Monday, July 16, 2012

Red Trio and Nate Wooley, Stem

The Red Trio have made an impact with several excellent albums in the past several years. For this latest they add the forceful presence of trumpeter Nate Wooley in a set they entitle Stem (Clean Feed 249).

Rodrigo Pinheiro, piano, Hernani Faustino, double bass, and Gabriel Ferrandini, drums, aka the Red Trio, have struck me consistently as an avant improvisational unit that has both passion and great smarts. They are deliberate as well as spontaneous; they get a great deal of interplay happening without responding overtly to one another much of the time. Each member goes in a similar direction to realize a particular musical moment in time and the consistency of result is very high.

With the addition of Nate Wooley there is a vibrant fourth color to work off of--and both Nate and the trio are very actively colorful soundmasters. The results are not necessarily denser, but there is more potential sound-figure spontaneity to work off of. And that potential is very much actual in this set.

All four players can flow lines or share a piece of the collective line constructed. Both happen with intelligence and passion, fire and implied endlessness.

I especially like how Rodrigo and Nate, as the front liners, work together, one punctuating the other, both streaming lines together. And then Hernani becomes a third line, Gabriel a fourth, so that everybody is soloing/nobody is soloing in a dynamic give and take.

It's an inspired set of freedom sounds. Listening should be the response. That was mine. It pays the aesthetic dividend of a statisfying artistic-musical communion of self and disk! So try that out if you can spring for a copy.

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