Palmetto Records
2007
Spark!
About This Album
As jazz is an instrumental medium, it's a challenge for its players to make sociopolitical statements with its music without the benefit of liner notes to give the work context. Once the listener understands some of the ideas that inspired this creative and lyrical duo's powerfully emotional project, its passionate and percussive tracks take on a deeper meaning. That doesn't mean one can't enjoy multi-movement pieces like the opening "Hymn" -- which features Myra Melford's bluesy piano touch and some of Marty Ehrlich's most urgent and emotional alto work here -- without a scorecard. It's just that when you know that the following two songs, the thoughtful and hauntingly reflective "A Generation Comes and Another Goes" and the crafty, percussive "I See a Horizon," were inspired by the poetry of Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri, a deeper meaning emerges. The duo explains that al-Jawahiri was a poet who spoke eloquently on a previous war in Iraq in the 1940s, and that they're offered here as prayers for peace and joy in Iraq and throughout the world, "wherever the sanctity of life is violated." That's heavy stuff, but it's actually hopeful in the hands of Ehrlich, whose vibrant, wistful clarinet musings counter Melford's darker piano runs.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4 and 5)

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