, generating rich, rosin-slicked lines that seesaw against Gjerstad’s keening alto arcs. Sanders holds the rhythmic center on tightly drawn snare and cymbals. Gjerstad whinnies and snorts across the fractured lock-step groove, jettisoning spouts of saxophonic glossolalia along the way. During the closing minutes of the third segment the trio reaches an apogee on the strength of indigo-hued clarinet and muscularly brooding bass and drums. The program’s final two segments continue along an analogously absorbing course, but are ultimately anticlimactic by comparison.

Free jazz and free improvisation remain uneasy bedfellows. Both styles of expression arose in response to perceived stagnation in conventional music forms and as such are at times fiercely committed to asserting what makes them stand apart. Bean counting listeners could safely place Gjerstad and his British colleagues in either camp. But once the music siphons into the ears the better course is to follow saxophonist’s lead and let the sounds speak for themselves independent of idiomatic classification.