CD ECM Records Joe Maneri, Barre Phillips, Mat Maneri: Angles Of Repose

2004

Joe Maneri - clarinet, saxofon alto si tenor
Barre Phillips - contrabas
Mat Maneri - viola

The new impulses that the father-and-son team of Joe and Mat Maneri have brought to experimental jazz are increasingly acknowledged by their fellow musicians as amongst the most important developments in contemporary free playing. The Maneris’ improvised chamber music, as radical as it is graceful, brings the yearning passions of jazz and blues together with lessons learned from Schoenberg, microtonalism, and a dozen world music traditions. No other improviser has entered the Maneris’ idiosyncratic universe as persuasively as the great bassist Barre Phillips. Since their debut trio recording “Tales of Rohnlief”, Maneri/Phillips/Maneri have toured on both sides of the Atlantic, further refining their group understanding. “Angles of Repose”, co-produced by Phillips, captures the trio inside the ancient French chapel of Ste. Philomène, responding to the charged resonance of the church as well as to each other.

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Joe Maneri, the eccentric, free-improvising saxophonist and pianist continues his long partnership with his son, Mat, a violinist. It’s a relationship that has been deepened by the duo’s collaborations with that great American double-bass player, Barre Phillips. Phillips’ technique and ear allow him to adapt readily to the Maneris’ fondness for lurking in the dangerous territories between the notes in the traditional western scale. Mat Maneri often plays an electric violin, and is frequently tumultuously energetic with it, but he restricts himself to viola on this session, and the set is entirely acoustic. …
A conversation between uncompromising equals, full of demanding but absorbing detail.
The Guardian

Even the most organic music, in the hands of certain players, can take on a completely other-worldly tinge; somehow managing to feel both rooted in reality yet evocative of alien vistas. Reedman Joe Maneri has been exercising that neck of the woods over a fifty-year career that has seen him emerge as one of the progenitors of modern creative music. … There is much to appreciate in a group of improvisers who daringly mix a more extemporaneous nature with a style that emerges more directly from contemporary classical work. Angles of Repose represents one such ensemble; if you can put aside preconceptions, and open up to music as something more textural, more timbral, something to be felt as much as heard, then you’re most of the way there. …The exceptional dynamics and ambiences, which range from dense to spacious, make Angles of Repose a captivating listen for those who like their music to be free of boundaries and prepossession.
John Kelman, Jazz Views