Recording is Available on Sunnyside Records January 18, 2011

Guitars: Liberty Ellman, Joel Harrison 

One absolute about Joel Harrison: Whenever he releases a new album, it’s bound to be steeped in adventure. While he’s crossed multifarious boundaries in his career as a guitarist, composer, bandleader, arranger and singer/songwriter, Harrison’s latest project and 11^th release overall, String Choir—The Music of Paul Motian (Sunnyside), is his most fully accomplished recording. Along with fellow guitarist Liberty Ellman, Harrison has enlisted a jazz-oriented string quartet, featuring violinists Christian Howes and Sam Bardfeld, viola players Mat Maneri and Peter Ugrin (on separate tracks), and violincellist Dana Leong.

Ten years in the making, String Choir finds Harrison intrepidly delivering a lushly orchestrated style of music that is a meld of improvisational jazz and classical chamber music. The wellspring: largely the compositions of iconic jazz drummer Paul Motian, who is not only a legendary bandleader but also served as time keeper for, most famously, Bill Evans, as well as Thelonious Monk (two tunes, one from each pianist’s songbook, are also included here).

Writing in the liner notes to String Choir, Harrison pays homage: “Paul Motian has written a remarkable number of highly original tunes, especially for his trio with Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell. His singular, underappreciated sound is at once quizzical, playful, melancholy and fierce, more suggestion than declaration. I arranged his pieces according to my own vision, yet trying to capture Paul’s elusive approach to drumming and writing.”

In doing so, Harrison notes that “the task was formidable.” He says, “This was a new challenge. The process was so different and so unusual from what I’d done before. The trick was in balancing the classical-oriented part and the improvisation. I’m stuck in between two styles, which actually makes the recording feel on the edge. Each tune suggested a different approach—some were more free, some were through-composed.” 

Harrison also wanted to keep his own personality as an artist in the mix. “I spent a tremendous amount of time rewriting so that I could find a voice that was mine in Paul’s music,” he says. “I wanted to give the tunes a chamber music feel as well as my own sense of harmony while at the same time the flow that’s so present in Paul’s music. But it couldn’t be the free-flying feel that Paul has because I decided not to have bass and drum in the mix.”

The impetus for the concept came some 10 years ago when Harrison helped to reunite Motian’s quintet (including bassist Ed Schuller) for a 2000 show at Oakland’s Yoshi’s club as a part of the now-defunct Eddie Moore Jazz Festival presented by Jazz in Flight. Around the same time Harrison had a conversation with producer Hans Wendl, who had worked with Motian at ECM, where he expressed interest someday in doing a string quartet take on Motian’s music. Harrison says that the idea, as absurd as he thought it at the time, “stuck to me like flypaper.”

Harrison worked on arrangements and in the past five years played string quartet gigs on occasion. He contacted Motian, who was intrigued by the idea and sent him charts of his music. Finally Harrison made the commitment to follow through and make good on his plan to record.

On String Choir, several tunes are truly beautiful— lamenting melodies taking on an almost sacred music feel—including the refined “Cathedral Song,” the orchestral “From Time to Time” and one of the beauties of the 12-song collection, “Etude.” 

That’s balanced by more modern sounds, such as the angular “Drum Music” with its tense percussion and collective improvisation, the lighthearted and buoyant “Owl of Cranston” and the playful call-and-response of instrumentation on “Split Decision.” The delightful and short tune “Mumbo Jumbo,” with a country guitar twang, almost didn’t make it onto the CD. “I tried it so many different ways and nothing worked,” says Harrison. “I was ready to throw it away until I just let all the guys in the band have a go at it. And it definitely worked then.”

Also at play in the collection are classical music allusions, including Beethoven (“Cathedral Song”) and Shostakovich (the haunting, lyrical tune “Mode VI”). And for a potent jazz touch, the evocative “Conception Vessel” was inspired by Keith Jarrett’s duo version of the tune with Motian.

The two non-Motian numbers that Harrison includes are Monk’s “Misterioso” (a set favorite in Motian’s live shows) and bassist Scott LaFaro’s “Jade Visions,” performed by the Evans trio. Of the former, Harrison says, “I wanted a tune with a beat. I think this is my best arrangement.” And LaFaro’s gorgeous ballad came via a last-minute call by Harrison to Motian, who said he had an original chart of the song his rhythm mate had given him.

In reflecting on the album, Harrison, writing in the liner notes, says that in his striving to “make a ravishingly beautiful document of some incredible songs” he’s fulfilling his desire “to elevate composers who are not already part of the jazz canon…I strive to find new ways to balance spontaneity and notation and destroy stylistic barriers.” With String Choir, he’s certainly hit the mark while celebrating the unsung compositional prowess of the great Paul Motian.

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Joel Harrison’s publicist: Amanda Sweet/Bucklesweet Media

347/564-3371, amanda@bucklesweetmedia.com

Sunnyside’s publicist: Bret Sjerven