Israeli reedsman Assif Tsahar has been active in New York’s jazz scene for more than a decade, most recently leading and conducting The New York Underground Orchestra and The Zoanthropic Orchestra. Tsahar’s subtle and abstract approach to improvisation is displayed on his duet album with multi-instrumentalist Cooper Moore, 2005’s “Tells Untold.”
The music floats from intricate percussion and meditative bass clarinet motifs to selections showcasing Tsahar’s driving tenor sax to full-blown mind-altering noise. It’s out there. But, at least as far as new improvisation goes, there’s a lot there to make the work accessible on the first spin and enough substance to warrant further interest.
If I could sit down and have a drink with any contemporary musician, I would, of course, buy a round for Krayzie Bone. But if I could stick around for a second, I would almost certainly choose to take out Tsahar’s esteemed colleague, Cooper Moore. In addition to being a well-respected piano improvisationalist, Moore has designed and built an impressive number of strikingly original musical instruments. If there is one good way to play something that Coltrane couldn’t have thought up, it might be to play it on Moore’s horizontal hoe-handle harp. Moore’s mastery of his handcrafted axes produces music that is always captivating and, at times, quite beautiful. A mark of any great jazz instrumentalist is the development of an original sound; if you’ve heard Miles before, you’ll know that it is Miles when you hear him again. Although Cooper Moore has certainly taken a shortcut to uniqueness, his ability to apply such a vast array of new instruments to the world of new improvised music is certainly of great interest. But it is his ability to apply them so seamlessly that has taken him from the realm of mere curiosity and novelty act to true innovator.
A common criticism of jazz music, and of free jazz music in particular, is that it all sounds the same. On “Tells Untold,” this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The quiet interplay between Moore’s harp/flute and Tsahar’s bass clarinet on “Tribal Gathering,” the bizarre noisemaking of “Another World Another Time” and the funky bass licks of “Deviations” sound like they must have come from three different groups. So I can assure you that the track list is diverse. But what makes this record worth listening to is that it is not just eclectic, it is downright fantastic. The sounds Moore makes on an instrument I will dub “some awesome stringed creation” make “Tribal Gathering” one of the coolest little pieces of music I have stumbled upon, and Tsahar’s improvisational mastery is never better displayed than on “The Hunt.”
This recording also drives home the point of one of my constant rants: You simply cannot classify much of new improvised music. Although free jazz is a term I use for the sake of clarity, it simply does not apply to a work like “Tells Untold.”
Depending on where you start this disk, the recording might sound like ambient classical music (“Oracles”), smooth music for a Hollywood romance (“Forlorn”) or avant-garde swing music (“Tells Untold”).
Instead of making further classifications, I simply recommend that you start the disc. To have a listen, tune in to WSRN on Thursday night at six o’clock. If the music sparks your interest, check out The New York Underground Orchestra’s most recent date, “Fragments,” and keep May 23 open to see Moore play at The Slought Foundation.