We all know Thomas Morgan as the American double bass player from the recordings of Bill Frisell, Jacob Bro, Dan Weiss, and Craig Taborn trios, among many others. But Morgan is also a gifted programmer who developed WOODS (or WOODS Often Oscillates Droning Strings), a virtual string instrument comprising qualities of West African lute-harps, Asian zithers, cimbalom, and marimba. It is a SuperCollider-based system designed to generate timbres and patterns that sound natural despite their algorithmic origin.
Around You Is A Forest is Morgan’s long-awaited debut solo album, featuring him focusing on playing the WOODS, in a series of all-star duos. He began working on the album in 2016 and returned to it during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Producer David Breskin (who has worked with John Zorn, Frisell, Nels Cline, and Mary Halvorson) convinced Morgan that every piece in the album would be a duet with a different partner, cementing the organic, intricate interplay of the WOODS with acoustic and electronic instruments. The album, recorded in 2024, was co-produced by Danish guitarist Jacob Bro and released on his label, Loveland Music. Morgan added detailed liner notes about his programming adventures, the development of WOODS, and an introduction to every piece.
The album begins with the title piece, Morgan’s double bass is surrounded by the West-African sounding WOODS. This piece sets the atmosphere and thematic spirit of the album. i.e., a forest is a community where knowledge and nutrients are shared through root systems. In that sense, the guest musicians on this album are some of the trees that teach and nourish Morgan and all the rest of the forest. The following «Eddies», with Dan Weiss on tabla, represents for Morgan the flow of water around rocks in a stream. This piece expands the playful yet unpredictable, sensual flow of the opening piece. «Dream Sequence» was conceptualized by Craig Taborn as a dramatic-cinematic piece, with Taborn playing electric and electronic keyboards, and adding field recordings of rain, wind, crickets, and birds captured in a Balinese town surrounded by rainforest.
The 16-minute «Through The Trees» with drummer Gerald Cleaver (who has played with Morgan in Taborn Trio), evolved over a long period. Its gentle, breezy atmosphere benefits from the drummer’s nuanced and inventive percussive touches. The mysterious, poetic «In the Dark» features Henry Threadgill, who recorded himself playing the bass flute, and then added a second layer playing the flute without listening to the first one. He miraculously wove them together thematically, rhythmically, and harmonically, as if he was indeed seeing in the dark. «Assembly Of All Beings» with trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, borrows its title from poet Gary Snyder, and Morgan and Akinmusire’s trumpet imagine dinosaurs, elephants, and horses in a nocturnal choir.
«Rising from the West», with Bill Frisell, relates to that both Morgan and Frisell came to the East Coast from the West. Accordingly, Frisell’s clever usage of loop pedals blurs the sensibility of time and space, making it feel as if it flows backward and charging it with a dream-like atmosphere. «Murmuration», with alto sax player Immanuel Wilkins, layers Wilkins’s playing eight times to imagine a chatty flock of birds soaring, swirling, dispersing, clustering, and quickly changing direction. The album ends «Here», with poet Gary Snyder’s suggestive reciting his cosmic and existential poem, while Morgan plays and thinks of WOODS as akin to the geological or cosmic processes told in the poem. The duets are reflections of how each human partner exists and relates to a nature-like environment or process in their own way. And Morgan concludes that just like in the poem, his musician comrades show us how to be here. As they improvise in the moment, there is only being, and perhaps there is no need to ask why.
Eyal Hareuveni
Thomas Morgan (double bass, WOODS), Dan Weiss (tabla), Craig Taborn (Farfisa organ, Fender Rhodes, synthesizers, field recordings), Gerald Cleaver (drums), Henry Threadgill (flute, bass flute), Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet), Bill Frisell (acoustic and electric guitars), Immanuel Wilkins (alto saxophone), Gary Snyder (voice)
