Spirit Stronger than Blood
Frank London; The Elders
ESP Disk 5099 CD (espdisk.com)
While much music is a celebration of life and birth, a subcategory exists dealing with death and dying. However, few creations approach eventual demise with the same combination of remembrance and defiance as this disc by New York trumpeter Frank London’s quartet. Recently diagnosed with myelofibrosis, a rare and fatal blood cancer, London’s compositions celebrate other artists who have died from cancer. Aiding him are veteran improvisers, New Yorkers drummer Newman Taylor Baker and bassist Hilliard Greene, Toronto pianist Marilyn Lerner, and on four of the six selections, the trumpeter’s long-time associate and now ordained rabbi, tenor saxophonist Greg Wall.
Despite the topic the tracks are anything but downers, instead they usually move with relaxed bounces or swaying swing. They also inhabit the juncture where freylekhs meet funk, with the instrumental language and rhythms often as much Latin as Ladino. Sound tapestries include cymbal sizzles, thick string pulses, chiming keyboard patterns and reed bites and squeezes. As well, when not playing in unison with Lerner or Wall, London’s tone is much closer to Garbriel than the graveyard. He tongues triplets, projects half-valve and bent notes with davening intensity and moves from meditative respiration to guttural growls that push The Elders into sounding like a Judaic Jazz Messengers.
A common medical-philosophical theory is that dying is just another stage in a person’s life, where acceptance eventually overcomes grief. Add audacity and London’s band aptly demonstrates those concepts on this CD.
