Marty Ehrlich: Practical abstraction

Marty Ehrlich doesn't let his understanding of the jazz tradition stifle his adventurous spirit. And that's never been more true than on the two new releases from this 42-year-old reed/flute player and composer. The Open Air Meeting (New World), a riveting duet with pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams, may offer the most exciting improvising Ehrlich's ever put on disc. And Ehrlich's own quintet is featured on the engaging New York Child (Enja).

Open Air Meeting captures one of those rare, magical moments in which music seems to transcend conscious control and a deeper, intuitive hand guides events. More than quick reflexes, technique, and experience is needed to explain how pianist and reed player can anticipate each other's every move, offer instantaneous support, and build a performance of great daring and emotional depth. Abrams's name gets top billing on the CD cover and spine, but the performance belongs equally to both.

The pianist sets the tone of the continuous hour-long concert, which was recorded outdoors last August at the Brooklyn Museum, with a quicksilver introduction to "Marching with Honor." Abrams alternates chords and single-note lines, making glancing historical references to earlier jazz pianists, including Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, without losing focus or individuality. After Ehrlich's alto swoops in over Abrams's two-beat marching rhythm, the two lock into a fluid, contrapuntal exchange that intensifies.

On "Dark Sestina," Abrams's warped stride and Earl Hines tremolos form the bedrock on which the peaks and valleys of Ehrlich's plaintive clarinet solo rest. The nervous stop-and-start rhythms of "Crossbeams" catapult the pair into the most energized moments of the set, which climax with screaming saxophone and atonal waves of piano notes. "The Price of the Ticket" heals this emotional turmoil with a prayerful Abrams solo followed by a triumphant Ehrlich, whose joyful alto is tempered by a sorrowful undercurrent. Abrams has recorded duos before, most notably with saxophonist Anthony Braxton, bassist Malachi Favors, and violinist Leroy Jenkins, but none sustains the same level of inspired excitement as this one, and none so successfully weds the earthiness of swing and blues to the extended techniques and abstractions of new music.

Those same qualities characterize New York Child, the new release by Ehrlich's quintet (with Boston-based tenor-saxophonist Stan Strickland, pianist Michael Cain, bassist Michael Formanek, and drummer Bill Stewart). With Formanek and Stewart giving the rhythms solid, almost sculptural definition, the music swings hard. And Ehrlich's writing on "Elvin's Exit" and "Tell Me This" pays homage to the jazz greats while playing tricks with convention. The band respond brilliantly to the material, using the fragmented melody of "Time and the Wild Words" as the basis for a group improvisation blending bowed bass, clarinet, and tenor saxophone over a tempo that appears and disappears.

With its wide, warm vibrato, Ehrlich's alto playing is angular enough to express urgency but not so sharp or obscure as to ward off listeners. When he breaks into pure sound toward the end of his solo on "Tell Me This," the wailing abstraction is perfectly natural and musical. Yet on "Turn Again" and Julius Hemphill's "Georgia Blue," he's capable of tenderness and vulnerability. Ehrlich is a young master in peak form.

-- Ed Hazell

(Marty Ehrlich and Stan Strickland perform with poet Erica Hunt at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University at 7 p.m. next Thursday, April 10. Admission is free. Call 736-3400 for further information.)