Lisbon Improvisation Players - Spiritual

Clean Feed 62

Trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez has never made any denials about his affinity for Don Cherry. The elder doyen’s influence is all over Spiritual, an inspired match-up of Gonzalez’s mercurial, but always thoughtful horn with the like-minded Lisbon Improvisation Players, here winnowed to a trio of Rodrigo Amado, Pedro Gonçalves and Bruno Pedroso. German cellist Ulrich Mitzlaff guests on the two concluding cuts, enhancing the ensemble’s chamberish feel. The closest analogue for the set is Cherry’s Complete Communion with Amado occasionally mirroring some of Gato Barbieri’s Latin-tinged reed fireworks on baritone and alto. The pieces favor a kindred open-ended freebop template, with catchy porous heads expanding into closely attuned collective improvisation. Gonzalez has one of the most beautiful and controlled attacks of any freer leaning brass player. The comeliness of his sound is in place from the opening “Tensegrity” in tandem with Amado’s well-burnished baritone. Where some of his peers calcify and crenellate their articulation through muted metallic slurs and smears, Gonzalez largely plays his horn open and clean such that even during frenetic passages there’s an underlying calm and composure to his constructions. To some seeking blunt fire and force, that might seem a detriment, but in settings like this one its definite boon. Amado responds in kind and the pair repeatedly engages in close-listening counterpoint that conjures the counterintuitive comparison point of Mulligan and Baker. Situated slightly back in the mix, Gonçalves and Pedroso wisely revert to active support and leave the majority of foreground space to the horns. Some of the pieces, all collectively credited to the ensemble, feel interchangeable, but even at an hour’s length the piquant flavor of the music never goes bland.

~ Derek Taylor