Mary Halvorson - Cloudward

The Quietus

Cloudward probably won’t jump out to familiar listeners of Brooklyn-based jazz guitarist Halvorson’s previous albums as being particularly unusual in her catalogue. However, it’s probably the first where she sounds fully immersed in her band Amaryllis, which she originally composed music for in 2020 during the pandemic. Now, she finds herself still writing for the band, and the results are rich and increasingly organic-sounding. With the album a means to articulate the process of her band re-emerging after the pandemic, the cadence of the record does seem to replicate the sound of the city’s life gradually blossoming out into the streets.

With improv sextet Amaryllis in tow, featuring Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Nick Dunston (bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums), Jacob Garchik (trombone), and Adam O’Farrill (trumpet), the group create a thicket of sound around Halvorson’s agile, but muted riffs. They become an immediate, bracing presence on the album’s opening track, ‘The Gate’, before being cut short on its follow up ‘The Tower’, a number more concerned with demonstrating the distinctive personality of Halvorson’s guitar. Accompanied by the minimal presence of a vibraphone, she first demonstrates her virtuosity in a strumming pattern that seems to trill like a bird, before providing a more chord-based bed for the rest of her band to emerge into the conversation.

It’s hard to compare Halvorson’s playing on this album with that of other jazz guitarists. You could liken her playing to Wes Montgomery a little thanks to its warm, comforting strumming patterns. Ut seems a bit less rock-influenced than some of her previous work. On Cloudward, her guitar almost coughs and splutters. ‘Incarnadine’ appears to feature a granular pedal or effect on it. All in all her rhythmic style is singular. It’s also on this track that labelmate Laurie Anderson makes an appearance, presumably as a violinist (she’s only credited by name). Listeners may be surprised that she’s not here to provide a spoken word accompaniment (Halvorson took a lyrics-based approach on Code Girl with the singer and jazz musician Amirtha Kidambi but hasn’t fully returned to this idea since).

Upbeat, curious, and inquisitive, Cloudward makes for a great city walking album. It strikes the perfect balance between being jazz that’s not too impenetrable, while also being full of interesting surprises (primarily in terms of the language of Halvorson’s own playing). It feels like walking around a block to be confronted with a street that has a slightly different feel to the one that you have just left. Halvorson’s approach to composition is both soft and hectic in a seemingly alternating fashion. She knows just when to pique your interest and when to draw you into what feels like the warm, informal ambience of a Brooklyn jazz club at night.

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Pitchfork

Read Andy Cush’s review of the album.

The Free Jazz Collective 0

By Don Phipps

Guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson has become a mainstay of the free music scene – her albums winning accolades for their innovative compositions and challenging abstractions. Cloudward is no exception – with eight compositions whose musical ideas seem never to touch the ground, but prefer, instead, to suspend themselves in mid-air.

Her choice of bandmates on this outing certainly help to make this happen. In addition to Halvorson, the sextet is comprised of Tomas Fujiwara on drums, Nick Dunston on bass, Jacob Garchik on trombone, Adam O’Farrill on trumpet, and Patricia Brennan on vibraphone. The band is large enough to add colorful voicings to the outing yet small enough that each musician has the space to contribute. The sextet is even joined on “Incarnadine” by Laurie Anderson, who chips in on violin.

The dissonant and abstract tunes are not harsh or difficult. Instead, they are seasoned with just enough sauce to provide a tasty gumbo of sounds and effects. Each has its own captivating themes and there’s plenty of counterpoint to establish these themes in clever and enticing ways.

One can marvel at the way the group navigates the compositions both together and apart. Take the first number, “The Gate,” where Halvorson and O’Farrill open with joint guitar and trumpet over Dunston’s engaging bass. Or the abstract picking and electronics Halvorson uses on “The Tower,” which migrates into Brennan’s gentle vibraphone phrases. As the tune progresses, the music seems to disassociate, almost like a tapestry unraveling into different strands.

For variety, there’s the industrial rock found in “Desiderata,” with its electronic distortions and cascading guitar notes juxtaposed against the vibraphone arc, as Brennan’s lines pilot the turbulence like a moth flying in circles around some distant light. Fujiwara drives the bus forward with some excellent drum work underneath the eerie guitar and dream-like vibraphone phrases.

Perhaps the most fascinating number is the final one – “Ultramarine,” Dotson opens the piece with adroit maneuvering on the bass and he’s joined by Halvorson, whose twangy tones sound almost banjo-like. As the number moves forward, it develops a gentle swing, highlighted by the abstract bluesy chords created by Garchik’s trombone and O’Farrill’s trumpet atop Halverson’s arpeggios. O’Farrill’s contribution is particularly noteworthy – as his trumpet slides up and down the registers like butter on a hot skillet.

There’s more of course – from the odd time meter employed in “Unscrolling” to the discombobulated Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole effects generated by the group on “Incarnadine.” Cloudward certainly displays Halvorson and colleagues at their best – a stunning exhibition of musical ideas and fluid musicianship.