Dave Burrell

Author: Lyn Horton
Source: JazzReview

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Dave Burrell manages brilliantly to convey his concept of tempo on his new release, Momentum, on High Two. It takes about two seconds to realize that what is going on here is how well his partners can keep up with Burrell’s chart, not in terms of speed, but in terms of change.  Michael Formanek on bass and Guillermo E. Brown on drums fall beautifully into place.

Delicate is not a word I would use to describe Burrell’s music. Nor is the music heavy. It is powerfully melancholic yet charged with commitment and classical gestures of jazz. Burrell’s hands are the timekeepers and the melody makers. The bass and the drums ornament and emphasize the backbone that Burrell provides. When Burrell takes off into a tune, Formanek and Brown can lift up the tune to support it. Formanek’s pizzicato is dry and deep and Brown’s drums stay light and spry. The two musicians move up and down, forward and back and in and out of the ever changing mainline sound waves.

Burrell’s songs settle into places that are comfortable. There is very little distortion as to where he wants to go. The mystery of the unfolding is nothing less than arresting. He can be playing completely in synch with the bass and drums, in total dissonant counterpoint to them, at half the count or offering a call to elicit a response.

Composition seems to supersede improvisation in the recording. The compositions are replete with Burrell’s incredible touch. If you have ever seen Burrell perform, you know that his fingers are incredibly long, lithe and handle transitions with ease. Clicked out tunes on the high end of the keyboard can move quickly without trial into chordal structures in the bass keys. His hands alter expected roles of positioning on the keyboard.

The beginning and end to any single song are crystal clear. They define the choice of limits for the steadfast focus of a piano master. The memory of how Burrell speaks through his instrument is indelible. The pleasurable memory of Momentum is inescapable.

Author: Nate Dorward
Source: Exclaim

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Dave Burrell’s first disc for High Two was Expansion, featuring the Full Blown Trio, his group with William Parker and Andrew Cyrille; the music ran the gamut from sonic abstraction to Irving Berlin nostalgia. His new disc, Momentum, is credited to the DB3, a new trio based on the rhythm section of bassist Michael Formanek and David S. Ware-associated drummer Guillermo E. Brown. The sound is more groove-based than on the earlier album, drawing together dark, stealthy swing and battered free-funk to create sticky webs of three-way interplay. A reprise of “Coup D’Etat” from the earlier album provides a useful point of comparison, the new version strutting along insouciantly in the manner of Don Pullen’s latter-day classic “Random Thoughts.” Momentum connects the dots between the trancelike post-bop of Mal Waldron, Thirsty Ear’s hip-hop-meets-jazz experiments and the perverse grandeur of Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks (several tracks here were written to accompany a silent film by African-American director Oscar Micheaux). Burrell remains one of jazz’s true originals, capable of beguiling you with a sprightly passage of stride piano before knocking you over with a keyboard-pummelling washout. And while Momentum may be one of his less fiery outings, its dark intensity still puts virtually every contemporary jazz piano recording in the shade.

How did the DB3 come about?
I first heard Guillermo with his group Beat Kids; they were using a computer and a poet and it was very hip-hop-oriented. Then I played with him in William Parker’s Curtis Mayfield Project and I heard another side of him. I was introduced to Michael at An Die Musik by a friend and we started working in Philly doing duets.

How did you become interested in mixing free playing and earlier kinds of jazz?
When I moved to New York in 1965 all the gigs I was handed were avant-garde gigs, but the Archie Shepp groups, for example, were quoting Ellington. And I always felt that I needed more bebop/post-bop knowledge. Over the next 20 years I kept learning pieces, sometimes out of curiosity, other times because they were assigned to me. I was on the NPR Jelly Roll Morton centennial with Dick Hyman and Wynton Marsalis; I realised afterwards it had changed my feeling and technique for the better and I wanted to really get those pieces mastered. I like to mix things up; if I have to be screaming all the time it becomes very unpleasant. As I’ve aged I’ve found it a lot easier to see the music as one. Even popular music like hip-hop — the improvisational process is one and the same.

Author:  Derek Taylor
Source: Bagatellen
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For a veteran with four decades of musical service, Dave Burrell’s discography remains incommensurately small. The High Two label has made strides (pun intended) to rectify the situation, starting in 2004 with Expansion, a trio date that teamed the pianist with the prodigious talents of William Parker and Andrew Cyrille. The public picked up on the album’s pervasive merits and it made more than a few year-end lists as a result. For the follow-up, Burrell makes some key personnel alterations that at first suggest possible steps backwards, but swiftly reveal themselves as sound choices.

Momentum seems a somewhat incongruous title for the set. Most of the disc’s tracks are decidedly dark in mood and slow to build. Only occasionally does Burrell break into a keyboard sprint, preferring instead to let the tunes spool out in stuttery meters that sometimes slow to a crawl. “Downfall” deploys with the inexorable tension of a tightly wound tourniquet, a repeating piano riff riding a series of Shaft-style syncopations from Guillermo E. Brown. “Broken Promise” is even more fractured and ominous, Brown’s brushes caressing skins as Burrell shapes sparse chords that sharpen into teeth-chattering clusters by the end. Here and on the menacing title track the influence of Blue Note-era Andrew Hill is prominent, Michael Formanek’s spidery pizzicato thrums echoing vintage Richard Davis in execution. The dour arco strains that open the dramatic “Fade to Black” let in little tonal light, complementing Burrell’s downcast patterns and Brown’s staccato press rolls before opening up into a loping march in the second half. “4:30 to Atlanta” pantomimes the piston-churning speed of an interstate express train with Brown showing off an energetic rock side and Burrell making artful use of space and silence.

