Michael Sarian – ‘ESQUINA’

Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, Dave Douglas’s artist-led Greenleaf Music has been both a dependable outlet for his own work and a platform for such emerging artists as Kneebody, Matt Ulery and Linda Oh. Still just about falling into the emergent category is the Buenos Aires-raised and NYC-based trumpeter Michael Sarian, whose “Live At Cliff Bell’s” (Shifting Paradigm Records) was a highlight of 2024. Building on the mid ’60s innovations of Miles Davis’s great quintet, Sarian revealed himself as a passionate soloist, combining a burnished lyricism with a sense of freedom redolent of such ECM greats as Enrico Rava, Tomasz Stanko and Kenny Wheeler.

ESQUINA features the same quartet that took Cliff Bell’s eponymous Detroit jazz club by storm, although this time the music takes a very different turn. Switching from acoustic to electric instruments, Sarian (trumpet / FX), Santiago Leibson (drums) embark on a deep excursion through the dark and alluring sound worlds of ’70s Miles, the dreamy Fourth World soundscapes of Jon Hassell and the atmospheric after-hours trip-hop of Portishead.

Following a series of graphic scores that Sarian created while touring as a sideman, the album’s two main jams move through a sequence of changes. At almost twenty minutes in length, the opening ‘Straight Trash’ veers between the swagger of ‘On The Corner’ and the menace of ‘Agharta’.

Sarian and then Leibson mine the groove, an after a wonderfully controlled transition the pace slows and the group explores a spacey abstraction. Longer again at twenty-five minutes, ‘Floating Ballerinas’ is a little more In A Silent Way. Sarian patiently circles around Marty Kenney‘s hypnotic bass ostinato as the momentum builds, Nathan Ellman-Bell‘s rhythmic cross-currents gathering in intensity. Leibson’s otherworldly Mini Moog then asserts its presence, and after a slick change of gear the quartet settle into a uptempo groove as Sarian runs the voodoo down.

Perhaps the most surprising piece of the album is the quartet’s reimagining of Portishead’s 1994 hit ‘Glory Box’. Sarian holds onto its deeply melodic core, although his clarion horn is a brighter and less ethereal presence than Beth Gibbons’ haunting voice. Leibson’s expansive Rhodes then taps into its solid soul-jazz potential, reaching beyond, but never quite escaping, the spell of the original. The final track is a short radio edit of the opener, and drawing from its closing section it’s a particularly Hassell-ian mix, Sarian’s processed horn shrouded in mysterious electro-static.

Just like Dave Douglas’s Keystone and Sanctuary projects, no amount of electronic treatments can disguise the fact that Sarian’s quartet are a serious improvising unit. Whether ESQUINA is a one-off before the quartet returns to its acoustic roots remains to be seen, but I certainly hope there’s more of this to come.

Release date: 25 April 2025

Michael Sarian – Trumpet/FX
Santiago Leibson – Fender Rhodes, Hammond B3, Mini Moog, Wurlitzer
Marty Kenney – Electric Bass
Nathan Ellman Bell – Drums

from https://ukjazznews.com