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Eliot Zigmund Quartet

Golden

 

 

Veteran drummer Eliot Zigmund is renowned for his rich history with such jazz luminaries as Jim Hall, Lee Konitz, Vince Guaraldi, Michel Petrucciani and, most famously, Bill Evans, whose trio he played in from 1975- 1978. Zigmund brings that profound depth of experience to every stroke he plays on Golden. 

The loose, conversational nature of the gestalt group is apparent from track to track on this spirited quartet outing with pianist David Janeway and longtime collaborators, trumpeter Rick Savage and bassist David Kingsnorth. Together they forge a beautiful balance of reverence for jazz standards and a willingness to explore beyond, both avenues highlighted by the quartet’s high degree of interactive playing. “We’ve been doing this for several years now,” said the leader. “We really function as a unit, very closely listening to each other and reacting to each other. And nobody’s stepping on anybody else’s toes. There’s a real kind of group consciousness in this kind of democratically-produced music.”

Said bassist Kingsnorth of the uncommonly open-minded leader of this quartet date. “That’s kind of his m.o.— just let it go where it goes, not really staying within preconceived boundaries. And he really trusts everybody’s instincts and where things are going to go. He so rarely tells you what to play as a leader, almost never. He’s just like, ‘Wherever you go, that’s cool.’”

“With this band, we’ve been experimenting more with having completely free passages within normal diatonic tunes,” explained Zigmund. “That’s becoming more interesting and prevalent in my life. A lot of free music, for me, becomes boring because it remains only free. It’s a great texture and a great place to go, but it’s nice to come back from that and contrast it with really skillful playing within time and form. So that’s kind of what we think about when we play free in this band.”

Whether showcasing his swinging prowess (at age 79) on potent numbers like his dynamic “Remediation,” Janeway’s driving “Fully Vaxxed” and a burning take on Thelonious Monk’s “Jackie-ing,” delving into more daring, open-ended rubato playing on his “Blues-E” or demonstrating uncommon sensitivity with brushes on Janeway’s uplifting ballad “Maybe Tomorrow” and the oft-covered jazz standard “The Touch of Your Lips,” Zigmund reveals a wide breadth of expression throughout Golden. And his conversational instincts on the kit always elevate the proceedings. 

“Eliot has this ability to complement on the drums and bring out the best in whoever’s playing with him,” said Janeway. “All the band members have commented on this. He just brings that out, whatever that is. There’s a lot of empathy there and given his decades of experience he knows how to make the music come alive.”

Formed at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, the members of Zigmund’s quartet began playing sessions at the leader’s house in Teaneck, New Jersey (with masks on), just jamming and getting a group feel. “It was during Covid that we formed a bubble and agreed to start rehearsing,” recalled Janeway. “Rick, David and Eliot had been playing together for many years by that point and they had been talking about starting a band. I was invited to join them and we put together this collective, where it was an opportunity for all of us to contribute original compositions and develop a group conception.”

When it was safe to start playing in the clubs again, they booked gigs at Small’s in the West Village, Maureen’s Jazz Cellar in Nyack, Jazz Forum in Tarrytown and the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap while also performing at a summer concert series that Janeway curated near his home in Hastings-on-Hudson called Hastings on Jazz. “So we started playing around a little bit,” recalled Kingsnorth, who had played in Zigmund’s previous quartet with pianist Allen Farnham and saxophonists Matt Garrison (documented on their 2018 release, Live at Small’s). “And eventually, we just decided to go into the studio and record.”

The collection kicks off in triumphant fashion with Janeway’s surging 6/4 swinger, “Fully Vaxxed.” Said the composer, “It’s influenced by McCoy Tyner and Woody Shaw with that kind of raw energy and spirit. It reflects the exuberance and relief I felt after the Covid vaccines were announced and came out.”

Savage’s title track opens with a dramatic, golden-toned solo flugelhorn passage before the band settles into a moody rubato exploration with Janeway’s Fender Rhodes electric piano coloring the journey. “I find that the Rhodes is very expressive and can add a lot of color or texture that an acoustic piano can’t. There’s just an aesthetic thing about it -- the touch, the feel of it, the sound — that I love.”
Savage said he was going for a mid-‘60s Miles Davis-with-Wayne Shorter vibe on his two compositions, “Golden” and “New Waltz,” both colored by Rhodes. “When I was just out of college, I had a quintet that played Wayne’s music and it was a real education for me,” he said.

Janeway stays on the Rhodes for a swinging, if unconventional, interpretation of Monk’s “Jackie-ing.” “The way we approached that Monk tune is almost like playing free,” he said. “We’ve experimented a lot with playing free in this band and on ‘Jackie-ing’ we basically took what we’ve experienced in that realm and then applied it to that Monk tune.”

On Savage’s mysterious “Slow Blue,” a tune that grew out of the trumpeter’s fascination with the Phrygian mode, the quartet explores freely in a more sparse environment. “The thing I loved the most about Miles was how he could just play one note and it was amazing,” said the composer. “And I wanted to see if we could do that too here…play with that kind of simplicity and still tell a story.”

“Maybe Tomorrow” is Janeway’s hopeful anthem in the face of threats from Covid, climate change and ongoing political divisiveness. “I guess I’ve always been an eternal optimist,” he said. “That comes from my mother who taught me how important it is to keep the faith. That was the inspiration behind this tune-the hope that we can turn this around by coming together.”

Zigmund’s aggressively swinging minor blues, “Remediation,” which features the leader on an extended drum solo near the end, evolved out of some personal catharsis. “This piece was written because of a ten-year remediation on a leaking oil tank beneath my house in Teaneck, which ended up costing a million bucks,” he explained. “Fortunately, in the end, after lots of legal hassle, we were covered by private and state insurance. But it was just one of the most awful experiences I went through.” (It was such a fiasco that playwright R.N. Sandberg’s wrote a Kafka-esque treatment of Zigmund’s order, Terra Incognita, which was performed in 2016 at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey).

Kingsnorth’s indelible hookup with Zigmund is perhaps best exemplified by the drummer’s “Blues-E,” which he dedicates to his former Bill Evans Trio bandmate, Eddie Gomez. It opens with an extended solo bass intro before the full band enters, prompting the bassist into some ferocious walking through the swing section and some deep-toned exploration through the rubato section.

“Samsara” is Savage’s exercise in harmonic movement. “At first I was trying to play all the right notes with all those chord changes, and eventually I transitioned into feeling like I was able to flow melodically over the whole thing,” he explained.

Another optimistic Janeway original, “Forward Motion,” is about music’s profound ability to serve as a healing force,” as he said. Savage’s high-note flurries are prominently on display throughout this invigorating number. 

Savage plays muted trumpet on his alluring “New Waltz,” and the collection closes on a nostalgic note with a display of Zigmund’s briskly swinging brushwork on “The Touch of Your Lips,” an engaging number he played on an almost nightly basis with Bill Evans, whom he dedicates the tune to.

“I’m very proud of this album,” said Janeway. “Eliot has opened a lot of doors for all of us, musically speaking. And one of the many beautiful aspects of his playing and musicianship is how he can do that so naturally and seemingly effortlessly — to open doors so that the music can go where it’s supposed to go. And it’s a transcendent thing. Maybe it’s a higher power that’s involved, but I think we all aspire towards reaching that place or arriving at a place where the unexpected can occur and the music can take off.”

Indeed, the four members of the Eliot Zigmund Quartet collectively take off from track to track on Golden. — Bill Milkowski


 

Bill Milkowski is a longtime contributor to Downbeat magazine and the author of biographies on Jaco Pastorius, Pat Martino and Michael Brecker. His website is at billmilkowski.com