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THREE
by Cosmosamatics

review by Bruce Wallace
12.12.04

In the interest of full disclosure, I should come right out and say that jazz ensembles with no bass player make me nervous. I've tried to break what I know is a narrow-minded habit: I remind myself about the stifling nature of song form and the necessity of artistic imperative. Still, the bass-less trio always leaves me feeling a little empty. After turning in two great albums with a complete (see, I can't help it) rhythm section (William Parker played bass on the first, Curtis Lundy on the second), the Cosmosamatics' third release, Three, makes good on the promise of its title with a trio of drummer Jay Rosen and multi-reedists Sonny Simmons and Michael Marcus. While I'm not quite sure why they did it, truth is that they do it pretty well.

One thing that the format does is force Simmons and Marcus to interact in a way that horn players normally don't. Rather than taking turns blowing through choruses with muscular bravado, the two offer subtle counterpoint to each other's solo passages. Aside from both being intuitive and lyrical musicians, they also have nearly a decade of experience working together, beginning with Simmons' 1996 album Transcendence. This symbiotic relationship is particularly good on two of Marcus' compositions, the album-opening "Futura" and the free-time, dirge-like "12 Seasons of Love."

The album really hits its stride in the second half, taken from a live recording made in Amsterdam in 2003. "12 Seasons of Love" is atonal flourishes painted over a slow blues moan. The trio flexes its free-jazz muscle with "Avant Garde Destruct," a piece that is balls-out from the word go, with Simmons ascending gracefully through bebop lines and capping them with off-color squawks.

Simmons's unaccompanied turn on the indefatigable "'Round Midnight" reminds the listener that this is a musician who spent a decade supporting himself by playing his horn for passersby in San Francisco's financial district. It is a lonely (is this song ever not lonely?), lightly ornamented, masterful reading that one can easily imagine echoing up through the cold angles of looming skyscrapers.

Although Three is the collaborative effort of a working band, one really feels that this is a Sonny Simmons project-he's the group's elder statesman, who in his career has played with greats including Eric Dolphy, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner and Billy Higgins. Most of the feeling, though, comes from the broad cohesiveness of his sound, which describes an uninterrupted arc from blues to pure bebop through the '60s avant-garde and funk, a sound that seems thoroughly contemporary. The last decade has seen Simmons' welcome return to recording and touring; the next will hopefully bring more of the same. Or the same, only with a bassist.

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