Harris Eisenstadt - The All Seeing Eye + Octets

Poo-Bah 7

Creativity need not be predicated on preoccupation with the new. Percussionist Harris Eisenstadt has been proving that axiom for the past few years, his interests and travels bringing him into contact with African musical traditions that predate Western musical ones by wide margins. On this recent project, he sidelines that train of inquiry in favor of revisiting one of the lesser heralded classics of the New Thing era. Conventional wisdom of the time viewed Wayne Shorter’s The All-Seeing Eye as an ambitious, if at times overreaching, endeavor where the saxophonist attempted at channeling metaphysical and cosmic themes into music. Averse opinions have leavened in the decades since, but the album remains one of Shorter’s more marginalized works. Eisenstadt recognized the worth in modifying the music to his own designs, tailoring it to an ensemble sensitive to the thrust of Shorter’s original, but also dissimilar in several key ways.

Shorter’s suite made use of the conventional septet instrumentation of saxophones, brass and rhythm section with arrangements that stressed sweeping dynamic shifts and passages of dark ensemble dissonance. Eisenstadt’s interpretations lack some of the intensity and sweep of the originals. They breathe better than their predecessors, but also siphon off some of the excitement in the bargain. Part of this disparity stems from the altered ensemble make-up. Eisenstadt replaces the saxophones parts of the score with clarinets: Andrew Pask and Brian Walsh alternate duty on regular and bass variants of the instrument. In combination with Sara Schoenbeck’s bassoon, the reed section is more colorful and nuanced than Shorter’s, but also less prone to the energizing brawn that made the hardbop sections of the saxophonist’s score so exhilarating.

Daniel Rosenboom ably fills the slot originally occupied by Freddie Hubbard or Alan Shorter. His trumpet brings greater breadth of moods and meshes with Eisenstadt’s more measured take on the music. Chris Dingman’s luminous vibes also contribute to the spacious, ethereal feel to parts of the set, echoing some of Bobby Hutcherson’s work contemporaneous with the original recording. The closing “Mephistopheles” sounds almost like a Sun Ra space march with Dingman’s dissonant tones threading through the dark interplay of the ensemble like Ra’s antique clavoline. The result is music with more chamberish focus and Eisenstadt’s own playing further accentuates the difference, with a textured tack quite different from Joe Chambers’ original, often bracing, approach on drums.

Eisenstadt fills the remainder of the disc with a pair of three-part suites for octet, adding the trumpet of Aaron Smith and enlisting the aid of conductor Marc Lowenstein. These pieces exude an even stronger chamber flavor and remind me a bit of Jimmy Giuffre’s stabs at third stream scoring. While somewhat sedate in sections, they work as a fine complement to the earlier Shorter pieces. Like his source composer, it occasionally feels as if Eisenstadt’s ambitions fall partially short of his apparent aims, but applause is due for his courage to test his mettle against a body of music with such historical magnitude.

~ Derek Taylor