Ran Blake - Ghost Tones

Ran Blake
Ghost Tones
a-side records

Available through CD Baby

Ran Blake - Piano, electric piano
Peter Kenagy - Trumpet
Aaron Hartley - Trombone
Doug Pet - Tenor saxophone
Eric Lane - Piano, electric piano
Jason Yeager - Piano
Ryan Dugre - Guitar
Dave "Knife" Fabris - Pedal steel guitar
Rachel Massey - Violin
Brad Barrett - Acoustic bass, electric bass
David Flaherty - Drums, tympani
Charles Burchell - Drums, tympani, vibraphone
Luke Moldof - Electronics

Ghost Tones is Ran Blake’s tribute to his former colleague at the New England Conservatory of Music, the late composer and theoretician George Russell. The album was originally slated to be released on HatOLOGY, but was rescued when that label went through some tough times and has been issued on a-side records.

The abstract cover of the CD shows a mottled, fuzzy image of Mr. Russell, and the music matches the visual perfectly. Ghost Tones features a mix of standards, Blake’s own songs, and radically reworked versions of Russell compositions such as Stratusphunk, Ezz-Thetic and a segment from Vertical Form. You’ve never heard You Are My Sunshine like this before, a funhouse ride through C&W, avant-garde and who knows what else.

The words I thought of when listening to Ghost Tones was “fever dream”. Through various solo, duo and group performances, a languid mood is sustained, mixed with Mr. Blake’s trademark Noir sensibilities. There are some subtle electronic touches that appear, and even though there are contributions from thirteen musicians sprinkled through the CD, a consistent tone and mood carries through all seventeen tracks. Ghost Tones plays as one continual piece, taking the listener through a time capsule of various aspects of Mr. Russell’s music and Mr. Blake’s signature conception.

The CD begins and ends with Ran alone, with two gorgeous versions of Autumn in New York, beautiful harmonies capturing the perfect fall day in the city with a touch of sentiment and regret.

Ghost Tones will take you to a Lonely Place, but it’s a place you’ll want to visit with Mr. Blake as your guide.

Recent Passings

They say deaths come in threes, but it seems like many notable people in and out of the jazz world have passed away recently. In addition to George Russell, drummer Rashied Ali and multi-reedist Joe Maneri recently left us. Ali is probably the better known musician, due to his work with John Coltrane on Concert in Japan and, most famously, Interstellar Space shortly before Coltrane passed away in 1967. His approach to free rhythms solidified and extended what had been started by Sunny Murray, Andrew Cyrille and Milford Graves.

Joe Maneri, a Boston-area legend, was a one-of-a-kind voice who played alto, tenor, clarinet and piano. He is best-known for pioneering micro-tonal playing, which divides the octave into 72 tones rather than the 12-tone equal temperment system found in most Western music. He was a long-time faculty member of the New England Conservatory of Music and counted Matthew Shipp among his students.

Joe experienced a renewal of interest in his music starting in the 90's, based partly on the emergence of his son, Mat, as a bright new voice on violin and viola. Maneri recorded for both Leo and ECM; his albums with Mat and bassist Barre Phillips, Tales of Rohnlief and Angles of Repose, are a good place to start an exploration of his music, as is the duet album with Mat, Blessed, also on ECM. Once you immerse yourself in their world, the albums have a strange beauty to them underneath a dissonant exterior.

A Sad Day

I learned that George Russell, composer and pianist, passed away last night at the age of 86. He created the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, which influenced Miles Davis' and John Coltrane's use of modes, and the system has been called "the only original theory to come from jazz".

His string of mid-50s albums for Riverside highlighted his original compositional sense and his outstanding arrangements for small groups. The mid- 60s Live at Beethoven Hall albums for the German MPS label featured Don Cherry and are some of my absolute favorites to this day. His reworking of classics like Round Midnight demonstrate how the Lydian Concept changes a musician's approach to the relationship between scales and chords.

During the sixties he worked frequently in Europe, particularly Sweden, and his recordings feature some of the earliest work from future ECM mainstays Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal and Jon Christensen. He returned to the United States, taught at the New England Conservatory of Music, and released big band albums like The African Game on Blue Note. In the eighties he formed the Living Time Orchestra with a pool of international musicians. This chapter of his career is his least interesting, in my opinion, as the rock influences sound a little corny and overdone to these ears.

Nonetheless, George Russell was an relatively unsung giant in the jazz world, and I will be listening to his work for years to come.