Billy Martin - Starlings (2006)

Billy Martin is best known as the percussionist in the experimental jazz trio Medeski, Martin & Wood. Starlings features an assortment of his compositions, some of which have been arranged for various ensembles by avant-garde composer and jazz musician Anthony Coleman, based on Martin's multi-track compositions he originally performed on mbiras, African thumb pianos. Other performances on the CD are based on Martin's graphic scores.

The primary delight of this CD is the timbral variety that Martin and Coleman elicit from the chamber ensembles, string quartet, and percussion ensembles. Stridulation for the Good Luck Feast features Martin conducting his ensemble, the Whirligig Percussionists, interpreting one of his graphic scores. Using struck wooden instruments with a wide range of pitches, quirky melodies emerge from its ebullient cacophony. Strangulation, another one of Martin's graphic scores for string quartet, is hauntingly dramatic and structurally sophisticated, testimony to Martin's skill not only as an improviser, but as a composer.

The five movements of Starlings and the three movements of Metamorphosis arranged by Coleman for chamber ensemble are clearly influenced by minimalism and are related to the aesthetic of Bang on a Can. Because they are based on the limited pitches of mbiras, they are tonally static, and interest is generated by their rhythmic energy and variety and the metric independence of the different tracks in Martin's original version. The broad tonal palette of the chamber ensemble gives Coleman the freedom to capitalize on the subtle variety of timbres available on the mbira.
Any listener who wonders how Coleman derives such rhythmically and timbrally complex arrangements from sounds produced by thumb pianos will be pleased to know that the CD closes with one of Martin's improvisations, and that it is possible to detect the richness Coleman heard in the original versions.