Zigsaw: Music of Steve Lampert, tenor saxophonist Noah
Preminger’s 14th album, is easily his most ambitious one to date. Combining
jazz improvisation, electronics, backbeat grooves and powerful melodic
sections, it all adds up to a cohesive and highly listenable piece of music.
The latest in a series of brilliant albums that have established Preminger as a
leading saxophone voice and an important figure in today’s jazz scene, Zigsaw
represents the apotheosis of the 33-year-old tenor man’s recording career —
thus far.
Zigsaw is the product of Preminger’s enduring friendship and
collaboration with composer/trumpeter Steve Lampert, an under heralded jazz
figure whose heady compositions lay down a gauntlet for even the best players.
“Steve is absolutely brilliant,” Preminger says of the artist whose recording
resume includes five extremely innovative albums as a leader. “He’s the
highest-level cat. It doesn’t get any deeper than Steve.”
The project dates back more than two years, when Preminger
asked Lampert if he would compose a piece of music for him and an ensemble.
Lampert readily agreed and, as is his custom, did not enter into the endeavor
lightly. Rather than deliver a collection of tunes, Lampert concocted something
akin to a magnum opus — a single 49-minute piece that’s at once highly
structured and consummately open.
Zigsaw — a portmanteau of “zigzag” and “jigsaw” that Lampert
says sums up the character of the piece — is divided into 12 sections. Each is
divvied into four subsections — a vamp-like sequence, explosive “open blowing,”
a return to a part of the central melody, and a floating “fantasy section” —
that create serpentine avenues for Preminger’s ace band of improvisers to
explore.
“For all my projects, I write a kind of musical virtual
reality within which instrumentalists can react to the piece and with each
other,” Lampert explains. “I want them to be who they are as improvisers, to
not tie their hands in any way, to put them in a strange new world and have
them do their thing.”
Preminger needed musicians with the skill to not only execute
the music technically, but improvise effectively within such an imposing
composition. The saxophonist didn’t have to look far. Trumpeter Jason Palmer
has been a regular bandmate of Preminger’s for several years. Likewise, alto
saxophonist John O’Gallagher, pianist Kris Davis, bassist Kim Cass and drummer
Rudy Royston have been consistent Preminger cohorts. All are absolutely monster
musicians.
“These are all people who I really admire, and it was a
privilege to share the studio with them,” Preminger says. “I really felt they
brought out the best in me as an improviser. And Steve’s composition opened
doors for all of us and brought things out of players you don’t typically
hear.”
The ensemble’s wild card is Rob Schwimmer, a
pianist/keyboardist who also is also one of the world’s leading theremin
players. Here he plays the Haken Continuum, a futuristic fingerboard, creating
atmospherics that course through the sections and provide one of many sonic
elements that distinguish Zigsaw from shopworn jazz. Schwimmer provided a sonic
foundation that took “the improvisation sections into a zone that would not
have been fully realizable with only acoustic instruments,” Lampert explains.
It wasn’t just the musicians’ improvisational acumen that
was tested. “The melody that Steve wrote is literally the most difficult thing
I’ve had to learn,” Preminger says. “I had to practice it exhaustively in order
to perform it accurately on the session.”
As music writer Eric Snider says: “Zigsaw is a thrill ride,
like nothing I’ve heard, challenging but eminently listenable. Steve Lampert’s
epic composition opens new doors of perception for player and listener alike.”
Zigsaw: Music of Steve Lampert continues Noah Preminger’s
penchant for making intriguingly themed albums. His masterful Dark Was the
Night, Cold Was the Ground (2016) puts Delta blues into a jazz quartet context.
The following year, he released Meditations on Freedom on Inauguration Day,
2017, as a musical protest in response to ominous political developments in
America. In 2018, the saxophonist formed the Dead Composers Club with drummer
Rob Garcia and released The Chopin Project, the first in a series that explores
the music of legendary deceased composers outside the jazz milieu. Also last
year came Genuinity, a collection of the tenor man’s originals that earned a
top pick in the Jazziz magazine annual critics survey.
This year saw the release of Preminger Plays Preminger —
where the saxophonist interpreted and wrote music associated with the films of
his distant cousin, director Otto Preminger — on the French, vinyl-only label,
Newvelle Records. It features pianist Jason Moran, bassist Kim Cass and drummer
Marcus Gilmore.
Born in 1986, Preminger grew up in Canton, Connecticut. His
debut, Dry Bridge Road, released just after his 21st birthday, was named Debut
of the Year in the Village Voice Critics Poll. In 2017, he was the winner of
DownBeat magazine’s Rising Star Best Tenor Saxophonist and has been listed
regularly in both the Rising Star and Tenor Saxophonist categories for almost a
decade. The Boston Globe has hailed Preminger as “a master with standards and
ballads, as well as an adventurous composer.” The New York Times declares: “Mr.
Preminger designs a different kind of sound for each note, an individual
destiny and story.”
The saxophonist has performed on key stages, from the United
States to Asia, and he has played and/or recorded with the likes of Jason
Moran, Dave Holland, John Patitucci, Fred Hersch, Dave Douglas, Billy Hart, Rob
Garcia, Joe Lovano, Victor Lewis, John and Bucky Pizzarelli, Cecil McBee,
George Cables, and Roscoe Mitchell.
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