# CD review: Joe Lovano Trio Tapestry – Garden of Expression 2021: Video, CD cover, Photo

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2021/02/01/cd-review-joe-lovano-trio-tapestry-garden-of-expression-2021-video-cd-cover-photo/
- Published: 2021-02-01T00:01:43+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Joe Lovano’s debut, Trio Tapestry, was one of 2019’s most talked-about releases.
Their concept is taken to the next level on Garden of Expression. Lovano is a saxophonist
who plays with exceptional sensitivity. **

Carmen Castaldi’s space-conscious approach to drumming further refines his improvisational
understanding. The trio is also a wonderful context for Marilyn Crispell’s solos
and counter melodies. The album was recorded at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI and
produced by Manfred Eicher.

The Cleveland-raised saxophonist Joe Lovano comes from a jazz tradition that extols
blowing a lot of notes, fast and loud. He grew up on his saxophonist father’s stories
of what it felt like to jam with John Coltrane, but also in a Sicilian-American 
household that revered the operatic tenor legend Enrico Caruso – experiences that
nurtured an appreciation of virtuosity and the subtleties of nuance and timbre. 
Now, after more than four jazz-star decades that have seen him considered one of
Sonny Rollins’ heirs (and a collaborator with originals from Bill Frisell and Elvin
Jones to Esperanza Spalding), Lovano’s Trio Tapestry explore delicate distillations
of the musical resources that all three members have often individually set loose
with warp-speed intensity.

Garden of Expression, Trio Tapestry’s second album, reconvenes Lovano with the brilliant
pianist Marilyn Crispell (New York Times critic Jon Pareles described witnessing
her fusions of classical virtuosity and free-jazz fearlessness as “like monitoring
an active volcano”) and his fellow Clevelander Carmen Castaldi on percussion. The
softly ecstatic Chapel Song finds Crispell shadowing Lovano’s exquisite tenor tone
in coaxing and reciprocal piano murmurings over Castaldi’s mallet whispers, followed
by an improvisation that’s a complete piece in itself; and the ways she buoys up
the vaporous lines of the sax with harmonious ripples on West of the Moon seem to
bypass all deliberation with reflexive empathy. The title track’s opening ascents
and descents shift to stormy, pensive and then scamperingly free-jazzy variations,
Dream on That teasingly suggests a hidden jazz tune in repeated, mutating fragments,
while Zen Like is an increasingly melodic exercise in gong tones and minimal motifs.
Garden of Expression is about the spaces between sounds as much as sounds themselves–
but, as in meditation, they’re spaces that resonate with stories.

Saxophonist Joe Lovano’s sideman appearances for ECM label stretch back more than
thirty years. For the most part, the American delivered the label’s musical compass
with the same gruff tone and rhythmic edge that marked his own-name recordings for
Blue Note.

Here though, the saxophonist delves deeper into the resonant lyricism and understated
rhythms that marked 2019’s Trio Tapestry, his ECM debut as a leader. This follow-
up release, a set of eight Lovano originals, was recorded later the same year. As
before, Lovano clothes his floaty tenor sax phrases with the ethereal tonalities
of Nordic jazz. Pianist Marilyn Crispell and drummer Carmen Castaldi weave ambient
textures into a diffuse pulse.

Opening track “Chapel Song” sets the tone with Crispell’s sparse piano rounding 
out Lovano’s wispy introductory phrase. Castaldi enters with a sequence of pings,
the theme is contemplative and spiritual in tone, and the mood is sustained to the
end of the piece. The haunting “Night Creatures” comes next, introduced by mellow
piano chords. Two minutes in, the key changes and the playing grows more intense,
reaches a gentle high and then arcs back from whence it came. Then follows the ebb-
and-flow moods of “West of the Moon” with Lovano displaying greater edge.

Although saxophone is the dominant voice, the collective spirit is high. Crispell
closely follows Lovano’s trains of thought with a wide array of voicings and melodic
fragments of her own invention and holds one’s attention when taking the lead. With
no steady bass, Castaldi can tug the pulse this way and that, decorate phrases and
rumble and roar when required.

“Garden of Expression”, the album’s ambitious title track, hangs contrasting moods
on a repeated theme and “Dream on That” is the nearest thing to an up-tempo jaunt;
Crispell introduces the dance-like theme, Lovano hints at Ornette Coleman at the
end. Elsewhere, “Treasured Moments” and “The Sacred Chant” are suitably serene and
the gong-adorned “Zen Like” is exactly that.

 1. Chapel Song (6:05)
 2. Night Creatures (6:46)
 3. West of the Moon (5:47)
 4. Garden of Expression (7:28)
 5. Treasured Moments (5:04)
 6. Sacred Chant (3:14)
 7. Dream on That (3:07)
 8. Zen Like (10:42)

**Joe Lovano: Tenor, Soprano Saxophone, Tarogato, Gongs**
 **Marilyn Crispell: Piano****
Carmen Castaldi: Drums**

⌊Delicate distillations of all three ... Trio Tapestry (from left: Joe Lovano, Marilyn
Crispell, Carmen Castaldi).⌉⌊Delicate distillations of all three ... Trio Tapestry(
from left: Joe Lovano, Marilyn Crispell, Carmen Castaldi).⌉⌊Album Garden of Expression,
Joe Lovano | Qobuz: download and streaming in  high quality⌉⌊Album Garden of Expression,
Joe Lovano | Qobuz: download and streaming in  high quality⌉

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