Free Fall (Jimmy-Giuffre-Album)

Occupation

• Clarinet: Jimmy Giuffre
• Piano Paul Bley (2, 6, 10, 12 )
• Bass: Steve Swallow (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12)

Freefall is a jazz album by Jimmy Giuffre trio with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow, taken on 9 July, 10 October and 1 November 1962 in New York City. Produced by Teo Macero album was released in 1963 on Columbia Records. In expanded form it was re-released in CD form in 1998.

Prehistory

Giuffre had in the Lenox School of Jazz, where he taught the end of the 1950s, for the first time heard Ornette Coleman, who took part in the summer school 1959. Giuffre was very impressed by Coleman's game, joined in 1960 by the baritone sax to the clarinet and his music changed in the next few years; the result was moody, overlapping improvisations without fixed key or tempo that characterized his game from now on.

In 1961, the clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre with pianist Paul Bley and bassist Steve Swallow a trio with which he, the two Verve albums Fusion ( March 1961 ) and Thesis ( August 1961 ) grossed ( re-released under the title in 1961 on ECM ), and went on a four-week European tour in October / November 1961, documented on albums such as Emphasis, Stuttgart 1961, Flight, Bremen 1961 ( published on HatHut Records). Between the two Verve albums to Giuffres music had gone from pastoral plaintive sound of "The Train and the River" developed away what one was not thrilled by the memories of Steve Swallow at Verve management; you have tried to convince Giuffre, " mitigate its impact on the purchasing power of Jazz" and instructed Creed Taylor to monitor the sessions that were handled quickly.

The album

The Columbia session a year later, " then took place in more pleasant atmosphere, " recalled Swallow, 1998; " Teo Macero was our music more tolerant than the Creed Taylor was, and had much more sympathy for it." Recordings - with a familiar with classical music recording engineer - found in the studio converted church held at the 30th Street, which has a suitable acoustic decreed.

After the first recordings of unaccompanied solos in July 1962 Giuffre went with Bley and Swallow on October 10 to the recording studio; incurred in the session ( in addition to the solo number one alone ), the title Spasmodic, The Five Ways and Threewe. At the last recording session on November 1, were the trio tracks Dichotomy, Divided Man and Motion Suspended and Solo titles Onothoids, Yggdrasill and Primordial Call recorded.

The original album contained five clarinet solos, two duets for clarinet and bass, and three trio tracks. With the re-release as a Compact Disc five more clarinet solos were added. Giuffre later ruled over the music of the album:

List of titles

LP Edition 1963

• Jimmy Giuffre: Free Fall (Columbia 1963 - CL 1964/CS 8764 )

A1 Propulsion -1:43

A2 Threewe -4:10

A3 Ornothoids -2:11

A4 Dichotomy -3:56

A5 Man Alone -2:16

A6 Spasmodic -3:24

B1 Yggdrasill -2:32

B2 Divided Man -1:52

B3 Primordial Call -2:16

B4 The Five Ways -10:20

• All titles come from Jimmy Giuffre.

CD - 1998 edition

• Jimmy Giuffre: Free Fall (Columbia 1998 - CK 65446, Legacy - 01-065446-10 )

Effect of the album

This trio was less than two years; Steve Swallow wrote later, the group had last played in a coffee house on Bleecker Street in New York, in which the fee would be 35 cents for every musician. Despite positive reviews - the magazine Jazz ( 1964) believes contains " Freefall some of the most unique group improvisations that were ever recorded " - remained Freefall at its appearance in 1963 a commercial failure. After the Columbia album Giuffre released no new recordings for ten years. Instead, he taught at the New School and at New York University in New York City. Only in 1989 and 1992, Giuffre, Bley and Swallow met again to touring and recording; thereby created the albums The Life of a Trio: Saturday and Sunday and Fly Away, Little Bird ( Owl ).

The importance of the album was fully recognized only in later years; in the opinion of the British magazine Gramophone was the Jimmy Giuffre 3 with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow " in retrospect " one of the ambioniertesten groups of the era have been. According to Tracie Ratiner However, the appearance of Giuffres trio free jazz was overshadowed by Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz album fundamental to Come (1959 ) and other publications of this phase. Steve Voce called it in his obituary in The Independent Giuffre - 2008 is a classic album of free jazz genre; Josef Woodard referred to them in Jazz Times as " an early and important rumblings of the coming revolution in improvisation ".

According to the British music critic Wilfrid Mellers Giuffre take here, " the ultimate stage and disconnects completely from the Beat, " According to Piero Scaruffi Giuffre explore sound surfaces at the boundary between free jazz and classical music.

Thom Jurek rated this album in Allmusic with 4 ½ stars and described it as one of the most revolutionary recordings to come out of the 1960s. While John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor " wanted to rip the music from the inside ," Giuffre developed its own quiet microtonal revolution that has been overlooked by the other Avantgardistsen in jazz. In Freefall be Giuffre issued with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow "on a much more extensive travel " than on the previous two Verve albums Fusion and Thesis ( 1961) " in his search for pointillist harmony, open - tonal match and the force of a nuanced phrasing to create new perspectives for solo and group improvisation. "This album procure a great view of Giuffre as a master not only of free improvisation, but also as an excellent performer of a musical language of composers like Darius Milhaud, Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen and Morton Feldman and Earle Brown was prepared.

Giuffres clarinet studies how Man Alone, Yggdrasill and Present Motion are studies in tonal coloration; the group interactions Threewe and Spasmodic would offer a look at interlocking chromatic pointillism. But Freefall was at the time such a radical music that no one was ready for it. Freefall be a precursor to the European microtonal studies and an inspiration to all who accept it.

Richard Cook and Brian Morton draw the album in The Penguin Guide to Jazz from the highest rating of four stars and the additional crown (a special token of merit). Compared to the two previous albums Fusion and Thesis have Freefall a " complicated and hinterlistigeren sound." It 'll start the group shortly before the end of its existence. It is noteworthy that Columbia have had the courage to realize this project. " What you hear is something that has stabilized in practice, but has not lost his creativity by far. Swallows fiery poking around and pointed plucked single-note playing gives the music a new impulse to the kind of energy, " how to find them in free jazz. In addition to the previous albums, especially Freefall is an " essential document of a wider Jazzidioms who refused; in to see the sole claim Bop. "

Jimmy Giuffres trio recordings with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow were the inspiration for Ken Vander Marks shots with Havard Wiik and Haker Flaten Ingebrigt ( Freefall: Gray Scale 2010). Even the trio from Lotte Anker, Rodrigo Pinheiro and Hernani Faustino was referring to in their album Still ( Creative Sources, 2007) to Freefall.

Freefall was included in The Wire 's " 100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening )" as # 112.