Eric Revis - Sing Me Some Cry (2017) [Hi-Res]

Whether frontier his own ensembles with colleagues like Orrin Evans, Nasheet Waits, Kris Davis, Andrew Cyrille, Darius Jones and Jason Moran, double bassist Eric Revis has established himself as much for his experimentations into the unknown as with mainstream jazz forms (Branford Marsalis Quartet, Betty Carter). On his newest album as a leader, “Sing Me Some Cry” (Clean Feed), he goes a long way beyond anything he’s achieved before. “Sing” is the next step beyond 2013’s “Parallax” (Clean Feed), his first recorded pairing with multi-reedist and MacArthur Fellow Ken Vandermark, the Chicago experimental scion. It shows Revis’ astoundingly flexible range with a huge grounded sound.

Vandermark returns to this session in a quartet with Kris Davis (Revis’ frequent trio partner in a handful of recorded dates with drummer Andrew Cyrille), and a former Chicagoan, Chad Taylor, whom the bassist employed on his acclaimed 2014 quartet session “In Memory of Things Yet Seen.” Together, they reinforce the idea that the identity of the music is relative to context and shared experience.

The various points of departure sprouting from each player’s unique identity fit within the same context because of a shared willingness to experiment with sound and form. Modern creative music is invariably composed of multiple sensibilities. This recording explores these qualities, confirming what has already been said about Revis’ personal aesthetic — one committed to the “stretching the jazz fabric without ripping it apart.” So, in “Sing Me Some Cry” you have traditional vocabulary, free-bop and more, with a continued indifference to established aesthetic ideologies.