Look for your love

About the album a Lovesome Thing Jerry Allen

In the very center of Vienna, on Judenplaz, a jazz plates store is hiding. I came there to buy Vienna Art Orchestra disc. The seller listened to some plate and warmly discussed it with a couple of a person-either his friends, or the same random visitors as me. After spending an hour and a half there, I returned home without Vienna Art Orchestra (“We Deleted Them,” the seller said, what would it mean?), But with the last album, Jerry Allen, about which at that time had no idea. The seller, having learned about my ignorance, smiled joyfully and let me listen to A Lovesome Thing. And I realized that I found love, and now Vienna will sound for me like a piano Jerry Allen.

A couple of weeks ago I already wrote that

Jazz has one amazing ability: to capture modernity, like a resonator hole on the guitar captures the vibrations of the string. By this, he resembles genre literature.

Do you want to know something about the past? Read the Gothic romance or horror. About the future? Science fiction. About the present? Detective. If Koltrain’s music seems to me a symbol of our time, depending on the abyss, then Jerry Allen’s work - and specifically A Lovesome Thing, explains how to reconcile with this time. Coltrain, when the road rushed, paves bridges through the water; This was done at the beginning of the last century by the writer Rex Stout. In his detectives about Niro Wulf and Archie Goodwin, he stated the death of the mind and only illuminated separate spots in the gloomy picture of the Universe. And Jerry Allen reaches out so that we do not fall, balancing on staggering boards. A hundred years ago, having sent Patter Brown to this dark world, Gilbert Kit Chesterton held out his hand in the same way.

Allen's life tragically broke off in 2017. The sixty -year -old pianist died of cancer. Her death did not become such a loud news as the death of the saxophonist Michael Brex 10 years earlier, but for connoisseurs of Allen's work, this turned out to be an irreparable loss. Her last lifetime record, the record of the Perfection Trio, was a farewell with the recently left pioneer of Free Jazz Ornett Cowlmann-the audience had to wait for goodbye to Jerry Allen herself. A Lovesome Thing, recording of the 2012 Paris Concert, finally replenishes this gap.

During her life, Allen managed to work in all conceivable and inconceivable compositions, play with jazz's luminaries such as Ron Carter, Charlie Hayden, Ornett Coleman and Jack Devzhonett, to visit the role of Fiugen-, Gospel-, Free Dzhazor Artist. On this variegated background, A Lovesome Thing stands out with deliberate conciseness. Instead of a large composition of instrumentalists, not even the “Key - Percussia -Contrabas” trio, but a duet. In his associates, Allen invited Kurt Rosenvinkel, a virtuoso guitarist who knows how to be at the same time very economical in choosing musical remedies, like Bluesmen (characteristic that he was recorded with Eric Clapton), and eclectic-ordinary as Pat Matini. As a result, the character of the album is close to the atmospheric duets of Koria-Berton, only instead of resonant blows of the vibrophone, smooth discharges of the electric guitar sound here.

The Standard Billy Staykhorn, the faithful partner Duke Ellington, is opened by the record, A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing. The quiet entry of Rosenvinkel sounds like an invitation. A duet is always a dialogue. Jerry Allen weaves a melody and cuts it off in a midst, gently conducts harmony through the maze of sound, but does not show it a way out of there. Minotaur and Ariadne in one person, Allen captivates and scares at the same time.

The second standard on the record, Embraceable You George Gershwin, sounds in the processing of Herby Hankok and returns us home. Hankock arranging, supported by the laconic manner of Rosenvinkel, sounds very in the Uglinovsky, in the world of academic music, this version could claim the title of authentic.

Allen takes a little from everyone: Baker's couple, Ornett of Coleman, Charlie Parker, but most of all, of course, from Billy Holliday, to tell a gentle story

And to precede the second half of the plate, opening with the original composition of the Simple #2 Rosenvinkel, where Allen demonstrates the ability to go back to the background to create Sound Landscape for thoughtful and only playful improvisations (flickering quote from Favorite Things, flirting solo). Further-the unexpected Telonius Monk, Ruby My Dar, where Allen is even more unexpected, but Rosenvinkel, and, finally, the open -handed reach of the authorship of Allen herself, seductive and mysterious, like a portrait of a beauty from a long-leaving era, mock dance, like waltzes from a broken musical box.

But all this elegant tenderness, which is gradually revealed for more than 50 minutes, is actually hidden already in the very first, title composition of the record. A Flower is A Lovesome Thing ends with a cascade of virtually executed notes in the upper register, which at first resembling the manner of Kita Jaretht. However, the first impression is deceptive: Allen plays romantically simply, like Robert Schuman. So the classics say goodbye. Winking overheads somewhere at the top (something similar to a dash at the end of Emily Dikinson's poems) is a warm voice from eternity. And then the applause follow.

With this column, I interrupted the cycle of stories about Vienna. I think it is sometimes very important to leave all thoughts aside, stop the movement, and stay alone with music. Vienna, sounding like a piano, Jerry Allen, invites Moscow to dance. Moscow, of course, is embarrassed. She was already wearing the habit of dancing, although she actually dances beautifully.

Read about Niro Wulf is necessary not to get confused. Listening to Coltrane is how to check with a compass.

In order not to despair, not to fall into despondency and continue to live, no matter what, the advice of Pater Brown is needed. Listening to Jerry Allen is how to chat with a friend.

Or find love.