Dre Hocevar Collective Effervescence (Clean Feed, January 2016)
Percussionist, composer and improvisor Dre Hocevar is realizing individual approach to life and creation through research, practice and performance. He is interested in taking risks, experiencing new challenges and designing solutions that provoke and inspire.
Philip White electronics | Lester St.louis cello | Bram De Looze piano | Chris Pitsiokos saxophone | Dre Hocevar drums
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An important date in jazz history—one not found in most books on the
subject—is November 3rd, 1966. On that day German pianist Alexander Von
Schlippenbach assembled several of his countrymen, as well as a
Netherlander, Belgian and Pole, under the moniker Globe Unity Orchestra
(GUO), for the third edition of the Berliner Jazztagen. It was one of the
first equitable international collaborations in jazz; prior to this
Americans had come to Europe to lead pickup rhythm sections while the
occasional European worked as a guest in the States. Over the next five
decades, musicians from England, France, Canada, Italy and the U.S. would
be added to the GUO, fulfilling the promise of its name and purpose.
Fast-forward 48 years and three weeks to a 21st century Berlin (AKA
Brooklyn), where Slovenian drummer Dre Hocevar convened Belgian pianist
Bram De Looze and three Americans—cellist Lester St.louis, alto
saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos and signal processor Philip White—for his
third album. Not one of these players was alive back in 1966 but they are
a new generation carrying on a praiseworthy tradition.
Hocevar is a canny leader: substituting cello for upright bass opens up
the textural palette; electronics add industrial edge; Pitsiokos' absence
for the third and fourth compositions creates a chamber-like interlude
(White is also excused), making his return all the more impactful. Most
importantly, Hocevar leads himself, so to speak, deliberate with each
sound he produces, highly aware of his placement, never swapping ego for
equanimity. He can act like a second piano or be a conduit for the sounds
of nature.
Another aspect to Hocevar's leadership is his titling, increasingly a
lost art, along with the notion of album programming. Take the album name
Collective Effervescence. Rather than keying in on the emotional aspect of
the second word, Hocevar focuses on its physicality. Defined as "the
escape of gas from an aqueous solution and the foaming or fizzing that
results", the contributions of each player bubble up to the surface at
different rates and densities and then dissipate almost as quickly upon
contact with the air. This process—repeated, transmogrified, inverted
sometimes—creates fascinating tension across even the longest tracks. And
song titles such as "Interaction, Complexity, Affordances" and
"Imaginary_Synthesis Within Sublime Inside" are not pseudo-intellectual
throwaways but an attempt to codify highly abstract processes with words.
Hocevar's last album (his Clean Feed debut and tantalizingly designated
Coding of Evidentiality) also included De Looze and St.louis, Sam Pluta
adding electronics to one track. Yet it would be folly to consider
Collective Effervescence as merely a "follow-up". The use of electronics
within jazz and improvised music has developed exponentially in the new
millennium, such that each person behind the screen or above the knobs has
as much of a voice as traditional instrumentalists; thus White adds a
vastly different sheen than Pluta. And Pitsiokos brought more than his
magnificent coiff to the studio. While he probably had to clean some lung
fragments out of his alto after "Imaginary_Synthesis Within Sublime
Inside", he slithers through the underbrush of Hocevar's percussion on
opener "Unknown Unknowns".
After a piece for quartet, quintet, two trios and another quartet, the
album closes with two full quintet tracks. Though we can't be certain in
which order they were recorded, Hocevar, as with the rest of the session,
has been methodical in presenting the totality of his vision after giving
us oblique sightings. "1987's" refers to the year of his birth. He was 27
years and 4 months old when Collective Effervescence was made;
Schlippenbach was just over a year older in Berlin. Coincidence or
providence?
-Andrey Henkin
Editorial Director, The New York City Jazz Record
www.nycjazzrecord.com
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