Paul Motian
Conception Vessel
Album · Jazz · 1973 · ECM Records
Not long after his landmark stint with the Bill Evans Trio in the late ’50s and early ’60s, drummer Paul Motian rose in stature as one of modern jazz’s most enduringly enigmatic bandleader-composers. It began with this all-original 1973 debut, on which every track is a journey wholly unlike the last. There’s a solo drum ode (“Ch’i Energie”); a ferocious piano-drum duet with Keith Jarrett (“Conception Vessel”); a short flute-drum duet with Becky Friend (“American Indian – Song of Sitting Bull”); and engrossing guitar work from Sam Brown, nylon-string and electric respectively, on “Georgian Bay” and “Rebica” (also featuring iconic bassist Charlie Haden, Motian’s partner in the Jarrett “American Quartet” of this period). The closing “Inspiration From a Vietnamese Lullaby” finds violinist and avant-garde pioneer Leroy Jenkins deep in dialogue with Motian, Friend, and the ensemble. Even at its stormiest, the music has a certain inner mysticism, a quality that Motian brought to his own work and that of so many other artists, young and old, until his death at 80 in 2011.
Conception Vessel
Paul Motian
Not long after his landmark stint with the Bill Evans Trio in the late ’50s and early ’60s, drummer Paul Motian rose in stature as one of modern jazz’s most enduringly enigmatic bandleader-composers. It began with this all-original 1973 debut, on which every track is a journey wholly unlike the last. There’s a solo drum ode (“Ch’i Energie”); a ferocious piano-drum duet with Keith Jarrett (“Conception Vessel”); a short flute-drum duet with Becky Friend (“American Indian – Song of Sitting Bull”); and engrossing guitar work from Sam Brown, nylon-string and electric respectively, on “Georgian Bay” and “Rebica” (also featuring iconic bassist Charlie Haden, Motian’s partner in the Jarrett “American Quartet” of this period). The closing “Inspiration From a Vietnamese Lullaby” finds violinist and avant-garde pioneer Leroy Jenkins deep in dialogue with Motian, Friend, and the ensemble. Even at its stormiest, the music has a certain inner mysticism, a quality that Motian brought to his own work and that of so many other artists, young and old, until his death at 80 in 2011.
