These turbulent times can be a source of confusion and
hopelessness even for those of us who obsess over social media feeds and 24
hour news channels. So just try explaining it to young children still forming
their sense of the world! That’s the challenge faced by composer and bandleader
Ezra Weiss in composing the debut album for his own Big Band. Weiss rises to
the occasion with a heartbreakingly confessional and impassioned suite that’s
both a loving message passed down from father to children as well as a profound
and deeply felt plea for togetherness and empathy.
We Limit Not the Truth of God, due out August 16 via Origin
Records, is framed by a letter penned by Weiss to his two young children. “This
music is for you,” Weiss opens before quickly correcting himself: “Well, not
really. It’s for me. But it’s inspired by you.” The same can be said for the
text interspersed throughout the suite, which ostensibly takes the form of a
parent explaining the challenges their offspring should expect to face as they
embark on life in contemporary society; but it’s just as much a document of the
struggles we all face in trying to make sense of a rapidly changing and
increasingly divisive world.
Weiss does that the best way he knows how: through stirring
and emotionally expressive music played by a stellar ensemble of first-call
musicians. The brilliant 17-piece big band includes such distinctive soloists
as saxophonists John Nastos, Rob Davis, Renato Caranto and Mieke Bruggeman;
trumpeters Farnell Newton, Derek Sims and Thomas Barber; trombonists Stan Bock
and Jeff Uusitalo; and flutist John Savage. The album was recorded live in the
resonant Alberta Abbey, a historic church turned performance space in Weiss’
hometown of Portland, Oregon.
When Weiss began writing the music that would become We
Limit Not the Truth of God in 2015, he expected to communicate a more
light-hearted message to his youngsters. “Originally the idea was going to be
that these are some of the issues we’re dealing with, but we’re getting
better,” Weiss recalls. “It was going to have that optimistic slant, so by the
end you’d feel hopeful and empowered about progress. Then after the 2016
election, as I was actually writing the music, that was no longer a realistic
possibility.”
With countless issues to tackle, Weiss’ writing eventually
focused on a single theme: the notion of the ‘other,’ how it’s used to draw
lines in the sand and how it can only be rebuked by the realization that
ultimately we’re all in this together. “There isn’t an ‘other,’” Weiss insists.
“That became the theme of the piece.”
We Limit Not the Truth of God takes its name from a hymn
written by George Rawson in 1853, based on the words delivered by Pastor John
Robinson to the Pilgrims as they left Holland, eventually landing in America.
It’s difficult to imagine what those pioneers might think of the country where
they landed in its current, deeply riven guise, though the hymn’s inspiring
words could provide as much guidance now as they did then. They’re sung on this
recording by the Camas High School Choir, their young voices lending the
meaningful words an even more profound dimension.
Weiss, who describes himself as “religiously agnostic but
culturally Jewish,” discovered the hymn, ironically enough, while working as
music director for a Christian church. Bridging the illusory divide of belief
systems, the words resonated deeply with him. “In our contemporary world,”
Weiss says, “we tend to make a lot of assumptions, but there’s a higher truth
that we often don't see. That’s what spoke to me about the hymn; it brings up
the idea of truth, and now when we live in a world where we’re so polarized
that people choose what facts they believe and don't believe, the concept of
truth has become really important.”
That notion is reflected in the title of “Blues and the
Alternative Fact,” a play on Oliver Nelson’s classic Blues and the Abstract
Truth, updated to comment on today’s mind-boggling political euphemisms. The
piece itself bears echoes of Nelson’s style with a covert drama and sly humor
all its own, giving Bruggeman’s baritone and Bock’s trombone the gut-punch solo
space. That piece follows the mood-setting “Fanfare for a Newborn,” a
determinedly (if deceptively) optimistic opener with a soaring Farnell Newton
trumpet turn leading into a group improvisation.
The rich, moving colors of “José’s Drawing” were inspired by
the story of a 5-year old boy from Honduras, separated from his father after
crossing the border in El Paso, Texas. In his introduction to the piece, Weiss
compares José’s ordeal with that of his own child starting kindergarten – the
terror of that more commonplace experience suggesting just how horrifying the
situation on the border must be. “Obergefell” takes the suite in a more
celebratory direction with a victory for the forces of love, taking its title
from the name of the defendant in the Supreme Court case that legalized
same-sex marriage. Weiss’ choral arrangement vividly depicts the triumphant joy
of the decision as altoist Nastos and trumpeter Barber take flight.
“What Now” is the sole pairing of Weiss’ words and the Big
Band’s music, both gaining in intensity as the composer rattles off the list of
wrongs he can’t bring himself to address through his music. The ensemble’s
dissonant clamor, cut through by Savage’s urgent flute, underscores Weiss’
increasingly desperate tone. Before the palette-cleansing encore of Wayne
Shorter’s immortal “Footprints,” the catharsis comes via the culminating piece,
“Please Know That I Love You,” a tender ode that suggests a way forward through
understanding and, most of all, caring for one another.
Portland-based composer/pianist Ezra Weiss has released six
albums as a bandleader: The Five A.M. Strut (2003), Persephone (2005), Get
Happy (2007), The Shirley Horn Suite (2010), Our Path To This Moment (2012),
and Before You Know It [Live in Portland] (2014). Weiss wrote the music for the
Portland Jazz Composer’s Ensemble’s multimedia concert/recording From Maxville
To Vanport (2018), and music and lyrics for three children’s musicals designed
to introduce young people to jazz: Alice in Wonderland: a Jazz Musical (2009),
Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! (2010), and Cinderella (2013). His arrangements for Derek Hines’ recording
The Long Journey Home (2017) led to the formation of his own Ezra Weiss Big
Band, which he leads along with his Sextet. Weiss has won the ASCAP Young Jazz
Composer Award three times and has been listed in DownBeat Critics Polls in the
Rising Star Arranger category. He has performed with Billy Hart, Dayna
Stephens, Greg Bandy, Michael Philip Mossman, Antonio Hart, Thara Memory,
Renato Caranto, Devin Phillips, Marilyn Keller, Shirley Nanette, and Dennis
Rowland, among others.
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