Search - John Lindberg Ensemble :: Tree Frog Tonality

Following distantly in the footsteps of classic Blue Note prodigies like Lee Morgan and Tony Williams, bassist John Lindberg began his career as a teenager in the late-1970s New York avant-garde scene. A Tree Frog Tonality finds him freshly 41 and fielding a fine ensemble of Wadada Leo Smith on trumpet, ROVA cofounder Larry Ochs on tenor and sopranino saxophone, and Andrew Cyrille on drums. Lyrically inclined over much of this meditative set, the band is always out on a limb. Ochs bends sopranino tones and rasps throaty tenor scours as Lindberg bows in a high octave or thrums restlessly. The set takes on the feel of an Art Ensemble of Chicago performance in spots--without, that is, all the playful little-instrument punctuations of the AEC. The quartet rarely kicks it into full flight, favoring midtempo moods as Smith blusters with an open-bore brassy sound that fattens things up at times. The opening "Thanksgiving Suite" is all open-air space, with the band gaining traction on "Four Fathers" and then going tipsily toward a Steve Lacy precipice on "Drifter." The tempos shift, as do the harmonics, always evincing a theatrical sense that makes Tree Frog somehow seem a wonderful, generous quilt cut into different moods. --Andrew Bartlett