The Bond

Album review

In 2019, Dopolarians released Garden Party, one of the year's most satisfying avant-jazz outings. The band was a collective composed of three Arkansas-based jazz musicians: Chad Fowler (alto saxophone), Christopher Parker (piano), and Kelley Hurt (vocals). The previous year they and fourth member, New York bassist William Parker, entered a New Orleans studio with NOLA saxophonist Kidd Jordan and Mississippi drummer Alvin Fielder. They composed and recorded six gorgeous tunes on the spot. Just months after completing the album, Fielder passed away and never saw its release.
The Dopolarians' core quartet regrouped with longtime collaborators drummer Brian Blade and first-call session trumpeter Marc Franklin. The sextet entered the same New Orleans studio and emerged with The Bond, a sprawling, deeply communicative exercise in improvisational interplay consisting of three lengthy selections. It marks the first time the prolific bassist and drummer have ever played together.
The set opens with the winding 21-minute title track. Parker's piano introduces a modal gospel theme as its harmonic frame. Fowler and Franklin enter slowly, referencing blues and hymnody in their interaction while the bassist holds their space. When Fowler begins to solo, the pianist drops out and we hear ghost traces of the early Ornette Coleman Quintet. When the piano re-enters, Franklin begins his spiraling run as Blade crashes, rolls, and accents. He also engages the bassist in instinctive, incendiary interplay. Hurt enters, wordlessly singing with the horns. Her falsetto beautifully unfurls before she joins the piano and bass with a throaty contralto to improvise. "The Emergence" opens with intense frontline improv from the horns. Parker's piano governs the middle as the rhythm section extends the margins to approach open space. Hurt scats, moans, and wails (think Jeanne Lee) as she enters into a circular exchange with piano that the horns underscore with angular yet through-composed cadenzas. William Parker's swaggering bassline compels thoughtful solos from piano and trumpet while Blade furiously stretches the jam's linear concept of time. After a particularly expressive group exchange, Parker delivers an arco bass solo that moves from balladry and funk to blues and free as Blade supports him on tom-toms and a muted snare. The first three minutes of "The Release" are a lilting, exploratory ballad rooted in blues and spiritual jazz. The pianist commences with a modal chord sequence. Fowler accompanies him onto the ledge before letting go with a labyrinthian solo. The rhythm section dances in an evolving, mutant waltz. Franklin adds gorgeous melodic lines to Fowler's screaming horn and eventually claims the ground for his own solo. Whereas Garden Party sounded like a swinging avant celebration, The Bond, by contrast, finds Dopolarians on an inward but no less satisfying journey. While freer group interactions hold sway here, they also readily engage swing, post-bop, folk, and blues. This sextet explores tone, texture, rhythm, and dynamic as avenues of possibility. Discovery itself is the key to The Bond, and we listeners are richer because of it.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo