Dennis González - The Great Bydgoszcz Concert

Tim Niland, Music and More

Recorded live during a tour of Poland, this group consists of Dennis Gonzalez on trumpet, accompanied by his sons Aaron Gonzalez on bass and Stefan Gonzalez on drums. Rodrigo Amado joins them on tenor saxophone. This group makes very exciting and consistently interesting modern jazz, rooted in the freedoms that Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy carved out for jazz musicians last century. “Crow Soul” opens the concert with Amado’s strong and stark tenor saxophone improvising over rolling and shifting drum work. Ornette Coleman’s “Happy House” is a free bopping performance the echoes the music of the first great Ornette Coleman quintet of the late 50’s and early 60’s. Horns play the choppy melody over a bed of hollow sounding bass and ever shifting drums. “Joining Pleasure With Useful” features slow building bass and trumpet playing patient and thoughtful. Amado joins the fray, playing in a restrained manner like a coiled snake waiting to strike. “Document for William Parker” has a fast collective start, with Amado’s tenor breaking out in an uptempo fashioned with trumpet riffing along. He builds to a great solo over hyper-nimble drumming and deep bass. There is a drum interlude with a purposeful and dynamic solo before the full band returns to conclude the song. The leader gets some much deserved solo space on “Dialeto da Desordem” and responds with a spitfire solo. The music on this album is boundless and open ended, aided immensely by the elastic bass and drum playing that stretches time and allows the musicians great freedom within the context of the song. It is a very exciting and worthwhile recording.