Lenapewiattuck
River of the Lenape
NA1066
Bud Tristano, guitar
Kazzrie Jaxen, piano
PROLOGUE
1. Prophecy of the Fourth Crow
WINTER
2. Breath of the North
3. Long Dark Nights
4. Glacier
SPRING
5. First Thaw
6. The Greening
7. Sacred Forest
SUMMER
8. Ceremony: Song for the River of Time
AUTUMN
9. Vision Quest
10. Ancestral Return
EPILOGUE
11. Lenapewiattuck
Recording & Mastering: Dana Duke, Roscoe, NY
Recording Dates: April 2007 – September 2013
Field Recording: Brett Keyser, 2016
BIO: KAZZRIE JAXEN | INFO: BUD TRISTANO
REVIEWS
The description “a work of art” when it comes to an album has become trite and cliché. But what it really means in the case of Bud Tristano and Kazzrie Jaxen’s album “Lenapewiattuck: The River of The Lenape” is that the duo paint a musical picture of a powerful natural resource which also has deep historic significance as well as a steady source of inspiration for them personally. Known to us today as the Delaware River that borders New York State and Pennsylvania, a “walk to, and sometimes a dip into” the River of the Lanape inspired each track of this recording.
Right from the first track, “Prophecy of the Fourth Crow,” one can tell that the duo is ready, musically, for anything, as long as it is in direct service to conveying the vision of the inspiration of the mighty River. One can tell that both Tristano, the guitarist, and Jaxen, the pianist, both have a wide variety of influences (which they site as everything from Charlie Parker & Lenny Tristano to Bartok & Stravinsky to Hendix and Van Halen), and that they have ‘chops,’ but the spontaneously-composed pieces are never showcases of their individual talents so much as a fulfillment of the afore-mentioned vision.
The music on “Lenapewiattuck” is often abstract, but there are also times when the tonality is relatively consonant, and these moments are unpredictable and happen organically. This shows that the duo holds no pretention about playing “out.” It would have been unlikely that they could achieve such organic spontaneity that the River itself likely offers if they were harboring some kind of hidden musical agenda.
The duo is constantly interacting with each other, and they both have a significant degree and a wide variety of technique on their respective instruments. Listening to abstract music such as this reminds me of a lesson a high school art teacher once taught us about abstract art which can be summed up like this: if you think “any child could have done that,” try to do it yourself! There is certainly lots of skill required on the part of each musician to interact so consistently and spontaneously. The musical directions do change relatively quickly, which also adds to the overall adventurousness of the album.
After the opening ‘prologue’ track, the album highlights the River in each of the 4 seasons, beginning with winter. In “Breath of the North,” one can feel everything from stillness to the biting cold represented by Tristano’s shimmering tremolo lines that resemble someone shivering, while the pianist paints dark clouds and sometimes heavy storms. In “Long Dark Nights” Jaxen seems like she is using musical pointillism while her counterpart splashes darker waves of color against the canvas. “Glacier” starts off atonally but meshes into giant chord clusters from the pianist which suggest the massive and stoic blocks of ice while Tristano’s slow, scratching sounds could suggest the structure’s very slow moving, cracking, melting or crumbling. This culminates around the 3:20 mark which dies down and swells up again around 4:00.
From there as the River moves into Spring with “First Thaw,” the icicles are melting and their dripping is playing with the earth. Then the flowers are beginning to sprig in “The Greening,” and Tristano’s rapid tremolo suggests buzzing bees. In “Sacred Forest” the pianist does latch on to the moody theme created by the guitarist, although only briefly, and one gets the impression that the duo is in awe of the majesty of the forest while trying not make too much of a footprint in it on their sojourn.
“Ceremony: Song for the River of Time,” a 13-minute improvisation, takes us into summer time, in its full playfulness, with the duo interacting even more directly with swirling motives, but also the slow mellowness that comes from long summer days. Around 2:00, Jaxen plays a very simple octave motif that the guitarist can lazily interact with, which eventually winds into a motif of 5ths. Perhaps for the first time in the entire album, the interplay centers around a single tonality for good length of time, in full lushness after the 4:00 mark. One is reminded of the opening track of “A Love Supreme,” as the pentatonic lines of the guitarist giving nod not to blues but to Native American ancestry that permeated the area thousands of years ago. Like a shamanic ceremony, the parts are always moving, but throughout, there is a ‘bigness’ felt in the 6 directions (east, west, north, south, above, and below) as well as the 7th direction of ‘within.’ Finally around the 11:30 mark, Jaxen initiates an atonal low-end rumbling of controlled chaos, with the guitarist right there with her, until, unexpectedly, the ceremony concludes.
