Event releases, there aren’t that many of them. This debut from the long time Wayne Shorter players Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci and Brian Blade amounts to the first in quite a while.
The atmosphere feels densely elaborate and immersive, packed tight clusters melting away for euphoric release, intricate modernistic patterns that criss cross in wet streams like rain on a car’s windscreen, the instrument lines diagrams of artifice that point to a universal musical force.
It’s impossible, listening, not to think of the last time you heard the Wayne Shorter quartet live. But more to the point it’s plain quickly enough how different it is to that formidable unit. An independent life force has roused itself somehow sparked and inspired by Shorter but living on its own.
Children of the Light of course has the essence, the ‘footprints’ of Shorter all over it, from the name of the record itself (wordplay based on a Shorter piece ‘Children of the Night’ that first appeared on Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers’ Mosaic); the dedication to “our mentor in music and life”; and the swift segue from powerful new piece ‘Light Echo’ to classic repertoire in ‘Dolores’, a Shorter composition that appeared on Miles Davis 1967 quintet album Miles Smiles.
To think of Children of the Light as a piano trio album somehow sidesteps the sheer scale of what the three achieve. Worse, that may misthink what’s going on as there is so much compositionally hard wired into the 11 pieces released by the genie of improvisation in performance that even might easily translate into bigger scale instrumental settings at the flick of an arranger’s pen. And the scale isn’t just to do with the subtly introduced extra elements, whether electric piano overdubs added for additional drama on ‘Lumen’ and ‘African Wave’ or the cello part from Patitucci’s wife Sachi and strings on a later track or Patitucci’s bravua virtuoso passages on five or six string bass guitar.
It’s also, a good contrast, really different music to the Pérez trio heard at Ronnie Scott’s a few years ago, that unit with Ben Street and drummer Adam Cruz the three having fun with ‘Besame Mucho’ or letting go on Stevie Wonder’s ‘Overjoyed’. That unit perhaps was less about hard core laboratory creativity. The weight of jazz history did not rest as heavily on their shoulders either.
Recorded mainly at Avatar in New York tunes have been written by individual members of the trio although most of them are Perez’s. There is a complex physics to the way the trio operate rhythmically. They completely bypass swung beats, the pulse and rhythm structures are always really open. You never feel that there is a template to the trio or barriers to musical exploration to prevent their innate sense of flow.
Listening might make you want to go back to some of Herbie Hancock’s Blue Note albums or maybe to Andrew Hill for more insights just to figure out basic ideas but none really add up to the sum of Perez’s distinctive musical vision. There’s very little of an obvious latin flavour in the early part of the album as the pianist’s soloing unwinds but there is a little towards the end on the pretty love song ‘Luz del Alma.’ And yet there are one or two tracks that act as a relief and less of a hard listen (eg the lovely Brian Blade ballad ‘Within Everything’ succinct as a pop song), other extra elements adding natural humanity, the tunnels of found sounds for instance fashioning a wave of joyous blare in the excited children’s voices at the beginning of ‘Milky Way’ contrasting immediately with a very serious Pérez solo statement that could be the most complete achievement of all from a remarkable statement of debuting intent.
Danilo Pérez (top left), Brian Blade and John Patitucci. Children of the Light (**** RECOMMENDED) is issued on the Mack Avenue label on 18 September. Listen as a preview to the ninth track, ‘Looking For Light’, above