Michael Dessen -Lineal

Lineal – Michael Dessen
Circumvention 048

I like trombones. I can’t walk by an available one without blowing a raspberry through it. And with the motion of the slide, the players look like they’re having fun. Craig Harris sounded like he was having fun with all the blaring sounds he made; so did Ray Anderson even if his singing and between song patter was a little too close to Bill Walton. Roswell Rudd had a major braying sound; his singing was goofy too but he gets a legacy pass for all the things he did to keep Herbie Nichols in the public’s ADD stricken mind as much as possible. Paul Rutherford seems a bit more serious but I’d say there’s a good chance he’s having a good time doing it. Mangelsdorff definitely was having fun.

The point of this is that Michael Dessen is a new trombonist who knows how to effectively lead two different groups on this maiden voyage. The more recognizable grouping has Vijay Iyer (nice to see him in a different setting), Mark Dresser and Susie Ibarra and the other group has Jorge Roeder on bass and Bob Weiner on percussion. As was the case on the similarly split Segments by John Hagen, the lesser known musicians acquit themselves quite well. They get things off to a rousing start with “What Space Can Hide the Liberty of a Line” featuring a herky jerky shuffle beat with lots of cymbal and cowbell accents over which Dessen blats out his aggressively melodic lines. On “Not Minutes, But Breaths” the rhythm duo lays down a series of heavily accented backbeats for Dessen’s launching pad. Terry Jenoure’s violin is added on “The Eye is the First Circle”; at first her participation is tenous before dropping out for a scorching trio interlude. She returns for a frenzied duet with Weiner before all four confidently take it out.

Adding a piano fleshes things out so that at the start of “Levity in Detail” Dessen is just adding fluttering fills before things gradually heat up at the end. With all the uptempo action, the luxurious title song stays with you longest; kind of like “Ming” only if the David Murray Octet was pared down to a Non-Murray Quartet of George Lewis, Anthony Davis, Fred Hopkins and Steve McCall.

Not everything is an unqualified success. A duo with Dresser dedicated to Eric Dolphy never really goes anywhere and a final duo with Ibarra is kind of a meaningless add-on. But that shouldn’t detract from a strong performance from a newcomer on the fun horn.

~ Captain Hate