Marshall Allen & Lou Grassi - Live at the Guelph Festival

Cadence Jazz 1192

In the lifespan of a recording, six years spent in the can usually equates to something amiss. Either the tape was forgotten or the participants in its production weren’t visited by a burning desire to facilitate its release. It’s hard to identify the exact culprit behind the commercial delay in this duo set by drummer Lou Grassi and altoist Marshall Allen, though the accompanying notes do note its proximity to September 11th 2001 as a mitigating factor. Grassi’s never much been one for composerly constrictions, preferring instead to hit his kit with a minimum of premeditation. As such, a pair of standards and an original from Allen are adhered to mainly in spirit rather than letter and the pair stress instead the benefits of mercurial improvisation.

What’s perhaps most surprising is the emphasis on Allen’s melodic side, a facet of his musical personality somewhat at odds with the reed-splitting shrieks and otherworldly improvisatory bricolage that were his lineaments in the Arkestra. He makes room for multiphonics and shrill punctuations here and there, but the majority of his playing limns a more lyrical perspective. Grassi jockeys between forward propulsion and colorful accents, moving from mallets, to brushes to fingers and palms in providing a rhythm surface for Allen to paint and scrawl across. At nearly twenty minutes, the pair’s peregrinations through “When You Wish Upon a Star” err toward the overwrought, but on shorter pieces like the slowly smoldering “Blues for Two” and “Boma” there exists a solid number of sustained sparks. Allen’s flute makes an uncredited appearance on the meditative “Far Side” intoning sparse mantra-like motifs under which Grassi plants modest rhythmic seeds. Grassi has fielded flak for his visceral bare-knuckle approach to percussion, naysayers arguing superficially that he lacks nuance. In the company of an intuitive player like Allen his energetic and responsive style ends up fitting foot-in-sock and while this meeting has a number of meandering moments its still makes for a fine August-November match-up.

~ Derek Taylor