The Order

Description

File Under: Jazz / Free Jazz. Bassist Luke Stewart isn't afraid of blurring boundaries and blending bands, with astonishing results. An essential creative force in the fertile jazz and improvised music scenes of the East Coast and beyond for nearly two decades, he seized a promising moment to combine musicians from two volatile working combos. As the name suggests, his new Cuneiform album credited to Silt Remembrance Ensemble, brings together two players from his Remembrance Quintet (introduced on an eponymous 2023 album on his own label)- Jamal Moore on reeds and percussion and veteran master Daniel Carter on alto sax and flute - and Silt Trio, featuring powerhouse tenor saxophonist Brian Settles and drum maestro Chad Taylor. What had initially been planned as an album release concert for the Remembrance Quintet project evolved into an entirely new situation. Stewart had an opportunity to perform at Tonal Park Studios in Takoma Park, MD, around the same time that Silt Trio was recording Unknown Rivers, "and I used the opportunity to gather this special mix of those two groups," he says. The recording isn't a document of the two hour-plus concert. Rather, Stewart crafted the album after the fact, distilling and sequencing the music to create its own narrative arc, "editing and arranging the performance so that it would make sense in an album form," he says. Stewart resides at the center of a tangled skein of relationships running between the four other players. They're joined on several pieces by spoken word artists Janice Lowe and No Land, with verse that ties this music to the Remembrance Quintet album. Themes of ancestral recall, the flow of time and water, and the preciousness of shared moments run through the session, starting with the opening convocation "Memory." A setting for text by No Lands designed to feature Carter, it's a trio piece with Stewart that prepares the audience for the "molten experience" to come. The full band joins for "Remember," a piece harkening to the first Remembrance Quintet album with multilayered percussion and a serpentine saxophone conversation between Carter, Settles and Moore that gathers momentum over the churning rhythm section. Together, these players share a depth of knowledge and spirit of adventure that makes The Order a milestone collaboration that excavates and honors the past while embracing the unknown.