American Israel-born, Paris-raised, Minneapolis-schooled, New York-based alto sax player-composer Michaël Attias’ Quartet Music Vol. II: Kardamon Fall follows Quartet Music Vol. I: LuMiSong, released earlier this year and featured a new quartet with Argentinian pianist Santiago Leibson and American double bass player Matt Pavolka. Kardamon Fall features another new quartet with Leibson, double bass player Sean Conly and drummer Tom Rainey, all close comrades of Attias who have collaborated before, and it was recorded at Oktaven Studio in Mount Vernon, New York, in September 2022.
Attias described the overdubbed, sonic mosaics of LuMiSong as «psychedelic camel pop, electro-Lacy, alien-Glam, dabke Mingus, or urban Webern». The atmosphere of Kardamon Fall is completely different, moving from thoughtful, reserved and even melancholic to dense, rhythmic energy where the quartet sounds bigger than its parts. Attias said that he was reading poet Anne Carson’s Eros The Bittersweet while composing for this quartet, and her suggestive ideas about Eros who is both joy and destroyer, and how sweetness can turn tragic and tragedy can turn sweet, resonated with him. Attias wanted to capture in his new compositions a similar kind of rich ambiguity that keeps referencing elements of light and dark, feminine and masculine, and seduces the listener by delivering sophisticated, and rather irresistible, atmospheres.
The opening pieces – the gentle, emotional «Kardamon Spring (Femme Centaure)» and the powerful «Trinité» – suggest that kind of elusive, dual ambiguity. Jim Macnie, in his liner notes, notes the rhythm section of Leibson, Conly and Rainey contrast Attias’ introspective, graceful sax flights in pensive and provocative manners «in the same breath», always swinging between the notated and the improvised parts. This quartet already sounds like a working band with immediate, urgent and deep trust dynamics, with Rainey acting as the restless opposite of the more reserved Attias, shaping the music while letting it unfold. The last, 14-minute «The Angel Fold» summarizes beautifully Attias’ vision for the masterful, wise quartet.
Argentinian, Buenos Aires-based pianist-composer Nataniel Edelman’s American trio – with double bass player Michael Formanek (who spends much of his time now in Lisbon) and Attias (who frequents the Berlin scene lately) recorded its debut album Un Ruido de Agua (A sound of Water, Clean Feed, 2023. Edelman collaborated before with Attias on the Los Ángeles quartet album, ears&eyes, 2021) at Blackbird Studios in Berlin in May 2022. In celebration of the release of that album, the trio toured Portugal and Spain. The performance of the trio at Penhasco in Lisbon in October 2023 was documented in En vivo en Lisboa (Live in Lisbon).
The album features four pieces, three by Edelman, and one by Attias, each one highlights a distinct approach of the trio. The live setting emphasizes, even more, the natural, conversational flow of the music, and the trio moves from the energetic opening piece «Outline» to the ballad «Un Recuerdo Nuevo» (originally performed Un Ruido de Agua), the gentle, timbral play of «Liviano» and concluding with Attias’ slow-cooking and majestic «Kardamon Spring» (covered before by Attias Quartet in Kardamon Fall. Attias has now a new Berlin-based quartet by the same name). This trio has established a beautiful, chamber-like balance between Edelman’s lyrical, impressionist but always elegant themes, Formanek’s muscular but economic anchoring of the trio and Attias’ thoughtful sparse sax dances.
Eyal Hareuveni
Michaël Attias (alto saxophone), Santiago Leibson (piano), Sean Conly (double bass), Tom Rainey (drums), Nataniel Edelman (piano), Michael Formanek (double bass)
