On A Brief Diary, Sebastian Rochford leads from behind. The jazz drummer’s first launch beneath his personal title for ECM is definitely knowledgeable by latest occasions in his personal life, but Rochford—a former member of Sons of Kemet and Polar Bear who additionally works with Brian Eno and Andy Sheppard—settles right into a restrained, secondary position. Pianist Package Downes is the principle animating power on an album the place the 2 celebrated British gamers coexist in a delicate place clouded by melancholy.
The previous few years have introduced a spate of solo or duo releases in jazz, whether or not recorded within the pandemic (Matthew Stevens’ Pittsburgh, Marius Neset’s A New Daybreak) or launched right into a world significantly receptive to themes of isolation and mourning (Bheki Mseleku’s Past the Stars, Esbjörn Svensson’ HOME.S.). Rochford’s album—which he specifies is a diary “of loss”—works with related themes. After his father, the poet and psychotherapist Gerard Rochford, handed away in December 2019, the drummer sat down on the outdated grand piano of his household house in Aberdeen, Scotland, and commenced to formulate a inventive response. “Music simply appeared to return to me, sing inside me day by day, typically whilst I woke,” Rochford stated.
However on A Brief Diary, sorrow is changed with comfort, and, in responding to loss of life, the duo additionally creates a parable of grief. A Brief Diary is sort of a tranquil art-house movie, telling a narrative that’s as a lot about firm—two contrasting voices be taught to mesh, somewhat than jostle—as summoning an artist’s innermost emotions. Rochford finds well-established assist in Downes. Each have been members of London’s influential Loop Collective, and Rochford later appeared on Downes’ 2019 ECM album Dreamlife of Particles. In 2012, the 2 recorded a 35-minute look collectively at London’s Add Pageant. However the place that duo set is busy and bustling, the environment is totally completely different on A Brief Diary. Slightly than serving as a sparring accomplice, Downes leans into the position of an outdated buddy, letting Rochford’s compositions go via him with solely the smallest of embellishments.
Like many ECM releases, the album’s reference factors are drawn from European classical music. Rochford writes chains of stark chords that virtually hyperlink collectively. Typically, the impact is hymnal: Opening monitor “This Tune Your Ears Will By no means Hear” is formed like a Bach chorale prelude, with an anchoring phrase that spills out into mumbled variations. Different progressions—highly effective, but disjointed and eager to digress—might be cribbed from Mahler. Rochford’s cautious but characterful piano writing (in a rating marking, he signifies that the opening monitor needs to be performed “like a toddler calling out into the empty void”) brings out Downes’ tender facet; the pianist realizes Rochford’s compositional voice merely and humbly, as a conduit for Rochford’s distinct melodic model.
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