Tom Rainey Obbligato • Untucked in Hannover
 his quintet began with a simple if
tricky premise: play common standards, improvising from the melodies and minding the forms
and harmonies -- but doing it with the free fluidity of collective improvisers. The
musicians may enter and exit at will, and they never play a formal melody chorus, though
someone usually hints at the tune or maybe plays it outright, somewhere in the middle. If
you ever hear a head-solos-head band and think, Why don’t the horns improvise
together?, this music is for you.
Drummer Tom Rainey put Obbligato together on noting how well tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and trumpeter Ralph Alessi entwine in spontaneous counterpoint. (They were all already in the improvising quartet LARK.) Sometimes one horn inches into the lead role, the other on its heels with the obbligatos -- the improvised commentary, like Louis Armstrong behind Bessie Smith. Rainey and bassist Drew Gress have teamed in umpteen inside and outside bands since the 1980s, and have a mutual feel for how to let things unravel and when to tighten up. Regular pianist Kris Davis is replaced on this 2018 live recording from Jazz Club Hannover by their younger colleague Jacob Sacks, who helps prove the band concept by fitting right in. On Obbligato’s third (and first live) album they sound ever more confident, but (as often happens with long-running improvising groups) the spontaneous action is more regularized. Entrances and exits are less haphazard, more keyed to a song’s turning points. There might even be a little more overt melody-playing. It’s not like they’re keeping the selections a secret -- though Alessi practices a bit of misdirection, quoting from “There Is No Greater Love” (in the band’s book) on “In Your Own Sweet Way,” and from “If I Should Lose You” (also in their repertoire) on “I Fall in Love Too Easily.” One possible reason for greater regularity: They’d already recorded the eight tunes here. Which is not to say the fireworks or fluidity have faded. The way one player phrases a melodic fragment early on may dictate how another treats it minutes later. “Stella by Starlight” starts out of tempo, trumpet and tenor slowly leapfrogging. Laubrock favors a warm middle range; Alessi, who makes wide leaps sound easy, darts above and below. (He has a formidable high range, an avant Harry James.) Here and there we get something like conventional solos: tenor and the rhythm section kick off “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” Laubrock bringing the appropriate melancholy -- nothing ironic here. (Then trumpet sneaks in, and then tenor exits, then piano sneaks up as trumpet recedes, tidal motion.) Laubrock also gets a lovely melody chorus on “What’s New” (with a little trumpet heckling). It’s a pleasure to hear these outcats negotiating the changes and playing pretty. As the anarchic Misha Mengelberg once said, jazz is the teacher in the 20th century: it shows musicians how to deal with certain problems, and thus is a useful part of any improviser’s toolbox. With music this multi-linear and densely interwoven, you
need to hear everyone all the time to trace the elegant five-way counterpoint. That’s
just what you get, thanks to house engineer Raphael Becker-Foss, and North German
Radio’s Jans Kunze, who recorded it. The horns stay on mic, regulating their own
dynamics, and everyone sounds true -- although in Drew Gress’s case we hear the
amplifier, not the bass. But that’s club life. |