As the River moves into Autumn, we hear perhaps the most personal tune to the guitarist called “Vision Quest,” dedicated to a relative of the guitarist who presumably passed away. His distorted lines, dissonant intervals, and feedback are heart-wrenching. Complete with hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, use of the whammy bar reminiscent of Jeff Beck. Jaxen does a wonderful job of providing steady, sympathetic support to Tristano’s grieving, while allowing him plenty of space by not suggesting any particular musical direction. This is one of the few times where the guitarist comes to forefront, and yet is led by her towards the end of the piece to a somewhat peaceful if not yet contented conclusion.
In contrast, “Ancestral Return” sees the pianist dominating the musical direction with wild dissonant chords in rapid succession around the 3:00 mark. This is definitely not a peaceful autumn day at the River. With this stimulating yet somewhat agitated exploration, one wonders whether there are underlying feelings of regret over the original inhabitants of the land being driven out by newly arriving settlers. Whatever kind of ancestral return this is, it is definitely not triumphant; it is tragic.
The final title-track of the album serves as the epilogue. It is here that we hear the actual sounds of the flowing water, the birds and the surrounding landscape at the inception and conclusion of the track. The duo is back to representing the River’s flowing interaction.
In the movie “Smoke,” the protagonist takes a photograph of the exact same street corner at the same time every single day for 14 years. As you might expect, the scene changes quite a bit over time. Similarly, in “Lenapewiattuck: The River of The Lenape,” Bud Tristano and Kazzrie Jaxen offer a wonderful musical description of a constantly changing place, a place that is mysterious yet playful, sacred yet frivolous, deep yet carefree. This is Nature in all its glory, and the duo’s portrayal of all its aspects is a work of art.
— Dennis Winge, Jazz Guitar.com
A suite of 11 fully improvised tracks recorded over the course of 11 years, Lenapewiattuck, the name the Lenape Indians gave to the Delaware River, takes that river as the source of its inspiration. Indeed, each recording session was preceded by a visit to, and sometimes a dip into, the river, whose voice has long been a healing and mentoring presence for pianist Kazzrie Jaxen. Her colleague, guitarist Bud Tristano, the son of pianist Lennie Tristano, also takes his inspiration from nature and, in his liner notes, speaks of developing music that reflects Claude Debussy’s “mysterious accord between nature and the imagination.” There is mystery aplenty in this highly kinetic work, which, despite the presence of only two instruments, has a symphonic breadth of sound and feeling.
The concept for the album—the music is arranged as a suite that follows the four seasons, with a prologue and epilogue—evolved around the music, rather than the other way around. Over time, new information about the river’s history and the earliest inhabitants of its valley shaped the musicians’ understanding of what they had recorded. Jaxen feels strongly that the project was shaped by unseen forces. It’s hard to argue with that, because the music feels as if it is coming not so much from the musicians as through them. Tristano credits this to their ability to let go of ego, allowing the feeling in the moment to dictate their playing.
Both musicians use the full palette of sounds available from their instruments over the course of the album. On “Prophecy of the Fourth Crow,” Tristano calls to mind John Fahey on a pilgrimage to Persia perhaps. On “Vision Quest,” he delivers a blistering, distorted blues solo, and he finds a most delicate touch on the prayer-like “Sacred Forest.” “I wanted to be like a big guitar hero like Jimi Hendrix and the other ones that came after,” he says, “but I couldn’t even get into a cover band.” The “failed rock guitarist”—as Tristano, tongue in cheek, occasionally refers to himself—nevertheless found a voice of his own and a microtonal mastery of his instrument, needing only the whammy bar for sound effects.
The classically trained Jaxen can generate waves of bass that hit you in the chest, as well as the most crystalline sounds in the upper registers. She uses the piano almost as a harp, with broken chords and extended arpeggios. She enters arpeggio heaven in “Ceremony: Song for the River of Time,” allowing the music to ripen into an act of compassion. Her playing, as well as Tristano’s, transcends genre, incorporating textures, styles, dynamics as the moment demands.
The sound is so complex and dense at times, that it seems there must be more than two instruments at work. Maybe they’re striking ghost tones off one another. However, except for the final, title track, which, overdubbed twice, comprises three pianos and three guitars, all of the music is coming from two instruments recorded without the benefit of pedals or other effects.
Immerse yourself in this river of sound, and emerge refreshed, enlarged, and illuminated.
— Mel Minter, Musically Speaking: An Avid Listener’s Observations
Just the other morning I was thinking reality is like undecipherable code. What we know about it is that the parts which compose it follow each other and so are sequential (which means the parts that go before have a say in what comes after, a condition which allows scientists to get a grip on it). But the parts are also simultaneous like the notes of a piece of music all laid out in the performer's memory which he or she knocks off one right after the other like ducks in a shooting gallery. Now, I'm thinking this when my friend Bud Tristano's CD arrives with the unpronounceable title - leave it to Bud to put integrity before sales - Lenapewiattuck. That's American Indian for, "This waterway belongs to the Lenape tribe. So you know who to see before you dip your toe in it. We are located right in the heart of what in 11,000 years will be called "Philadelphia."
