Joe Giardullo Open Ensemble | Red Morocco
Rogue Art Record
Review by Peter Aaron
It’s pretty amazing luck for Hudson Valley jazz fans that our region is home to two of the avant–garde’s leading soprano saxophonists: Cottekill’s Joe Giardullo and Poughkeepsie’s Joe McPhee, artists who are, in addition to being close friends, frequent collaborators both on the bandstand and in the studio. Indeed, McPhee performs here in Giardullo’s 14–piece Open Ensemble, alongside Dom Minasi, David Arner, Martha Colby, Rosie Hertlein, and other notables. Interestingly, though each of them is most commonly identified with the soprano, Giardullo and McPhee are actually multi–instrumentalists, and for this release they put aside their usual horns in favor of alto flute, bass clarinet, and sopranino sax (Giardullo) and pocket trumpet and valve trombone (McPhee).
In keeping with the approach the leader calls his G2 music, the mainly microtonal (non–12-tone Western scale) sounds here are consistently unpredictable. According to the liner notes, at some intervals Giardullo conducts the musicians in a manner that’s vague and impressionistic; at others he has them improvise with no regard at all for what is going on around them; and for others he directs the players to step outside of themselves and focus on the ensemble as whole. The loose, between-the-notes, constantly morphing sound recalls the large groups of bandleader and composer Anthony Braxton, with whom Giardullo has worked, and often even echoes the styles of 20th–century serialist composers. For those in search of music that offers daring new revelations with every listen, Red Morocco is a tonic for the ears.
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