Our Daily Bread

Album review

Each member of Trio Tapestry—saxophonist Joe Lovano, pianist Marilyn Crispell, and drummer Carmen Castaldi—has an utterly distinctive voice. Lovano, who has integrated the influence of John Coltrane into his own highly developed sound, is one of the best tenor players in jazz. Crispell, known for her impressive discography and her work with Anthony Braxton among many others, brings a lucid touch and a great sense of space to her instrument. Castaldi is a very unusual drummer—low-volume, spare, free; at times he can recall the late Paul Motian, with whom Lovano also collaborated. (Castaldi and Lovano, both Cleveland natives, have collaborated off and on for decades.)

2023's Our Daily Bread is the group's third album and it's excellent. On "All Twelve," Crispell lays out a twelve-tone row before Castaldi's artful taps and hits come into play. Lovano enters with a wobbling run and the group goes on to coalesce in delicately balanced ways. "Grace Notes" opens with unaccompanied gong tones that are followed by Eastern-flavored piano and rippling trap-kit cymbals. Lovano plays the tárogató, an Eastern European woodwind with a pinched sound evocative of oboe and soprano saxophone. Later, he switches to tenor sax, changing up the group vibe.       

"One for Charlie" finds a solo Lovano paying tribute to the great bassist Charlie Haden. The blues-tinged piece, which features exquisite phrasing, is both low-key and moving. "Rhythm Spirit" is a duo for sax and drums and here, Lovano's thoughtful performance is backed by gongs and pianissimo drumming—Castaldi's incredibly quiet dynamics on the track are downright radical.

Crispell rejoins her bandmates for the mysterious "Crystal Ball," where Lovano's sax brushes against her clearly articulated melodic fragments, and at times, piano and sax unspool lines in tandem. Throughout, drums provide an abstract percussive backdrop. There's muted dramatic tension in this music. It doesn't reach out and grab you; instead, it pulls you in with its subtleties.

Dans la riche et prolixe production discographique du saxophoniste ténor Joe Lovano, ses enregistrements pour le label ECM constituent sans doute la part la plus intime et expérimentale. Après avoir débutée sa collaboration avec le label en 1981dans l’album Psalm de Paul Motian, puis l’avoir poursuivi en participant, toujours en sideman, à d’autres disques du batteur (I Have the Roome Above Her) mais aussi de John Abercrombie (Within a Song) ou Steve Kuhn (Mostly Coltrane), c’est en 2019, à la tête précisément de ce Trio Tapestry que Lovano a finalement franchi le cap d’y signer son premier disque en leader, inaugurant ce que l’on peut d’ores et déjà considérer comme une  nouvelle étape de sa carrière. Après Garden of Expression paru en 2021, Our Daily Bread est déjà le troisième album de ce trio aussi funambulesque que singulier, constitué autour du saxophone ténor lyrique de Lovano des harmonies aussi modernes que raffinées de la pianiste Marylin Crispell et de féérie gestuelle de la batteuse Carmen Castaldi. A partir de compositions originales mettant savamment en scène la dynamique du silence et laissant énormément d’espace à l’improvisation, les trois musicien.nes inventent dans une forme de télépathie relationnelle une musique atmosphérique tout en équilibre instable, passant d’humeurs post-coltraniennes intenses à des séquences d’improvisations collectives fondées sur des jeux de textures sonores impressionnistes d’une grande poésie.

Stéphane Ollivier