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For over 15 years Marilyn Crispell has been making beautiful music—pretty and often delicate music—for the ECM label. But some of us who came upon the Woodstock-based pianist earlier, during her decade-long participation in the Anthony Braxton Quartet (with bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Hemingway) and the Reggie Workman Ensemble, have longed for more of the explosive, expressionistic, Cecil Taylor– related playing that marked Crispell as one of the most powerful pianists on the planet. On these eight tracks, recorded live with Hemingway (drums, percussion, vibraphone) in four different locations, there is plenty of dense, crashing, volcanic, oceanic, and emotionally cathartic sound to satisfy aficionados of the post-Coltrane avant-garde. The music is less songlike and more jaggedly abstract than Crispell’s work for Manfred Eicher. Still, the lion’s share of these 66 minutes—engineered with varying degrees of brilliance, and cleanly mixed (by Hemingway and Willy Strehler) without audience applause until the end—is as gorgeously airy and reflective as Crispell’s most approachable work, warranting her mention in the same breath with Keith Jarrett and Paul Bley, as well as Taylor. And her kaleidoscopic interplay with Hemingway proves that half a quartet is better than none, and can match the range of one.
By Derk Richardson
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