The quartet's music is deeply rooted in the jazz tradition, and comprises a series of Fraser's compositional sketches, points of departure for the inspired group improvisation at which these players excel. Tony Malaby's sinewy, impassioned tenor and soprano saxophone improvisations are practically without peer in contemporary jazz, and display a rhythmic imepetus that is complemented beautifully by Fraser's deft drumming. Clutton and Downing provide, by turns, a thick, shifting field of harmonic support and melodic invention. The work of this group is a high water mark in Canadian jazz and creative music.
Nick Fraser is a member The Lina Allemano Four, Eucalyptus and Peripheral Vision (among many others) and has collaborated with many luminaries, including Anthony Braxton, William Parker, Marilyn Crispell, Roscoe Mitchell, David Binney, and Donny McCaslin. For ten years he led Drumheller, a quintet who released four critically acclaimed CDs.
Composition. Improvisation. In recent times, the relationship between the two has been deliberated, often in binary terms, to the point of exhaustion. But if we shut up and discuss them no further, we might as well give up talking about jazz, since the point where the two methods connect is to the music what flint and steel are to campfires. Without that starter, you have no blaze.
Based in Toronto since 1995, Nick Fraser has learned jazz from both inside and out. He’s drummed with free-leaning musicians such as Lina Allemano and Marilyn Crispell; as a long- time participant in the Ottawa Jazz Festival’s jam sessions, he’s kept the groove for Joe Lovano, Wynton Marsalis, and countless other establishment jazz figures. His heart lies with the unscripted moment. “I've always loved the act of improvising,” avows Nick Fraser, “and the more improvised parts of jazz music are usually my favorite parts.”
But that doesn’t mean that he neglects the rest. Fraser has composed for every band he’s led or co-led. He has also adapted his material to the rigorous requirements of the Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, a Calgary-based dance company directed by Kimberly Cooper. A couple of the pieces on If There Were No Opposites, the quartet’s fourth album, were adapted from compositions for DJD productions. But while the original versions of “Shoe Dance” and “The Fashion Show” had to adhere to rigid timing requirements in order to coordinate with the rest of the stage production, the quartet lets the music flow in more free-wheeling fashion.
The quartet first recorded in 2012, and its personnel has never changed. New Jersey-based saxophonist Tony Malaby was originally billed as a special guest, but now he is simply one of the band. This is not a demotion, but an acknowledgement of how essential he is to the group’s sound. By turns agile and burly, his playing reliably turns up the heat on whatever the rest of the ensemble is cooking. Says Fraser, “There's a sense I get when I play with Tony of him taking the entire band on his back and saying, ‘Here we go!’”
Cellist Andrew Downing and bassist Rob Clutton are fellow Canadians, and Fraser has long histories with both of them. Clutton, who was in Drumheller, has been an associate for over twenty years. “I've never made an album as a leader with a bass player other than Rob.” Downing, who also plays with Fraser in the Lina Allemano Four, could have been the second. “He plays bass, he plays cello, he composes, he plays classical music, jazz, various folk musics and more, but never in a merely ‘professional’ way. He is always deeply musically and emotionally invested in the music he makes.” Enamored with the sound of Bill Dixon’s Vade Mecum records and Ornette Coleman’s final quartet, Fraser originally invited him to play the bull fiddle, but Downing said that he’d rather play cello, and the way he toggles between melodic and rhythmic roles while occupying his own pitch zone constantly validates that decision. Fraser has also drummed on recent recordings led by both Clutton and Downing, and their collective rapport facilitates the quartet’s countercurrents of flow and undertow.
Close listening and empathy enable the quartet to find a gravitational center during the album’s opening moments. “Improvisation (Part 1)” represents new ground for the quartet. “This band doesn't normally play entirely improvised music, but at the end of the session, we decided to.” A thicket of pizzicato strings and sparse stickwork rustles around Malaby’ coarse, probing tenor, ultimately cohering into a turbulent stream. Soprano and cello take the melody of “Sketch #50” at a breakneck pace; as the band slaloms through its switchbacks, different instruments re-introduce it, as if to renew a shared sense of direction. Here and elsewhere, Fraser’s drumming expands the sound field, forming a constantly changing perimeter that reflects the band’s energy back into the music. “I usually have the least prescribed material of any of us,” he confesses; instead, he completes the music as it happens.
Fraser originally wrote “Shoe Dance” for the DJD production, Juliet & Romeo. “The choreography featured 4 or 5 dancers with shoes on their hands, like puppets. It's a boogaloo, inspired by two of my favorite drummers — Billy Mintz and Paul Motian.” “Table 49, The Rex Hotel, Toronto” is the 49th in Fraser’s series of compositional sketches, but the name also applies to the table where musicians congregate at the longest-running jazz club in Toronto.
The title of “The Bulldog and the Capricorn” derives from nicknames for Malaby and Kris Davis. But the tune’s call and response dynamic, with quizzical cello-soprano unisons greeting Clutton’s solemn bass statements, can be taken as a structural reflection of another meaning embedded in the title. Explains Fraser, “A "Mexican Bulldog" is a margarita with an open beer bottle upside down in it, so it fills up with beer as you drink it. It's a challenge to drink, although you can always go with a straw if you're having trouble.” “The Fashion Show” has been in the quartet’s book for a while. In this performance, a couple minutes of free improvisation that takes cues from Clutton’s rough-timbred bowing resolve into a tense negotiation of the winding theme. The album ends where it began; "Improvisation (Part 2)" is actually the second half of the performance that opened the album.
~Bill Meyer, Berwyn, January 2021
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