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IN THE GARDEN

Yusef Lateef, Adam Rudolph, Go: Organic Orchestra
Meta Records, Venice CA, USA and YAL Records, Amherst MA, USA, 2003
www.metarecords.com
www.yuseflateef.com

Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher <mosher@svsu.edu>, Saginaw Valley State University, University Center MI 48710 USA.

IN THE GARDEN is drawn from two nights of improvisational concerts, and was recorded live on March 1 and 2, 2003 at the Electric Lodge of Venice, California. It is the work of flute and reedsman Yusef Lateef and percussionist Adam Rudolph, the latter directing his Go: Organic Orchestra. Lateef asserts himself as a solid practitioner (for about four decades) of "black classical music", post-John Coltrane free jazz.

The opener of the first of the concert’s two disks is "Little Tree", featuring a propulsive, loping beat and Africanesque scat singing, with a precise call-and-response moment that must have been scripted. Like all improvisational, music it varies in strength and conviction, at worst like Martin Denny’s 1950s exotica, before it finally comes to a full stop. "Nanna" contains searching sax notes and beats reminiscent of the eclectic British improviser Lol Coxhill, while "Morphic Resonance" has swirling potential but doesn’t quite coalesce. In "Lobelia, Euphorbia, Rock", Lateef’s flute is evocative of Igor Stravinsky’s "Rites of Spring".

"Trace Elements" joins Lateef’s tenor saxophone in a duet with Sarah Schoenbeck’s bassoon. At first stately and contemplative, we are given a sax-rich cinematic spy movie opening, soon shading into a manic rhumba with Alex Cline and Hariss Eisenstadt providing drums and percussion. "Root Pressure" ends in echoing subway-station sax solos.

On the second disk, "Amanita" suggests African village festivity in its percussion and a counterpoint of flutes and balafon. Its insistent atonality and a saxophone march is in stark contrast to "Formative Impulses", where creamy, traditional tonality suggests George Gershwin or Richard Rodgers. This piece’s second movement fails to develop, while its third builds intensly to dissolve in a Lateef solo stabbing like separated brushstrokes, seeking form but not necessarily achieving that aim.

"Moisture Droplet" is melodic and thoughtful, almost bluesy in the best sense of the word, and "Chaotic Attractors" alternates strong melody with somewhat scatterbrained passages before coming to a whistling finish. IN THE GARDEN is an enjoyable two discs of improvisational music that must’ve been rich in performance. It will serve as a good soundtrack for doing artwork, inspirational work music in my own studio, or to broaden and stimulate the creativity of my hardworking university art students.

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Updated 1st January 2004


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