Gnosis: The Inner Light

Album review

Composed as a memorial for and homage to composer Ennio Morricone, one of John Zorn's most important influences and mentors, Gnosis: The Inner Light is a haunting collection of nine luminous chamber pieces. It is performed by the Gnostic Trio -- harpist Carol Emanuel, guitarist Bill Frisell, and vibist Kenny Wollesen -- with John Medeski on organ, piano, and Fender Rhodes. Each of these works is a self-contained musical universe that paradigmatically informs, and is in turn informed by, the others.
The title piece commences with Emanuel's harp offering an eight-note theme underscored by her plucked chords. Medeski's organ floats in, and then Frisell enters, first with fingerpicking and then with an elusive open seventh chord pointing to a change that doesn't yet arrive. Wollesen adds that change as his vibraphone bells slip in unobtrusively to assist in creating a vamp alongside Emanuel that is embellished and extrapolated upon by Frisell and Medeski. The ensemble opens an aural window onto the pastoral while hinting at spaghetti western themes, yet the pastoral always returns. "Poimandres" is titled for the first tractate in the Corpus Hermeticum of alchemy. Its theme is stated by Emanuel and Frisell, with a spectral Rhodes hovering around the backdrop. When Wollesen enters, Frisell embarks on a minor-key solo that weaves together blues, flamenco, and Duane Eddy's twang, as Wollesen harmonically accents and embellishes his lines. At eight minutes, "Dance of the Cross" is the longest track here. Introduced by Frisell and Medeski's organ, it finds an intersection between deep blues, cinema music, and British Isles folk. When the melody emerges, it drifts through arid western themes, organ jazz, and restrained, spiky rock. Emanuel and Wollesen enter halfway in and shift the direction toward modal jazz and modern classical before it moves afield again. "Parthian Songs" is titled for the Parthian Empire that existed in ancient Persia circa 247 BC to 224 AD. The music is lithe, bright, and spectral. Its theme and execution -- particularly the exchanges between Frisell and Medeski on B-3 -- explore some of the slippery space age pop played by Zorn's Dreamers group (of which Wollesen is a member). On "Prayer of the Messenger," Zorn openly borrows part of the melody from the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" for Frisell, but Medeski's organ refracts it with a pulse before it moves toward Emanuel and Wollesen, who together paint the backdrop before ushering in a less-scripted yet no less captivating, expressionistic direction. "A Garment of Light" starts with the ensemble playing a circular four-note vamp in subtly shifting cadences. Frisell slips in a quote from the bridge to George Harrison's "Something" before engaging interlocking melodic and rhythmic patterns with each of the quartet's members. Despite the fact that Gnosis: The Inner Light is performed by only four instruments, it amounts to some of the lushest, most harmonically enchanting music in Zorn's career thus far.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo