Recording of September 2024: Synthesis: The String Quartet Sessions
Synthesis: The String Quartet Sessions
Various composers and musicians
ArtistShare CD. 2024. Ryan Truesdell, prod.; Ryan Streber, eng. (footnote 1).
Performance ****½
Sonics ****
Until now, Ryan Truesdell has been known for producing two of the most important jazz records of the second decade of the current millennium. Centennial, in 2012, and Lines of Color, in 2015, contained newly discovered works by the great composer/arranger Gil Evans. They were lavish productions with huge world-class New York orchestras. The many honors they received included a Grammy award and multiple Grammy nominations.
Now Truesdell has a new project. His ensemble size has shrunk, but his ambition has not. Synthesis is a three-CD set containing new original works for string quartet by 15 large-ensemble jazz composers including himself.
You read that right: Synthesis is a jazz album with three hours of string quartet music. Truesdell explains: “We were at the point in the pandemic when groups larger than five or six couldn’t be gathered in a room together. Large-ensemble jazz composers were feeling hopeless for the future of their artform. The string quartet occurred to me as a possible way forward—first for practical reasons, second because the format is a legitimizing entity. In classical music, you’re not a real composer until you’ve written a string quartet. So I offered 14 of my favorite composers a commission to write a string quartet. I figured half would say no. They all said yes. Of course, I knew that I was asking people who wrote for large jazz ensembles with rhythm sections to suddenly write for four strings. But that was the challenge. I think that overcoming some kind of challenge is how we grow as artists and humans.”
The composers are Truesdell, Jim McNeely, Rufus Reid, John Clayton, Alan Ferber, John Hollenbeck, Christine Jensen, Oded Lev-Ari, Dave Rivello, Miho Hazama, Vanessa Perica, Nathan Parker Smith, Asuka Kakitani, and Joseph Borsellino III. (Truesdell also used a previously unrecorded piece by the late Bob Brookmeyer.)
The music on Synthesis is strikingly diverse. Clayton’s “Tidal Wave” is a four-minute jewel-like vignette, “loosely borrowed” from Chopin’s Prelude in C minor. Hollenbeck’s “Grey Cottage” is a wildly whimsical 29-minute, seven-part suite. Hazama’s “Chipmunk Timmy’s Sunny Funny Day” often sounds improvised but is through-composed. On Ferber’s “Violet Soul,” Sara Caswell’s gorgeous violin solo sounds too perfect to have been improvised, but it was. On Smith’s “Where Can You Be?,” a string quartet hits like a brass band. Borsellino’s “Paper Cranes” incorporates a prerecorded track and interweaves electronic sounds with acoustic strings.
For all the individuality of the tracks, the album has an overarching cohesion. The string quartet format (two violins, a viola, and a cello) is a magical microcosm with a special capacity for engaging with the human intellect and heart. Synthesis reveals how an iconic, 250-year-old ensemble structure can be made newly relevant.
Truesdell’s innovations coexist with beauty. Australian composer Vanessa Perica spent the pandemic in Melbourne, “one of the most locked-down cities in the world.” Her “A World Lies Waiting” is a direct translation of human feeling into music. As motifs emerge and flow and dissolve and reform, passing through successive configurations of four instruments, sonorous deep blends become correlatives for yearning. Jensen’s “Tilting World” is also a poignant recollection of the experience of the pandemic. Its intricately interwoven themes recall the sensation of the world shifting beneath one’s feet. Truesdell’s “Heart of Gold (for Jody)” is centered on a crystalline, indelible melody that feels like it exists outside of time. Truesdell says it appeared to him “out of nowhere, fully realized.” The haunting melody of Ferber’s “Violet Soul” also sounds like it has always been there.
There is now a generation of string players capable of both classical technical refinement and jazz improvisation. Many of the very best are on Synthesis: violinists Sara Caswell, Joyce Hammann, and Lady Jess; violists Lois Martin and Orlando Wells; cellists Jody Redhage Ferber and Noah Hoffeld. Truesdell says, “The string quartet is such a demanding format. It strips everything down to the core of four voices—low, medium, high. It’s very exposed. These amazing players nailed all the challenging music I put in front of them.”
A violin renaissance is happening in jazz. Sara Caswell should know. She is at the center of it. When asked for a comment on this development, she said, “It has to do with barriers dissolving. There’s a lot more cross-pollination now. There are many more string players who speak multiple musical languages. Jazz composers are hearing that, and they want to explore the timbres that only string players can provide.” The rich, resonant, piercing sonorities of Caswell’s violin are a quintessential example of those timbres. Her purity and precision are classical. Her edgy sensibility is jazz. She is a star of this album. Her featured solo improvisations are continuously breathtaking.
Truesdell’s project can be understood as the highest achievement to date within the string renaissance in jazz. But the 15 pieces here are not entirely jazz. They are certainly not entirely in the classical, or contemporary, or world music domains. They draw upon all of the above and point toward a new genre. What to call it? For now, call it Synthesis.—Thomas Conrad
Footnote 1: Ryan Streber was the engineer on Sasha Matson’s 2023 album Molto Molto.—John Atkinson