Joel Futterman - The Deep (2022)

Recorded in Virginia Beach in January 2022, this recording brings together for the first time Joel Futterman, William Parker, Chad Fowler and Steve Hirsh. The engineer hit the record button and almost an hour later, this suite was completed. It was that simple. And that deep.

Three tones as one: a manifestation, an invocation, an invitation to explore the depths of sound as it creates them. Joel Futterman’s sonority suspends as it engulfs, as William Parker’s countermelody envelops, as Steve Hirsh’s cymbals sizzle, beckon and decorate and as Chad Fowler’s tenor narrates the fiery musings of the deep-blue music’s heart. Slowly, inexorably, with the pellucid light of investigation and the victories of unity gained, this quartet’s first recording emerges from the depths of silence into moments of stark revelation

The finest music emanates from the vast reservoir of feeling, stopping time and exposing the infinite center of a liquid instant as waves approach, their microcosmic components foregrounded. Fowler and Futterman find new centers, as at 1:03, only to illuminate and then abandon them. As the shared sound progresses from reflectivity toward a coalescing dance of sonic particles, rhythm and tone converge as wave centers and decenters wave. Molten topographies of varied densities and constructions are revealed only to be absorbed, vast histories in climactic juxtaposition as cultures in dynamic disparity are referenced and recontextualized, each a historical entity in transition. The domes and arches typical of creatively improvised music are certainly present throughout, as at 2:28 and 44:43, but for each peak, there is the going under, a submerging into the more peaceful waters of shared experience. The piano trio emergent at 3:36 is mirrored near the 15-minute mark, except that Parker’s gorgeous arco informs the latter in counterpoint to Futterman’s foundational sonorities and rainbow colors. An entirely different dynamic of this quartet’s versatility imbues the simultaneously multi-rhythmic duets at 25:20 as Parker and Fowler’s capering counterpoint is borne aloft from the bedrock of Hirsh and Futterman’s delicate rhythms and archetypal drones.
Look deeper still to discover the multivalent mysteries of what Parker so succinctly calls the tone-world, the infinities gathered and dispersed in the intimate shock and rebound of communal gesture, leaving as many questions as answers in their wake. How, at 17:17, is the reemergence of that achingly beautiful drone manifested, four voices emoting as one? How, at 34:30, is the perfectly timed and overwhelmingly simple statement of bass and cymbal so delicately realized?
There, in the tick of time toward transition, lies the mystery. The extended interaction and reaction immediately following is as pure as it is miraculous. Like the point of contact between wave and shore, or the moment when day ceremoniously joins night, Hirsh’s majestic solo crashes, glides and ultimately descends toward eddies of tone, timbre and the asymmetrical repetitions attendant to the deepest listening. There, at the center of the maelstrom, time doesn’t simply stop; it suspends. As Edgar Alan Poe demonstrated with such narrative force, a magical relativity is achieved, an equity in which each element balances the others while transcending its own boundaries. Each piano fifth, parabolic saxophone emotive, bass pizzicato and gently stroked tom or cymbal unite even as they propel. Each harmonic progression is both a point of departure and a nostalgic return, an entity in and of itself, a resolution to the connections drawing all into and from its Protean surfaces. Each pitch iteration tells a tale beyond words, an instantaneous narrative whose incalculable depth is matched by the simplicity of a tear, a smile, the abiding warmth of an embrace.
- Marc Medwin