Formanek is better equipped than his predecessor Parker when it comes to the linear swing side of Burrell’s playing as the creeping blues “Cool Reception” attests. He can create an explicit walking pace just as adeptly as a free-floating pulse. That inside/outside ambidextrousness coupled with a stout, string-snapping tone gives the trio just the sort of variable-purpose anchor it needs. Brown was the chief question mark for me prior to spinning the disc. I worried that he would bring the same sort of heavy-handedness present on certain of his forays with David S. Ware, but his varied stickplay and sensitive touch largely allayed my concerns. As with Expansion, there’s a unified feel to the set and the tracks progress from overcast gloom to almost an almost optimistic countenance on the closing new version of “Coup d’Etat”, itself perhaps a bit of musical palmistry presaging the recent electoral reversal. At just under three-quarters of an hour it’s also a welcome exercise in economy, one that makes repeat spins all the more remunerative.

Posted by derek on November 11, 2006 12:19 PM

Author: troy Collins
Source: All About Jazz Published: November 07, 2006
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For the first time in almost thirty years, pianist Dave Burrell returned to the studio to record as a leader with William Parker and Andrew Cyrille on 2004’s Expansion (High Two). Momentum features Burrell recording for the first time with bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Guillermo E. Brown, continuing to explore the classic piano trio format. With this new blood, Burrell hones in on the jazz tradition with intensity and focus, delivering one of the finest statements of his career.Burrell explores a variety of moods from introspective to assertive on six new compositions, half of which (“Downfall,” “4:30 to Atlanta,” “Broken Promise”) were composed to accompany Oscar Micheaux’s 1925 silent film, Body and Soul, and a sublime new arrangement of “Coup d’Etat.” Many of Burrell’s recent pieces are inspired by the current tempestuous political climate, providing the session with an undercurrent of bluesy melancholy and dramatic tension.

Burrell is in fantastic form, his playing assured and resolute, his focus and commitment to the tunes palpable. He launches splintery fragments over the lumbering, deconstructed funk groove of “Downfall” with impetuous nerve. Conversely, his tender, regal touch on “Fade to Black” is delivered with conviction and restraint, almost neo-classical in its austerity and grace.

The title track finds him boisterous and exploratory, expelling cascades of fleeting notes and crushing block chords as Formanek and Brown accent his labyrinthine excursions. The closing cut, “Coup d’Etat,” reprised from Expansion, swings leisurely at first, and then shifts tempos as Burrell casually navigates the changes.

Perfectly suited to Burrell’s open-ended aesthetic, Formanek and Brown accompany him with elastic timing and a malleable compromise between structure and freedom. Modulating with endless variation through individual song forms, they maintain edgy forward momentum without losing track of the individual tunes’ framework.

Burrell is a magnanimous leader, allowing his able-bodied sidemen equal time in the spotlight. Formanek delivers a striking bowed bass solo on the opening of “Fade to Black” and plucks sultry, lyrical statements throughout “Cool Reception.” Brown introduces “4:30 to Atlanta” with a roiling and turbulent drum solo, subtly accompanied by Burrell’s muted chords and Formanek’s slippery bass work.

Momentum is a mature and haunting album from an acknowledged master—and a definitive statement from an underappreciated legend.

Dave Burrell at All About Jazz.
Visit Dave Burrell on the web.
Track listing: Downfall; Broken Promise; Fade to Black; 4:30 to Atlanta; Cool Reception; Momentum; Coup d’Etat.

Personnel: Dave Burrell: piano, Michael Formanek: bass; Guillermo E. Brown: drums.

Style: Modern Jazz

Author: Brent Burton
Source: Jazz Times Jan/Feb 2007

“Momentum, shows that Burrell’s art, unlike his reputation, is anything but tethered to the past.”

Author: Byron Coley
Source: Harp

Dave Burrell’s genius as an improviser lies in his talent to obliterate conventions and stylistic gulfs that would swallow most people whole. On this new disc, he creates bridges using blocked chords and solid filigree. Beginning with big clumps over Guillermo Brown’s shockingly cut-’n’-paste drums, through the gentrified tango of the title track, Burrell’s fully on his game here. He successfully interpolates great gobs of jazz history without getting overly preachy.

First printed in Jan/Feb 2007

Author: L. Pounds
SourceL Earshot! Dec 2004

“Expansion is an outstanding jazz collage of pounding raw piano chord chunks, beautiful sprinting tonal lines, calculated piano flitter meanderings, bottom-end rumbling disjointed-walking jazz bass lines and expressionist/explorative drum work.”

Author: Ben Watson
Source: The Wire August 2004

“Burrell’s take on jazz tradition is intelligent and wilful, refusing the categories thrust on it by outsiders… This is the record to bring Burrell to the attention of all listeners who crave the unmistakable thump of authenticity.”

Author: Francis Davis
Source: Village Voice – Tuesday, December 21st 2004