Pianist Joel Futterman and saxophonist Kidd Jordan salute a fallen comrade on Tribute to Alvin Fielder, an energized and eclectic free improvisation. Joined by bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake, their performance was recorded live at the Brooklyn club Roulette during the 2019 Vision Festival in New York. It includes 45 minutes of continuous—and continuously shifting—music.

Futterman and Jordan were longtime friends and collaborators of Fielder, an explorative drummer and founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) who passed away in January of 2019. Parker previously worked with the trio on Jordan’s 1999 New Orleans Festival Suite. With Drake taking the kit, the musicians ably evoke Fielder’s loose, omnivorous approach to rhythm and time and run the gamut of the jazz lineage. From New Orleans tradition to bop to free form, Tribute to Alvin Fielder also pays tribute to the music Fielder loved.

Although the quartet’s improvisation consistently changes shape and approach, it doesn’t easily break down into sections. The twists and turns are organic, each idea a logical extension of the preceding one. Hard-driving paroxysm evolves into earthy spiritual jazz, evolves into inquisitive solo bass. Time compresses, expands, and vanishes all together. Within those developments, however, are moments of complete spontaneity, whether in Futterman’s quote of Thelonious Monk’s “Crepuscule with Nellie” ten minutes into the proceedings, or Jordan and Parker’s ghostly moans in the closing moments.

Still, there are constants in the music. They lie in Parker and Drake’s simmering rhythmic lines—which for all their varying forms and directions, never relent even for an instant—and in the raw intensity of the performance. Fielder’s friends and fellow artists grieve his loss, yet also summon the powers of their imaginations to create sublime, in-the-moment music.

Which is surely the best possible eulogy. Sad though his physical departure (as his onetime employer Sun Ra would say) may be, Tribute to Alvin Fielder makes clear that the creative spirits that inspired and animated the drummer’s 83 years not only live on but thrive. Indeed, they show no sign of fading anytime soon.

Beautiful, lyrical sounds from a duo continuing a years-long musical partnership.

This offering was recorded in Brooklyn, New York, the music capital of the world, at Park West Studios on December 17 of 2018 by Jim Clouse, a guy who knows and honors this music with his highly advanced recording methods. The way this came about is somewhat miraculous.

William Parker had included a talk he had with Dave Sewelson, the instigator of these proceedings, in his latest book Conversations III. Chad Fowler was reading the chapter in his kitchen in Arkansas when he read Sewelson mention a recording “tried to put another one out. If anybody out there wants to put that out...” He immediately knew he wanted to release in on Mahakala Music. He knew master recording engineer Jim Clouse had it in the can and was the one to talk to connect him with Sewelson. The results of these synchronous events are a delight to hear.

The music here is completely improvised. Maybe someone was going to tell the musicians to try to make some shorter pieces, less challenging for a casual listener but they didn’t. Perhaps someone said, let the drums kick this one off or “go” but no instruction was given. These sounds come out of the silence that is already swinging. The results show what has been known since 2017, that when these four musicians start playing together the result is exquisite music. Call it chemistry, collaboration, community but it is contagious.

The music is presented as it happened on that December day in Brooklyn.

Track 1. Memories: The fact that Swell and Sewelson have been riffing together for years as part of Parker’s Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra is apparent from the beginning of this session. This track starts with a clearing of the ground as the two partners parallel playing gets more involved as the music moves along. Bustling along from collective blowing to back and forth soloing the bass and drums always having and important dialogue on top and below the thresholds.

Track 2. Dreams: Marvin Bugalu Smith sets the table on this one. He prepares a place where the conversation continues, with everyone free to say anything and everyone listening and respecting every point of view. The dialogue between the bass and drums intensifies and the plates almost fall off the table.

Track 3. and Reflections: This track begins with the baritone sax mixing the air in the room to a warm soup that just gets better with each ingredient that each musician adds. The reflection of the steamy image off the surface of the musical soup as the simmering continues.