Tweleve Minor [Import]

Editorial Reviews
From Jazziz
Eight years after Don Byron's landmark Tuskegee Experiments, it's still not as if the clarinet's making a comeback. But the once-dominant instrument is far more frequently evident in jazz these days - and not just in Dixieland. Ben Goldberg, the Bay Area composer and bandleader, has long been ahead of that curve. As leader of the New Klezmer Trio, he had the jump on Byron's klezmer project (Plays the Music of Mickey Katz) and on John Zorn's klezmer-inspired supergroup Masada. Somehow, though, Goldberg has never attracted the same kind of notice. Must be an East Coast/West Coast thing because the music on Twelve Minor slams the noggin with delicious complexities. The Middle Eastern/Middle European themes percolate throughout, refined through the (seemingly requisite of late) post-Ornette structural influences, but Goldberg doesn't stop there. He's organized a superb sextet - drummer Kenny Wollesen, bassist Trevor Dunn, koto improvisor Miya Masoaka, violinist Carla Kihlstedt, and tenor saxophonist Rob Sudduth - that's extremely sensitive to textural tensions. (For examples, check the vigorous precision of Wollesen's brush work or the Eastern traditions and tunings evoked by Masoaka.) These tensions can be resolved or heightened through delicately tuned interplay. As exemplified by the contemplative lilt of "Twine: Harmony," one of eight studies on the album, it's a chemistry that's part old country, part jazz underground, and part Zen garden.

Tweleve Minor,Ben Goldberg,Avant,Jazz

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