HOLY ABYSS

Joel Harrison / Lorenzo Feliciati

Musicians
Joel Harrison: guitar
Lorenzo Feliciati: bass guitar
Cuong Vu: trumpet
Roy Powell: keyboards
Dan Weiss: drums

Featuring trumpeter Cuong Vu, drummer Dan Weiss and Roy Powell on piano and Hammond B3 organ, the quintet reflects jazz’s increasingly international reach. Harrison and Weiss, musical comrades for many years, are New Yorkers, while longtime collaborators Feliciati and Powell hail from Rome and Oslo via the UK, respectively. Vu, who has toured and recorded with Feliciati and Powell, was born in Vietnam and is now based in Seattle, near where he grew up. The musicians are united by a passion for modern jazz unbounded by stylistic conventions. Open to sounds from around the world, they have all created music infused with electronics, odd meters, and uncommon timbres and tonal palettes.

Holy Abyss opens with Harrison’s anguished ballad “Requiem for an Unknown Soldier,” which establishes the album’s elemental sensibility with its ethereal trumpet fanfare and slow burning guitar solo. Harrison also contributes the tunefully picaresque “North Wind” and beautifully bent “Saturday Night in Pendleton,” a piece inspired by a memorable gig his band Free Country played in Pendleton, Oregon. “It was one of the strangest places I’ve been in my life, and this piece illuminates that surreal evening, the twisted cowboys, the stark, gorgeous desert, the ancient Native American woman who karate-chopped Dan Weiss in a bar,” Harrison says.

Vu contributes two emotionally roiling tunes, the brooding, elliptical “Faith” and the bittersweet “Old and New,” a sinuous 5/4 anthem that hints at his long tenure in the Pat Metheny Group. Feliciati adds the ferociously galloping “Solos”, and two pieces, “Small Table Rules” and “That Evening,” that serve as forums for combustible collective improvisation, a specialty of this highly-attuned quintet.

Although this is the first time Vu and Harrison have recorded together, they share a similarly expansive aesthetic. Both favor piercing, gorgeous tones mixed with raw, nasty electronics. Combined with Powell’s piano and Hammond B-3, the sound is simultaneously jubilant and hallucinogenic, crackling with energy, and then gently subdued. Weiss, one of New York’s most sought after drummers, delivers his signature mix of driving grooves punctuated by pithy, unpredictable asides, while Feliciati’s insinuating lines and textures ensure the music never proceeds in predictable directions.

Lorenzo Feliciati is rapidly gaining recognition as one of Europe’s most dependably creative bassists. “I find that Feliciati’s style on the bass reminds me more of players like Victor Bailey, Percy Jones, Jaco, Gary Willisand perhaps Jeff Berlin,” writes MJ Brady in Proggnosis.com. “Progressive rock, fusion, world fusion are heard on a CD from perhaps Italy’s best kept secret on the bass guitar.” A prolific studio musician who’s played on hundreds of pop and rock projects, he’s released a series of stimulating albums featuring his original compositions, such as 2008’s trio session Wasabi (Picanto) with pianist Alessandro Gwis and drummer Emanuele Smimmo and 2010’s Closer (ViaVeneto Jazz) with guest Cuong Vu. He’s probably best known as the leader of Naked Truth. Featuring Vu (recently replaced by Graham Haynes), Roy Powell on piano and Hammond B3 and drummer Pat Mastelotto, the band’s debut album Shizaru (Rarenoise) earned glowing reviews. Rarenoise is slated to release Feliciati’s third CD under his own name, Frequent Flyer, this winter, with an impressive roster of guests, including Vu, Powell, Mastelotto and Bob Mintzer.

Among the post-Frisell generation of guitarists, Joel Harrison stands out as the most daring and resourceful. As All About Jazz notes, “Harrison’s ability to integrate renders irrelevant the identification of his sources in compositions that range from edgy angularity to sheer beauty…He dispenses with boundaries and creates his own mélange that’s as timeless as it is thoroughly modern.”  A 2010 Guggenheim Fellow, Harrison has developed a singular voice through immersion in jazz, modern classical, American roots music and far-flung traditions ranging from West Africa to South Asia. His rejection of stylistic boundaries has led him to freely wander wherever inspiration is found, from inner city blues bars to the major concert halls. Since his heralded 1995 debut CD, Harrison has released a dozen albums as a leader, wildly imaginative sessions that feature fellow sonic explorers such as reed expert Paul McCandless, saxophonists David Liebman and David Binney, trumpeter Ralph Alessi, pianist Uri Caine, drummer Scott Amendola, and fellow guitar iconoclasts Nels Cline, Nguyên Lê andLiberty Ellman.

Though a dozen years younger than Harrison, Cuong Vu has blazed a similarly bold trail. Born in Saigon, he fled Vietnam with his family at the age of five at the fall of South Vietnam and settled in a Seattle suburb. With a full scholarship to New England Conservatory, he studied with masters such as George Garzone, John McNeil, Dave Holland and visionary reedman/composer Joe Maneri who encouraged him to investigate the trumpet’s unexplored sonic possibilities. Although often labeled as an avant-garde player, he draws on a vast array of influences beyond jazz, including rock, electronica, groove and ambient musics. Vu has worked with visionaries including Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, Dave Douglas, Myra Melford, Gerry Hemingway, and Mitchell Froom, though he’s best known for his long tenure as trumpeter and vocalist in the Pat Metheny Group (with whom he’s won two Grammy Awards). Vu has also led various groups, most notably his CV Trio with bassist Stomu Takeishi and drummer Ted Poor, and Vu-Tet (featuring Chris Speed), ensembles for which he’s composed music hailed by jazz critics for its ingenuity and originality.

Roy Powell studied piano and avant-garde composition at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England before defecting to jazz. A highly versatile musician who has released several acclaimed albums as a leader, Powell has recorded and performed with many significant musicians in both mainstream and avant garde jazz, including Art Farmer, Eddie Daniels, Bobby Shew, Anthony Braxton, Vince Mendoza, Mike Gibbs,Iain Ballamy, Martin France, Ahmad Mansour, Frode Berg, Arild Andersen, Terje Rypdal, Roy Hargrove, Graham Haynes, and Dave Liebman. Now living in Oslo, Norway where he leads a trio with Jacob Young andJarle Vespestad, Powell has become an invaluable creative catalyst on the Scandinavian jazz scene.

Dan Weiss has honed a singular approach to the trap set through his immersion in classical Indian music. One of the most original drummers of his generation, he’s a devout student of the tabla, and all-around musical omnivore. He regularly performs with many of the jazz’s most exciting improvisers, such as Miguel Zenón, David Binney, Chris Potter, Thomas Morgan, and Kenny Werner, and has become an in-demand tabla accompanist as well. He has released several titles under his own name including two solo drum CDs in which he plays dauntingly intricate tabla compositions on the drum kit. With its spacious textures, volatile free improvisation, and extended, episodic compositions, Holy Abyss is an ideal forum for Weiss’s rhythmic innovations.