Mark Helias - Fictionary (1998)

This premiere US release (and GM debut) has captured the electricity of Mark Helias’s live performance prowess at two different Dutch music festivals in 1995 (the Groningen Jazz Festival) and 1996 (Nijmegen Music Meeting). Helias is joined by NYC downtown’s Mark Feldman (violin), Ellery Eskelin (tenor) and drummers Tom Rainey or Mike Sarin in a setting of compositions that exude balance and form, rhythmic interaction, odd metrical sub-divisions and open form improvisation.

A veteran of many groups including those led by such masters as Anthony Davis, Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor, Ray Anderson and Anthony Braxton, Helias’s present quintet has been praised by Pulse! magazine for its ability to “slide across musical planes with the kind of witty, graceful inevitability that bespeaks well-honed craft and an ever more recognizable voice.”