The Convergence Quartet, Owl Jacket

The Convergence Quartet is a significant gathering of notable instrumentalists who also compose/arrange, in a provocative limited-edition LP release of six numbers entitled Owl Jacket (NoBusiness Records NBLP84).

Specifically this is a cooperative venture between Taylor Ho Bynam on cornet, Harris Eisenstadt on drums, Alexander Hawkins on piano and Dominic Lash on bass.

Harris arranges two traditional Ghanaian songs, "Dogbe Na Wo Lo" and "Mamady Wo Murado Sa;" Dominic gives us "Jacket" and "Azalpho;" Taylor contributes "Coyote;" and Alexander comes up with "Owl."

The music is smartly free but also structured by the compositions-arrangements. All four give us original improvisational inventions that work together well in the four-way. When combined with unusual and idiomatically structured compositional ideas the whole set stands out.

Bynum's "Coyote" and Alexander's "Owl" are good examples. They both have a memorable post-modern/post-minimal circular melodic head structure that sets up what the ensemble improvises off of in excellent ways.

In the end the music stays with you. It shows off the ingenuity and creativity of the foursome while also letting your ears grab onto compositional guideposts that lead you through the journey.

A seminal release that gets better and better the more you listen. Only 300 copies have been pressed, so get this one now if you can.

The Convergence Quartet, Slow and Steady

Free music is no simple matter. It can work marvelously when the chemistry between players is right. Or it can earnestly go along but never quite reach a collective point of convergence. Happily, the group named after such occurrences, the Convergence Quartet, achieves such a state consistently and rewardingly on their album Slow and Steady (No Business NBCD 53).

The band has excellent chemistry. Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet), Alexander Hawkins (piano), Dominic Lash (double bass) and Harris Eisenstadt (drums) each has a hand in the compositions presented (live at the Vortex in England as part of the London Jazz Festival). They are substantial. And each contributes excellent improvisations within a first-tier group dynamic.

I have not explored the music of Alexander Hawkins much at all but he shows himself stylistically well-suited to this outfit, with both a free/new music and a harmonic sensibility as needed. Like the others in this band he is not readily pigeonholed as a follower of x, y, or z, but rather has his own voice.

It's a beautifully hewn set! No one dominates; everyone dominates. There is tender introspection and hard-edged dynamics side-by-side here. It will make you think. It will let you feel. It will inspire you to a far away musical mindset that energizes and causes reflection. Very much an album to hear.