Dave Soldier & William Hooker - The LeWitt Etudes

The first sounds leaping from your speakers when you play this album are two upright bass lines, one  grounded in blues grooves and harmony, the other freely vocalizing with sinuous interjections from high on the neck. Right out of the gate, the twin voices foreshadow the extreme contrasts explored in this interpretation of Dave Soldier's LeWitt Etudes: Fifty Architectural Designs for Musicians (2015, Op. 34), namely selections 7, 9, 16, 24, 39, 40, 43, 45 and 48. The etudes, emulating rules for visual artists set down in Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawings series, are brief prompts for improvisers that deftly bring shape to collective compositions. For this album, a nine-piece ensemble gathered in the spring of 2022 to collectively compose in just this manner, over three hours at New York University's Dolan Studios. Their performance seamlessly blends the harmonies, groove and coordination of arranged music with the unfettered sonic sculpture of seasoned improvisers. And while others have interpreted the LeWitt Etudes, this latest recording by Soldier and William Hooker, under the Mahakala Music imprint, stands as the work's finest manifestation yet.

Hooker, a trailblazing, genre-defying drummer in New York's free improvisation scene since the mid '70s, feels the chemistry between the players and the resulting music lends this album historical significance. “This project was pretty damned heavy,” he says. “I think it makes a dent in the music of the 21st Century. I hope people worldwide, speaking other languages, can hear this music. That's my purpose now.”

The music's universal appeal is clear: simply hearing the instrumental odyssey, without intellectual trappings, is inherently compelling, as the richness of each instrument's tonal possibilities comes to the fore, beautifully recorded and mixed by engineer Parichat Songmuang, mastered for maximum clarity by Gene Paul. The musicians' melodic arcs, growls, sighs and drones — built on the sounds of  wood and string, reed and mouthpiece, oscillating electric voltages, and sticks on skins — create a smorgasbord of sound beyond the realm of language or even most other music.

But the chemistry in the room that day didn't come from nowhere. Soldier and Hooker have been making music together for decades. “Dave and I have four albums out together,” says Hooker. “We've done a lot of work together, and I don't separate the LeWitt Etudes from any of the work we've done so far.” Rather, it's a continuation of a years-long dialogue between them, with Hooker's drum kit and Soldier's violin, mandolin, and five string banjo bringing multiple voices to their conversation on this album.

From there, the collaborators added other voices to their palette: In one corner were the aforementioned bassists,  Luke Stewart (recently named one of the 25 most influential jazz artists of his generation by Downbeat magazine) and Ken Filiano (both an orchestral double bassist and a pillar of New York's jazz scene for decades), their weave of slapping, deep tones and whispering harmonics perfectly complementing the dynamics of Hooker's drumming. Beside them, Hans Tammen, renowned for multiple projects from Endangered Guitar to the Dark Circuits Orchestra, sat playing either a “big fat jazz guitar that's older than me,” as he puts it, or a Buchla synthesizer.

Further spaced around the tracking room were Dave Soldier, his three instruments at the ready; Rebecca Cherry, a violinist deeply versed in the classical canon, yet with an adventurous streak; Kirk Knuffke, with 18 albums under his name, dubbed by the New York Times “one of New York City’s busiest musicians,” on cornet; Ayumi Ishito, who's new Open Question project has received glowing reviews, on tenor saxophone; composer Alex Greene, a thirty-year veteran of the Memphis indie rock and jazz scene, on piano; and William Hooker, whose thunderous-yet-nuanced drumming had a profound effect on the dynamics of each piece.