Gene Pritsker’s Sound Liberation, Let’s
Save the World Suite (Composers Concordance 2022)
--originally published in The NYC Jazz Record--
Gene Pritsker is the kind of left-wing composer that proliferated in the 1930s in the John Reed Club and its off shoot, the Composers Collective of New York which boasted the talents of Aaron Copland, Elie Siegmeister, Marc Blitzstein, Ruth Crawford, Charles Louis Seeger, Henry Cowell and other modernist rads. Pritsker, founder of Composers Concordance, has often thrived on messages of social justice within his work and uses activism not only as fodder for compositions but also entire conceptual albums (2020’s Protest was cultured by the Black Lives Matter movement and the police killings which bore it).
Pritsker’s muse is a restless one, and through it, he very
successfully balances the roles of artist and militant, contemporary composer
and free improviser, guttural rocker and aerial jazzer. His latest is the
7-movement Let’s Save the World Suite, realized by his Sound Liberation ensemble.
The band’s name recalls Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, but the
suite’s title bears resemblance to ‘Change the World’, the Daily Worker
column of revolutionary writer Mike Gold. Even with so much history inherent,
this suite is based on the poetry of “proser-poet-performer” Erik T. Johnson
whose words and declamation are utterly contemporary. Behind and through
Johnson’s spoken word performances (on three cuts), Pritsker’s music soars, testifies
and exemplifies the struggle.
The work opens with a gripping prelude, commencing in the
leader’s haunting, mildly atonal guitar intro and the somber melody heard in Franz
Hackl’s resounding trumpet and Paul Carlon’s tenor saxophone. This edition of
Sound Liberation is small, a combo really, rounded out by Jose Moura (electric bass)
and Damien Bassman (drumset), and of course the central voice of Johnson. He
enters, proclaiming:
Listen
honey, there’s not enough pain in the world.
If
there was, someone would notice,
Do
something about it, give it a pulpit,
Found
it a faith, pay dearly to take its name in vain;
Then
in reason, overthrow it…
The music attaches itself to his reading, coating word
and breath, until the melodic content seems to transform into the speaker’s own
voice. This opening line becomes the title of the Suite’s second movement, built
on an early ‘70s groove (think Cobham’s Spectrum, heavy on the bass). Carlon
takes the first solo of the set, far too briefly, resounding in old-school Blue
Note as much as R&B, culminating in Pritsker’s harrowing guitar improv, its
rapid-fire fretwork, squealing octave-leaps and distortion claiming the piece as
something post-Altamont. An instrumental interlude follows and here the quasi-bossa
rhythm and open harmonies of the horns contrast beautifully with the leader’s deftly
dropped sus chords and pedal point, the effect being ominous as ancient modes singularly
wield. Movement IV, “We Don’t Have Much Time Left”, with a lingering modal
quality raked over a vexing, funky, odd-time signature which seems to glide
from rough 7/8 to 5/8 and back to common time. It’s just the traverse for
poetry which begins:
The
train is waiting but we’re too poor for the ticket.
Once the improv section takes flight, Pritsker seems
to channel the expressionist soundscapes of Robert Fripp, but one hears John
McLaughlin and bits of Jimi Hendrix in there, too. This sets off the unmistakable
progressive rock and fusion woven through the next interlude, its biting unisons
culminating in Bassman’s sizzling, crackling drum solo. However, movement VI, “Or
Pretend to Beauty” slows the atmosphere with a throbbing 2-beat recalling
Weimar-era Berlin, Pritsker’s guitar doing its best plectrum banjo mimicry and
Bassman leaning into toms and snare. And yet with the horns sounding like a hard
bop frontline, the already complex melody only grows outward with rhythmic
twists as the work expands.
The album closes with Postlude, a sister to the Prelude
but with new musical forays and poetry so dark, it speaks to the ages:
Said
the man to a woman, said the man to the man,
Went
with the children; held them in his hand.
Over
cloud black hills, there’s a stream running white;
It
don’t slate no thirst or pretend to beauty.
The
stream is shut up.
“I’m
taking you there”, said the woman to the child.
“The
hell you will”, said the man to them all.
Cried
the children to the mother; cried the sister to the dead.
Laugh
the man to them all; put them
In
his hand.
CREDITS: Gene Pritsker -
composer/guitar , Franz Hackl – trumpet , Paul Carlon – sax , Jose Moura – bass , Damien Bassman – drums , Erik
T. Johnson - narrator/poet
- Prelude
- There’s Not
Enough Pain in the World
- Interlude
- We Don’t Have
Much Time Left
- Interlude No.
2
- Or Pretend to Beauty
- Postlude