Graewe / Mattos / Vatcher
Impressions Of Monk
(Nuscope)
by Derek Taylor
March 2000
As long as there is jazz music Thelonious Monk’s influence upon it will be indelible. One of the most fascinating facets of his legacy is the lasting inspiration his work and persona have had on practitioners working within less widely regaled realms of the music such as free improvisation. Graewe could be considered within this category, though his affinity for Monk is admittedly more elliptical. On this outing he pays homage while still adhering resolutely to his own autonomy. His partners in the enterprise establish themselves early on as up to the challenge of his highly daring interpretations of a baker’s dozen of Monk’s tunes.
Mattos and Vatcher work exceedingly well as rhythmic, harmonic and melodic foils to Graewe’s confident explorations. Mattos’ elastic technique on his strings negotiates the tricky twists that are both inherent in the pieces and made even more precarious by Graewe’s intricate reworkings. Vatcher’s touch on his trap set is a little brittle for my tastes, particularly in his snare accents, and there are points where he veers dangerously in the direction of bombast. But even his most heavy-handed moments always seem to gel with the moods Graewe is attempting to invoke and never impede the progress of the trio. His work with bowed cymbals on “Light Blue” builds an effective element of unease into the piece in concert with Mattos’ spidery arco lines demonstrating again the fortitude of Graewe’s choice in sidemen. Here is a group that continuously transcends the limitations of its instrumentation through concentrated improvisational zeal moving with a uniformity of purpose which is often arresting. In the hands of improvisers of lesser resolve a program of pieces that centers on compositions as familiar as those presented here might flounder. Graewe’s ingenuity makes such a situation impossible.
An equally integral, but unseen component in the disc’s success is the clarity of sound that characterizes the recording. As a direct result of this sonic lucidity all of the player’s subtle shifts in shading and texture are presented in bold relief. Anyone with the least affinity for Monk should acquire this disc. Those who give it the attention it deserves will no doubt find Graewe’s renditions of the master’s songbook beautifully reverent and at the same time wholly unique.
