# CD review: Anne Mette Iversen Quartet +1 – Racing A Butterfly 2020: Video, CD cover

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2020/05/19/cd-review-anne-mette-iversen-quartet-1-racing-a-butterfly-2020-video-cd-cover/
- Published: 2020-05-19T13:00:31+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Many can surely recall the sunny, childlike fervor and bounce chasing a butterfly.
Whether it was the park behind the projects or a rolling, rural vista, a feeling
of wonder and wander settled into our core memory, only to be summoned in up from
the subconscious to displace the current. Even if but for a moment. Even if but 
for the forty-eight or so minutes of Racing a Butterfly‘s capering wit.**

No one is afraid to follow a butterfly, especially not as limber and vigorous a 
creator as bassist/ composer Anne Mette Iversen, who composes the whole of her eleventh
disc to assure us that she too shares both the same heartfelt memory and jumpy restlessness
we all do. Which is why Racing a Butterfly effloresces with “Triangular Waves,” 
a title of some suspect given its rousing call of solidarity that instantly infuses
the disc with a cavorting optimism and wit. Centering herself at the instinctual
crux of her Quartet + 1, tenor saxophonist John Ellis, trombonist Peter Dahlgren,
drummer Otis Brown III and pianist Danny Grissett -each then fall into orbit without
reserve, fully knowledgeable of the speed bump hairpins ahead.

Like the spaghetti that sticks, there’s an implicit trickery to Mette-Iverson’s 
twisting musical trains of thought: they can derail at any moment or at least convince
you handily they have so that, at the end of the day, what’s difference does it 
make? The music still conveys you to places only butterflies achieve which is why
and only why “Dancing Butterflies” even exists. Ditto “Cluster” (where Grissett 
and Brown rise and rise and to the occasion) and other obtuse swingers as the anything-
but-predictable title work-out and the winsome, two-part ballad “Parallel Flying
Part 1” and “Parallel Flying Part 2” both a hushed, indigo series of memory tissue
connected solos ala Bill Evansthat fire up and unquietly rage.

As evidenced explicitly on 2019’s Invincible Nimbus (Bjurecords); 2017’s Road Trip(
Bjurecords); her debut This Is My House (Bjurecords, 2006) or any record in-between,
Iverson, a mainstay and lynchpin of the tireless Brooklyn Jazz Underground has made
some great records in pursuit of her vision of swing as a fixed though frayed and
thrice curled ribbon around dazzling, little surprises. Remarkably, given the present
state of things, Ellis, Brown, and Grissett have grounded most of her works, with
their brimming dexterity shared by all who embrace Iverson’s nervy, high order, 
new swing pop.

01. Triangular Waves
 02. Racing a Butterfly 03. Parallel Flying, Pt. 1 04. Parallel
Flying, Pt. 2 05. Butterfly Interlude 06. Dancing Butterflies 07. Cluster 08. Reworking
of a Butterfly 09. Butterflies Too

**John Ellis (tenor saxophone), **

**Peter Dahlgren (trombone), **

**Danny Grissett (piano), **

**Iversen (bass) **

**Otis Brown III (drums & cymbals)**

![Racing a Butterfly | Anne Mette Iversen](https://i0.wp.com/f4.bcbits.com/img/a2978060877_5.
jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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