Deluxe limited edition double vinyl version of Beyond the Margins, pressed on Trost's high quality vinyl, protected by deluxe silky jacket and featuring beautiful artwork by master painter Miguel Navas. Includes a 20 minute bonus track from The Bridge's celebrated appearance at Berlin Jazz Fest, November 2022.
New formations involving musicians from different countries and generations are often put together with laudable intentions, but rarely live up to the expectations. One notable exception is Rodrigo Amado’s The Bridge quartet, its name a reference to Sonny Rollins' 1962 comeback album, but presumably also to the determination to establish strong connections despite different backgrounds. And this band truly delivers: there is the level of interplay, the malleable sound these four conjure up; there is the freedom and the eagerness to push things forward; and finally, there is the tangible gravitas of their combined artistry. The band’s founder must have known what he was getting himself into.
Amado has gradually become a front-rank improviser on the European scene. He can wrestle and brawl with the best of them, raise the roof with flamethrower energy and will not hold back anything if that is what the momentum requires. When I saw his Motion Trio with Miguel Mira and Gabriel Ferrandini at the 2014 edition of the Konfrontationen Festival in Nickelsdorf, Austria, I thought they were going to detonate. By the time they played, it must have been around 1 or 2am, and a huge sledgehammer blast was the smartest tactic. Still, it is not his go-to approach, as Motion Trio delivered a scorching set that, despite a furious, even manic intensity, never lost its sense of purpose, of clarity and depth. Urgency never got in the way of thoughtfulness. The introspective quality of his music remains somewhat underexposed.
He is an example of a musician whose sound and physique are closely aligned. A man of discipline and balance, he takes care of himself and of his music, rarely laying all his cards on the table from the get-go. Watch him closely, and you will realize he is not the guy of conventionally spaced, explosive climaxes, of frequent musical peaks and valleys, that automatic yin-yang of exploding and recharging. If anything, it is the simmering heat running through many of his performances that feels like the true essence of his music. The burning, not the exploding.
Amado is in it for the long haul and his music often meanders, in the best sense of the word. Not as a movement that doesn’t know where it is heading, but as an exercise in feverish introspection that keeps moving forward. His improvisations are exploratory exercises and perhaps no previous release is as enlightening in that regard as Refraction Solo (2022). On it, he touches upon thematic material by his most formative influence, Sonny Rollins, and an equally inspiring compatriot, Joe McPhee. This is something he never does in his other projects, yet he somehow bends the input, merges it with his personal framework, actually refracting it with two basic principles: patience and determination.
What has emerged over the course of the past two decades, is a remarkably coherent oeuvre, even though there are some differences in aesthetics and line-up between his work with his ‘American quartet’ (w/ McPhee, Chris Corsano and Kent Kessler), the one-off (for now) with the Scandinavians of Northern Liberties, the Motion Trio (with and without guests), The Attic, etc. With this new ‘European quartet’, his trajectory gets a sublime new addition, stressing and expanding the iridescence of his sound world. Plus, you get to hear Amado with a pianist, which is relatively rare, although Alexander von Schlippenbach previously appeared on The Field (recorded in 2019, released in 2021), the most recent album by the Motion Trio.
In the liner notes for that album, Amado recalled to Stuart Broomer, “Playing with a pianist is, for me, an added challenge, mostly because of the harmony. I need to play with pianists who are bold, open-minded, and who don’t get distracted, surprised or scared by my note choices.” As became immediately clear, the German trailblazer quickly found his place among these musicians that had been honing their particular group energy for a decade. As Broomer notes: “What is most striking about this first encounter is the extent to which the musicians find a common ground, like the early piano trio formation with the apt punctuation of Ferrandini’s drums and the parallel line of Mira’s cello, a continuous source of distinct light.”
It is therefore no surprise that Amado wanted to work again with Schlippenbach, who performs with a masterful clarity throughout this performance recorded at Warsaw’s home for exciting live music, Pardon, To Tu. You really should give this album, and in particular the lengthy title track, a spin just to focus on the pianist’s contribution, his use of space and dynamics. Moving from manic repetitive clusters to sparse counterpoint and quirky Monk-isms, he is both an agent of surprise as well as another backbone for an organically unfolding group improvisation that is tightly controlled and loose at the same time.
Of course, Amado knows that you are only as good as the people you surround yourself with. The presence of bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten was perhaps something just waiting to happen, as he crossed paths with Amado many times and is an ideal foil in a context like this. Like Amado, he has only become better over the course of the past decades, both with and without the bow, providing the music with color, thrust and dynamics. Supremely adaptable and quick-thinking, Håker Flaten confidently steps forward as a crucial part of this quartet of equals.
The final addition to the band, expat Gerry Hemingway, amazed Amado with “(...) a mix of subtle nuanced drumming and sheer mind-blowing energy” at the 2021 edition of Freejazzfestival Saarbrücken, where he played with Mat Maneri and Assif Tsahar. On Beyond the Margins, he impresses with the dexterity that has been his calling card since the glory days of the Braxton Quartet. Supremely inventive, moving around, over and through the band’s interaction with restless agility and controlled energy, Hemingway is too proficient to be a mere rhythm section member. He is all over the album, in the best way imaginable.
It was only when I got to see them live in Mechelen, Belgium, half a year after this recording, that I truly understood how exceptional their synergy is. Getting the opportunity to spend some time with the band before their concert, I was struck by the easy-going camaraderie when they saw each other again after some time. They checked the sound, opting to stand as closely to each other as possible and had it down in no time, after which they shared Italian food, wine and coffee. Not a word was spent on the upcoming concert.
When they finally played, they did it with that untamed sense of control that you get when you find yourself in the company of artists who allow the music to move in the direction it needs. That is also what you hear on Beyond the Margins: the sound of four imaginative masters combining craft and bold imagination with patience and determination. Never gets old.
Rodrigo Amado – tenor saxophone
Alexander Von Schlippenbach – piano
Ingebrigt Håker Flaten – double bass
Gerry Hemingway – drums, voice
