Sacred

Trace Pullen's work from his days in Charles Mingus's bands of the '70s (best heard on the Atlantic album Mingus Moves) through his years in a neo-bop quartet with reedman George Adams and finally to his African Brazilian Connection band, and one chief characteristic emerges. He was a major player in jazz keyboard history because of his uncanny ability to play both inside and outside traditional jazz piano styles. His deep roots in traditional blues and gospel were a cornerstone marking his output. Yet even as he mined that tradition for melodies, he ceaselessly experimented with "outside" rhythms, with his trademark percussive tone clusters and glissandos. No wonder that one of his most scintillating original compositions was entitled "The Dancer (for Diane McIntyre)," from Random Thoughts (Blue Note). Pullen danced like a boxer at the keyboards, jabbing rhythmic accents with shattering force, improvisations full of striking surprises.

Sacred Common Ground has a strong link to dance: it was a collaboration with choreographer Garth Fagan, the Chief Cliff Singers (Kootenai Indian musicians from Montana), and Pullen's African Brazilian band. The timing of this project was propitious. Fagan had received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest grant to create a new dance work with a jazz/Indian score. Pullen had released three previous Blue Note albums fusing traditional African and Brazilian musical ideas with jazz; it seemed he'd taken that concept as far as it would go. He was also severely ill, dealing with the cancer that would finally take his life. Thoughts of mortality can provoke great shape-changing. It was a time for Pullen and his band to shift and assume a new musical direction.

Sacred Common Ground opens with the chanting and drumming of the Chief Cliff Singers, five men and two women hammering out a regular ritualistic beat while vocalizing in ragged harmony. Just as the rhythm begins to suggest monotony, Pullen and band enter. Alto-saxophonist Carlos Ward and trombonist Joseph Bowie pick up on the rhythm the singers are lining out. They echo that traditional pulse, then improvise in the interstices between the regular beats. Pullen leaps into the fray, with explosive glissandos and dissonant tone clusters. Drummer J.T. Lewis and percussionist Mor Thiam throw African polyrhythms into the mix. It cooks, then jells. Pullen was proud of the charts he developed for these recordings -- and with reason. It took impeccable arranging for the mix of ancient and modern musical modes to blend without a loss in the vitality of either style.

"Common Ground" takes a different tack. It opens with one woman's traditional chant sans drumming. Pullen enters on piano, executing a slow, rhapsodic, somewhat wistful solo along the lines of his tearjerking "Ode to Life" (also on Random Thoughts). Then the singers return with their voices raised and drums pounding, bookending Pullen's pensive solo with their "roots" music. It's a curious act of mutual respect -- not styles juxtaposed or superimposed as much as offered as instances of meaningful difference.

Another high point is "Reservation Blues," with the Kootenai musicians and the Pullen band finding common ground in gutbucket blues. The rhythm of the traditional Kootenai chant opens out to the entrance of the jazz band. Ward and Bowie slip and slide around the Native American chant rhythm, slur and scream through their horns. Pullen scurries about the piano gleefully, sending blue notes flying like sparks from a campfire.

These performances suggest that a high level of spiritual resonance was experienced by the players. That might sound like typical industry hype, but time and time again Pullen, aware he was dying as he recorded this album, pulled himself out of chemotherapy to work on it. Listen carefully to "Message in Smoke," an apt metaphor for trying to communicate spiritual matters in jazz. Pullen's playing is marked by superhuman speed and convulsive dissonance. He knew there was little time left to write his "message in smoke." His final message honors us all.