Aug. 01--Two of the most striking recordings of recent vintage came from the pen and imagination of the same composer-bandleader: Chicago bassist Matt Ulery.
In 2012, Ulery's double album "By a Little Light" caught listeners by surprise with a singular approach to composition and improvisation. Its exotic colors, unexpected chord progressions and sinuous, circuitous melodic lines sounded like nothing else in jazz.
Last year, Ulery unveiled a follow-up double album, "In the Ivory," a similarly unconventional work that proved the first was no fluke. Once again, Ulery and his chamber ensemble created atmospheric mood pieces of uncommon allure.
Admirers of this work might argue over whether it should be called jazz, contemporary classical, highbrow pop or Eastern European folkloric music, for elements of each -- and other idioms, as well -- coursed through Ulery's scores. The name of the style was irrelevant, however, for Ulery clearly reveled in intertwining seemingly disparate sounds.
Live performances of this music have been infrequent, especially in light of the wide critical acclaim it has generated. In part, that has been due to the number and nature of the musicians involved, with Ulery's top-notch jazz collaborators playing alongside members of eighth blackbird, an esteemed new-music organization. Gathering all of these musicians in the same room at the same time can be a scheduling and financial challenge.
That made Friday night's performance at Constellation a rare and welcome event, a large audience listening to a dozen artists defy widely held notions of how music is to be created.
With Ulery center stage and his colleagues gathered around him, the music of "In the Ivory" sounded still more lustrous and appealing than on the album. To hear the subtleties of Ulery's instrumental voicings and the range of tone and texture he has conceived was to admire this music anew.
"Gave Proof," the curtain-raiser for both the concert and the "In the Ivory" album, touched upon a great deal of Ulery's musical vocabulary. Repeated rhythmic figures and pitch sequences evoked what classical musicians call minimalism, but the sweeping melodic phrases and the ebb and flow of this music took the composition beyond the limitations of that language. Above all, "Gave Proof" was about instrumental color, from Rob Clearfield's glistening pianism to the deep-amber shades of the strings to the delicate tintinnabulation of the percussion.
"Mary Shelley," also from "In the Ivory," showed Ulery's stylistically wide-ranging ensemble functioning as a single organism, jazz and classical approaches to rhythm somehow finding common ground. Through it all, Ulery's warmly resonant bass lines provided the anchor to so much shimmering sound.
The Polish-born, Chicago-based singer Grazyna Auguscik has been central to Ulery's enterprise from the start, but only in concert can one fully gauge what she and the instrumentalists can achieve together. They attained a high point in "Gone As It Always Was," from the "By a Little Light" recording, Auguscik's long-held notes floating just above the instrumental swirl. As Auguscik unspooled wordless legato lines and other worldly tones, the band provided a surging instrumental crescendo, bringing this music into operatic dimension.
The evening also included a new work, "Pictures in Grey," the piece establishing that Ulery is not content to recycle the ideas of "By a Little Light" and "In the Ivory." Passages in which Auguscik and Ulery sang together were more declamatory than any of the composer's earlier music for voice, while the instrumental writing proved edgier and more rhythmically turbulent than one has come to expect from him.
All of which only whets one's appetite for what Ulery will record next. He's developing quickly, and he already has said a great deal.
hreich@tribpub.com
