Ran Blake & Andrew Rathbun • Northern Noir
 n piano, Ran
Blake is a poet and an outlier. A poet for his refined touch, conjoined with subtle
sustain-pedaling, and his way of peeling a melody or interpretation down to skeletal
essence. He’s not about virtuoso gestures, but the effect is all his own, at once
grandly resonant and brittle. Hence the outlier part. The feeling/melancholy/nostalgia
that drench his performances are coupled with restraint: he trusts a few right notes to
carry all that weight. I’ve lamented how little this venerable veteran records, but
lately there’s been a stream of releases -- Dennis Davis reviewed one archival find with singer Jeanne Lee at TAB
last year. Blake has three new duo discs out in mid-2020, including Gray Moon with
fellow pianist Frank Carlberg, and When Soft Rains Fall (both on RPR), with a
frequent collaborator, singer Christine Correa. Northern Noir with Andrew Rathbun
is a too-rare pairing of Blake and a tenor saxophonist. (Ranophiles cherish Houston
Pearson’s drop-ins on the 1983 classic on Soul Note, Suffield Gothic.)
Blake prefers partnering with folks he knows well, frequently with a New England Conservatory connection. Rathbun was an NEC student in the 1990s, and, as annotator Neil Tesser recounts, two decades later Ran reached out to say, it’s time we record. (Since school days, Toronto-born Rathbun had been involved with too many groups, duos and compositional projects to tally; his other recent release is Impressions of Debussy on Centaur). The mournful tone and slow quaver he coaxes from the tenor, with a trace of Stan Getz’s irresistible tone, are perfect for the pianist. Hear Rathbun’s melody statements on Monk’s slow ballad "Pannonica," and two takes of "Strange Fruit," the anti-lynching anthem Billie Holiday immortalized, whose grave message hangs over both performances like a raincloud. Rathbun is mostly Ran’s straight man, minding those melodies, though he can also cut across the form with busier lines and still meet up with the pianist on the pivot points. He’s good at getting on Ran’s wavelength, shadowing his swerves. All that is apparent on a mini-suite drawn from the score to Hitchcock’s Vertigo, whose story’s somber obsessions fit Blake as snugly as Bernard Hermann’s vertiginous corkscrew arpeggios. Blake’s solo concerts can be riveting. Duos let him also play the role of accompanist. The young Blake had been friends with the Monk family, and Thelonious’s arcane comping helped inspire Ran’s brand of obstinacy: abruptly changing up tactics, density or dynamic level, or disappearing altogether, to keep soloists on their toes. One doesn’t think of him as a whimsical player except when he’s comping. Like all his best partners, Rathbun sounds totally unfazed. What else would he expect? The sound suits the mood. (The music was recorded at NEC by Aaron Saidizand, and mixed and mastered by SteepleChase’s Nils Winther.) You can hear all the nuances of piano pedaling and sustain, the subtly shifting bright colors and a distant rumble of thunder: the ambiguities of light and dark in his harmony. (Film noir is a lifelong influence.) Discreet reverb on the tenor, and a focus on his big, furry midrange, put Rathbun on an equal footing with the pedaling pianist. They play solo a little: Rathbun sketches three short
tenor portraits; Ran’s "Midnight Sun" rings out, as stately as a glacier.
Mostly they revisit some Blake favorites; like Lee Konitz, he makes well-worn personal
standards sound inexhaustible. Here they include themes from films long on mood, noir and
otherwise: Konrad Elfers’ "Dr. Mabuse," curiously jaunty, David
Raksin’s "Laura," Roy Webb’s "The Spiral Staircase," Leith
Stevens’ jazzy "The Wild One." The duo taps singers/composers Abbey Lincoln
("Throw It Away") and Al Green (the love song "Judy"), and play a hymn
by Hartford preacher/organist Rev. Hubert Powell, and a chipper Greek pop tune -- a
cross-section of Blake’s broad interests. But the far-flung melodies he chooses often
have one thing in common: catchy, memorable hooks. No matter how austere Ran Blake’s
music may sound, there’s that pleasure principle behind it. |
