Drummer
Paul Motian
, who emerged with the
Bill Evans
trio in the 1950s and died in 2011 at age 80, was a masterful performer with a fluid rhythmic sensibility that helped to free up the modern jazz tradition and make it more amenable to open time-keeping and unexpected textures. It's that lasting influence that is the focus of saxophonist
Joe Lovano
and guitarist
Jakob Bro
's 2022 collaboration
Once Around the Room: A Tribute to Paul Motian
. Though separated by a generation, both artists have their own deep ties to
Motian
: the elder
Lovano
worked in one of the drummer's later trios featuring
Bill Frisell
, and
Bro
was a member of
's band that recorded 2006's
Garden of Eden
. Here they are joined by a cadre of like-minded artists, including bassists
Larry Grenadier
,
Thomas Morgan
Anders Christensen
, as well as drummers
Joey Baron
and
Jorge Rossy
. Together, they commune over a series of original compositions inspired by
's work. The sole
piece that they tackle is the fittingly titled "Drum Music," a song
originally recorded on
's 1985 album
Jack of Clubs
with
Frisell
. Beginning with a roiling drum solo, the song soon gives way to a boppish melody that
play in unison with a guttural intensity. Later,
takes a solo, distorting his guitar sound with fractured, overdriven effects like a robotic sitar.
responds in kind, spitting out a long volley of notes that sound like paint being scratched off a wall. The originals are no less adventurous, moving from
's "As It Should Be" with its droney bass and echoey sax and guitar interplay to the spectral group improv of "Sound Creation," where
's crystalline chords and
's mournful sax lines merge into a wave of shimmering, fractal space noise. Equally compelling is
's "For the Love of Paul," a bluesy, off-kilter number that combines the rambling free-bop style of
Ornette Coleman
with the stop-start phrasing of
Thelonious Monk
. There's also
's "Song to an Old Friend," a delicate ballad that has the far-eyed introspection of a
Radiohead
song. All of this evokes the boundaryless creative spirit of
. ~ Matt Collar