Bud is the son of Lennie Tristano, the bebop jazz pianist and American composer extraordinaire who loved to distraction the sound of several musicians soloing altogether all at the same time, the signal trademark of New Orleans jazz. Now you should know that the New Orleans musicians were able to achieve that simultaneous sound because the solos they played were simple, formulaic, and conventional. Lennie took the idea a step further. In contrast to the Dixieland solos, those long, extended, individualized solos that Bird and Bud (Powell) and Prez play . . . what if bebop musicians played extended solos like that except simultaneously in such a way that they create unity on the spot even without the help of pre-arrangement or pre-anything, relying only on the inspiration of the moment! Clearly Lennie had transposed into music the political problem Americans haven't solved yet even after creating colossal individuals called corporations to bully their way toward a solution, namely, how to put individual interest to work on behalf of the common good.
Bud, who plays guitar, has inherited his dad's aesthetics (and politics) and has devoted his musical life to solving that problem. Bud did a CD awhile back with Connie Crothers, one of his dad's many disciples, called Primal Elegance. But Bud and Connie together were like an earthquake and a tornado dancing a minuet. When the music stopped and they looked around, everyone had cleared out and the ballroom was in shambles. So it was hard to tell after sifting through the rubble whether they had succeeded or not in uniting into a single composition their solos played simultaneously.
Presently Bud plays with pianist Kazzrie Jaxen. In Lenapewiattuck, Bud and Kazzrie present their research and findings musically on this question how do you interest individuals in a common good. But watch out because the question takes a quantum leap into epistemology.
Kazzrie writes in her notes to the CD that she began showing up everyday at the same place by the river "absorbing the visual vibrations of the water, the contrapuntal dance of rhythm and light. I learned to perceive these patterns as pure information and gradually opened to the field of natural intelligence all around me." Well, that phrase "pure information" jumped off the page. Pure information, if I understand it correctly, is when the information refers to itself without alluding to anything else. For example, an undecipherable code refers to itself because if it refers to anything else no one's the wiser. Now suppose reality is undecipherable code (I took up my earlier thought) with this added fillip that the cryptologist is included as part of the undecipherable code! My question is, what are the chances of the cryptologist deciphering the code even with him - or herself being part of it? I don't know how they did it, but it sounds to me like Bud and Kazzrie found the solution. Unfortunately the solution is coded in the music as "pure information" so all you hear is Bud and Kazzrie sounding wonderful together.
Frankly, after reading the notes I was afraid to listen to the CD. I feared that two such powerful spirits as Bud and Kazzrie in their endeavor to unite their musical talents might end up running each other off the road. But when I heard those wind chimes at the Fourth Crow, I knew they had arrived together. E duobus unum. A rarity.
I want to mention Lennie Tristano's "Maelstrom" as a musical source and leave it at that. Because even more important is that like Lennie Kazzrie makes atonal melody melodic. You have got to be half in and half out of a cage to do that successfully. You have got to call your halfway house home.
Sure we can burn nature as firewood but all we really know about it is that like reality nature is sequential and simultaneous. But then, so isn't music produced by two musicians playing at the same time. Now if sequence and simultaneity are the only prompts these musicians respond to, then whatever they add is pure unadulterated them. Like that quarter toning that Bud likes to do like maybe it's a fish leaping out of the water or a bird diving in. Compared to it the piano with its one tone to a key has in my opinion never sounded so rational. But that don't prevent Kazzrie from proving time and again that one plus one equals plus one plus.
Lenapewiattuck is Bud and Kazzrie's initiation ceremony into the tribe of the same name. That makes them American renegades in a long line of renegades going back to the 17th century when some émigrés felt more comfortable living in the forest with the Indians than dreaming of getting rich behind the stockade. Anyway, Bud quotes Chief Red Hawk on the Prophesy of the Fourth Crow: "We now know that the First Crow was the Lenape before the coming of the Europeans. The Second Crow symbolized the death and destruction of our culture. The Third Crow was our people going underground and hiding. The Fourth Crow was the Lenape becoming caretakers again and working with everybody to restore that land." Well, I would have called the CD "The Hour of the Fourth Crow," first, to announce to the four horsemen of the apocalypse that they had been anticipated by birds. And secondly, to expose the twinkle in the Chief's eye at the pun on "Fourth Crow": could be the last of four birds or the fourth cry of the same bird. So what? Well, hell, that's the difference between polytheism and monotheism! But like I say, Bud always has put integrity before sales.
— Marv Friedenn