Michael and Peter Formanek • Dyads
 ne hears a lot about
jazz siblings -- Adderleys, Marsalises, Jensens, Stricklands etc. Save for Ellis Marsalis
and his brood, we may not hear enough about trans-generational connections -- jazz parents
and kids: Albert and Gene Ammons, Clarence and Billie Holiday, Jimmy and Stacy Rowles,
Bucky and John Pizzarelli, Von and Chico Freeman, Hod O’Brien and Veronica Swift. In
her new book The Lady Swings: Memoirs of a Jazz Drummer (University of Illinois
Press), Dottie Dodgion talks about the importance to her own development of hearing her
father play drums when she was small: it helped shape her own timing, and made her hear
the logic in the ways he’d accompany other musicians.
Michael and Peter Formanek are father and son. Formidable bassist and composer Michael has been a mainstay of the new jazz for 30 years or so, in the last decade leading a passel of small and large ensembles heard on ECM and Intakt, and playing in the co-op trio Thumbscrew. Peter, born in 1995, started making occasional appearances on his father’s gigs while a teen, at first on guitar -- a chording instrument is a great gateway to understanding harmony -- before switching to reeds and heading off to study jazz and improvised music at the University of Michigan. He stuck around the state after graduation in 2017, and lives in Kalamazoo. Dottie Dodgion’s observations kept coming back to me, listening to the duo album Dyads, because the tight timing of Formanek and Formanek is a beautiful thing, not least on the free improvisations that make up half of this 72-minute program. Hear, for example, “How Was the Drive” for how often they place their beats in exactly the same place, even when an implied tempo might shift in the middle of a phrase. (It’s not telepathy; it’s familiarity.) They seem to breathe the same -- the bassist knowing string players need to incorporate breath pauses too, and not ramble on and on. They swap the roles of leader and follower, organically. Here and elsewhere, one’s line might follow the arc of the other’s in a general way, one sign they’re always listening. There’s a moment in the middle of the free “Hurricane” where they stop in exactly the same place, to initiate a new episode. Pieces don’t run on too long; most are under five minutes. Peter brought a couple of compositions, including the call-and-response volley “After You,” and Michael contributes four: three ballads and the slow strut “That Was Then” where either may take the melody, which they keep going one way or another. Their timing is so simpatico, a drummer would be an intrusion. The spare texture lays their sounds bare. On tenor Peter has an appealingly strong sound in all registers, not too hard or soft, with a bluesy/field hollery vocal catch to it; he may tinker with a note’s pitch or timbre as it sounds. On clarinet, he sails over the break between high and low registers, and gets a big, round, occasionally slightly harsh sound in the wood-horn’s low notes. Michael Formanek has such a fat, rich sound and reliable
intonation on bass, it’s a pleasure to hear it in such open terrain. (It’s even
more exposed on his new solo Imperfect Measures, on Intakt.) “Hoarse
Syrinx” features guitaristic hammer-ons and pull-offs that help bring out the singing
quality in his tone. David Amlen recorded the duo at Sound on Sound in Montclair, NJ, not
far from Michael’s home, with the bassist in a booth, though you wouldn’t know
to hear it. (Good sight lines are essential.) The bass sound in particular is exemplary --
so good I inquired how it was captured: with a solid-state Neumann U47 FET on a low stand
facing the bridge, and a Schoeps CMC6 fitted with an MK41 Super Cardioid Capsule close to
the strings. That’s one way to do it right. |
