Mario Pavone

A reunion record of sorts, with bass legend Mario Pavone getting together with some long-time colleagues of old in a sextet format. And the results are predictably excellent: multiple horn parts giving life to Pavone’s thorny compositions, a strong yet occasionally unpredictable rhythmic current, and superb musicianship throughout.

Listing an accordion in a jazz sextet's lineup evokes either thoughts of avant-garde leanings or maybe kitschy hipsterism. Not so for bassist Mario Pavone.

Blue Vertical is to be the final recording by the legendary bassist and composer Mario Pavone, who passed on May 15 2021. Though in the final stages of a 17-year battle with cancer, Pavone pushed throughout April 2021 to make sure this music would be a part of his recorded legacy.

By now, Mario Pavone doesn’t need more presentations: he’s on the top of the jazz nobility of today, after a life of partnerships with the greatest, namely Paul Bley, Bill Dixon, Thomas Chapin, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, Marty Ehrlich and others of similar status. In his own bands, Pavone chooses the best in activity: his new opus, “Vertical”, include the contributions of Tony Malaby, Oscar Noriega, Dave Ballou, Peter McEachern and Mike Sarin. With such luminaries, the music could only have a solar quality: it’s colorful, bright, warm and intense. The compositions extend the percussive approach to the double bass which imediatly identifies this extraordinary musician: Pavone’s integrated work with drummer Sarin is propulsive, nervous and energetic, cutting through the clouds of sound formed by the reeds and the brass instruments. The horn frontline can be formed by only four contributors, but sometimes it seems we’re in front of an entire orchestra. This is dense and intense music, full of grain and humanity, powerful and fragile at the same time, meticulously structured and spontaneous in the same measure, with motivating theme lines and loose improvisations. It has everything you can ask for in just a jazz album.

By now, Mario Pavone doesn’t need more presentations: he’s on the top of the jazz nobility of today, after a life of partnerships with the greatest, namely Paul Bley, Bill Dixon, Thomas Chapin, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, Marty Ehrlich and others of similar status. In his own bands, Pavone chooses the best in activity: his new opus, “Vertical”, include the contributions of Tony Malaby, Oscar Noriega, Dave Ballou, Peter McEachern and Mike Sarin.

"It's always a joy to have a new recording from someone like Mario Pavone, for five decades a central figure of the most defying and uncompromised jazz played in the United States. He was there, in many of the key moments of this music, either with Paul Bley, Bill Dixon, Thomas Chapin, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, Marty Ehrlich, Steven Bernstein, Joshua Redman and many others.

The piano jazz trio format was, of course, an invention of pianists, establishing a triangular hierarchy with the piano on top and the double bass / drums positioned on the bottom. When the leader of such a trio is the bassist or the drummer , almost certain is that there is the idea to turn this kind of instrumentation into a more democratic one. Simply because a bassist or a drummer don’t imagine the dynamics of the group, and compose for it, the same way a pianist would.