Marshall Allen, Matthew Shipp, Joe Morris 'Night Logic' [RogueArt 2010]

A release bearing the striking RogueArt design promises a few things. Recordings by the French label are almost always of American improvised music royalty. Fidelity is always pristine. And, with a few exceptions, the quality of the music is high. This time, stamped on the minimally-designed black, white, and red cover are three American musicians representing the cream of their respective generations. The leader is the venerable octogenerian Marshall Allen, who spent many years as Sun Ra's lieutenant and is currently the director of the Arkestra; on 'Night Logic' he plays alto saxophone, flute, and EVI (electronic valve instrument). Joe Morris takes a detour from his usual role as a highly sought-after sideman and inventive bandleader on the electric guitar to handle bass duties. The youngest member of the trio is the accomplished pianist Matthew Shipp, who is widely known as an innovative artist across stylistic divides, which justifies his simultaneous position as a provocative figurehead of experimental jazz. This album is the result of a July 2009 performance at New York City's Roulette.

For 'Night Logic', Marshall Allen and Matthew Shipp stow away much of their unique approaches to intensity and attack, in favor of excersizing the more discreet, meditative aspects of their voices. Matthew Shipp delivers a masterful display of composure behind the piano as he sparingly deploys colossal chordings to reverberate in space. These unadorned columns of sound provide a basic framework for coloring by the trio. Over his mammoth skeleton, Shipp adds rumitative, dampened playing as an afterthought, only occasionally riled to the point where he resembles the pianist as I know him. When he gets into the foreground, he does so with only clipped intensity, usually because he's engaged with Marshall Allen, and that interplay produces some of the best moments of the whole record. With Shipp largely limiting himself to preoccupation with structures (which are appropriately similar to the boldly minimal RogueArt cover design), embellishing them is left up to Marshall Allen and Joe Morris.

Though I respect what he does and can see the value in it, I'm not a big Joe Morris fan. 'Night Logic', however, is my first encounter with him playing the bass. And he does so well. His comping is more insistent than Shipp's. The bass gives a staccato undergirding, a fluttering heartbeat that pencils-in blank portions of the structure. Like Shipp, as Morris rises to the surface, he often does so while engaged with Allen: bass strutting around flute and saxophone. Elsewhere, Morris moves into uninhibited arco droning, which produces dark, stunning shades -- his strongest moments as a soloist on the album.

Marshall Allen is always tied to the moments of dual soloing, which form the crux of the successes in 'Night Logic'. On alto and flute Allen lays out quizzical lines capped by a husky vibrato for his collaborators to explore. Especially on the alto saxophone, Allen's fluid lyricism exudes a burnished sheen as he blows [seemingly] unaware of anything but his horn. He's completely focused, attuned perfectly to the space around him so that, even from a distance, he's able to lead Shipp and Morris along. Instinct pulls an incredible ferocity from him at times, when he lets loose an incredible howl that spurs Shipp and Morris into a frenzy. The most abstract points in the record -- reminiscient of Richard Teitalbaum's collaborations with free-jazzers -- are when Allen picks up his EVI. There, Allen plunges his partners into exploration of textures, alternately dense or roomy, while he floats high above the surface.

Marshall Allen is the trio's unquestionable guide, keeping his distance while he navigates a difficult terrain -- one in which lesser musicians would wander astray. Count 'Night Logic' as one of the top releases of the year.