Two from Gebhard Ullmann

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German reed musician Gebhard Ullmann turns a half-century old this year. A glance at his double-digit discography demonstrates that he’s been far from idle during that time. Two new releases illustrate both the depth of his creative music interests and his consistent record for bringing ideas into fruitful application. Die Blaue Nixe, translates to The Blue Mermaid and near as I can figure it’s not the name of a favorite neighborhood pub. The set hinges on Ullmann’s longstanding propensity for unconventional trio configurations, here in the company of Chris Dahlgren’s bass and Art Lande’s piano. All three players also double on toys of undisclosed shapes and sizes on pieces like “Spieldosen” and Ullmann also employs a small cache of ocarinas. Dahlgren applies various preparations to his bass, most commonly dampening the strings with objects. A veteran of several ECM sessions, Lande’s contemplative Satiesque approach to the keys jibes well with the chamberish dynamics of the trio and he makes use of certain subtle preparations as well. The acoustics of the Berlin Radio studio space are also important in the creation of stark, sometimes acutely arid sound.

The seven-part, jointly-improvisd title suite is broken up by another eight pieces of varying lengths and designs. “Verschiedene Annäherungen an den Ton Gest” pivots Lande’s elegant piano chords and the billowy Ben Websterish phrasings of Ullmann’s tenor, the pairing proving a winsome combination girded by the bassist’s attenuated throb. Lande’s “Winter Thoughts” encapsulates the sentiments of its title in another ruminative assemblage of chords voiced at icy angles. Products of Dahlgren’s design, “Baba” juxtaposes calming bass clarinet and piano against a looped dyadic bass rhythm while “The Sun Seemed Never Again As Yellow” dispenses with the other instruments and focuses solely on facile bass. Ullmann’s brief, but blustery solo tenor turn on “Das Tiefe A” is similarly potent, as is Lande’s solitary closer “From What I Remember.” The presence of these pieces detracts from the suite’s overall autonomy, but individual parts like the somber bass clarinet blues “Tiel 2” and the ghostly overtone-rich “Tiel 6” stand sturdily on their own. Even from a player known for his eclectic productivity, this set of largely somber meditations prevails as a depature from what’s come prior.

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The compositional properties of the orange gunk coating the pipes on the cover to Live in Münster are thankfully never revealed. The music within is imbued with a far more appetizing feel than the imagery suggests. Ullmann inaugurated his Basement Research concept back in ’93 on a self-titled album for Soul Note, tapping saxophonist Ellery Eskelin as frontline frontline foil and the rhythm team of Drew Gress and Phil Haynes. That band played off the contrasting temperatures of the horns and yielded a vague free leaning analogue to Ammons and Stitt. Taped six years later and borrowing three tunes from aforementioned studio date, the Münster set finds Tony Malaby in Eskelin’s place and the dynamic now closer to Sims and Cohn in similarity of sound and deportment. The two make for an equally empathetic tandem and the former’s cool, concentrated tendencies are echoed by his younger colleague. Gress and Haynes ease back for the first couple of numbers, leaving the foreground uncluttered for the horns. “Blaues Lied” glides forward at a gradual lope, the two tenors staggering their lines in breathy gusts against a shuffle beat before settling into quality solo time.

The even mix of virility and grace pulls the quartet out of the stentorian-to-soft tropes that usually serve as springboard for this sort of set, though the track endings do seem a bit ambigous. “Basement Research” is but a fraction of the length, a tone poem for bass clarinet, bowed bass and cymbals. Subsequent pieces open up to include lengthy statements for bass and drums, but a subtle binary division between reeds and rhythm sustains for much of the set. “Kreuzberg Park East” features some of the most heated playing of the performance through a gridwork of darting contrapuntal passages punctuated by moody rests. “Farbiges Lied” cools things down with another confluence of gossamer tenors twining in the absence of other instruments before heating up in its second half with the return of Gress and Haynes, the latter lighting fires with blurred brushes. The strident second line strut of “T.T. Walk” also benefits from Haynes’ agile beats, in part delivered with palms and fingers, as the tenors siphon a strong New Orleans feel and wrestle atop. By the time the closing “New No Ness” hits, the band is well in stride and the sectional boppish piece makes for a rousing finale with a particularly strong showing from Malaby.

~ Derek Taylor