released July 6, 2012

Riptide
Gerry Hemingway Quintet

Oscar Noriega - alto sax, clarinet, bass clarinet
Ellery Eskelin -tenor sax
Terrence McManus -guitars
Kermit Driscoll - acoustic bass & electric bass guitar
Gerry Hemingway - drums, harmonica

1. Sumna 8:47
2. Riptide 6:57
3. Gitar 12:51
4. At Anytime 9:30
5. Asamine 4:54
6. Holler Up 7:30
7. Meddle Music 4:38
8. Backabacka 8:20
9. Chicken Blood 4:32

Total Duration 68:02
All compositions by Gerry Hemingway© 2009 Nagual Music (GEMA/BMI)

Recorded December 5, 2009 Acoustic Music, Brooklyn, NY by Michael Brorby
Mixed, edited and produced by Gerry Hemingway
Mastered by Jim Hemingway
All Photos by Jordan Hemingway
Liner Notes by Brian Morton
Executive production by Trem Azul
Design by Travassos

Special Thanks to the current and previous members of the quintet who have all given generously to the process of developing this music, to Bänz Oester and his family who graciously housed and fed me during the brief hiatus when the majority of these works were composed and to my family who have supported my artistic aspirations.

Liner Notes:

Should you ever find yourself caught in a riptide you will not be pulled under. The water moves fastest at the surface, so those who panic and flail against it don't know how to negotiate its nature. All that has happened is that water is being pushed ashore by waves and wind. When it encounters a solid obstacle, it naturally moves sideways until it finds a break in a sandbar or a depression running out from the beachline, whereupon it rushes offshore again. I can bore you for hours about waves and their formation, cnoidals and sneakers, the Boussinesq approximation and the Ballantine scale. My grandfather was an engineer. He was also something of a scientific poet, capable of appreciating the beauty of such concepts but also a man who could perceive the order inscribed even in a stormy sea. I once came across him watching a wave move slowly up the Forth & Clyde canal. He scribbled down an equation in his notebook and walked on, calmly smiling, like Wordsworth the day he discovered daffodils.

It has been a useful apprenticeship for the appreciation of modern jazz and improvisation. I suspect many first time listeners find themselves like novice swimmers in a rip current, as a 'riptide' is scientifically known. They panic, they flail, they never go back in the water. The analogy isn't strained. Those who feel anxiety in the presence of contemporary music fail to what lies behind the apparent chaos. There is order. There are points of stillness in what looks like constant motion. Often, the greatest movement is at the surface.

I learned long ago that when Anthony Braxton's music started to pull at my legs and my understanding the thing to do was to listen to the other members of the great quartet. After a time, I learned to listen specifically to Gerry Hemingway. I learned about phrasing, and about the segmentary organization of Braxton's music. I learned about surface order and deep structure, and I came to recognize where and how the music had points of balance and change, philosophically still moments where the current stopped pulling and one was required to respond to something other than the familiar 'jazz' tropes of harmony and swing.

And there is such a moment here, on this marvelously mature recording by a Gerry Hemingway who has long since moved out of the 'rhythm section' - not that that is a subordinate role - and emerged as a fascinating and more important, evolving composer of contemporary music. Between the heterodox kwela of 'BackaBacka' and the start of 'Chicken Blood' there is almost a minute of silence. Hemingway intends it as a surprise but it also signifies his understanding that the other tracks are linked, almost like dance elements in a suite. Silence frames these pieces and the duration of silence between pieces is an aspect of music-making - and record-programming - long neglected even by sophisticated players and producers.

Chicken Blood' stands apart and stands out in other ways. Hemingway's use of multiple phrase lengths here in a way strikingly reminiscent of an earlier piece 'Junctures' on the first quintet record Outerbridge Crossing. Is this a personal signature? Is it a favorite 'device'? A 'style'? Not at all. In fact, it illustrates perfectly the way that Hemingway has effected a steady evolution in his work that takes him beyond a crudely graffitied 'style' For on 'Junctures' it is a device that very openly declares itself, while on 'Chicken Blood' it more subtly functions as the organizing principle of the piece, experienced only subliminally and after the fact.

'Outerbridge Crossing' (the title refers to a delicately engineered cantilever that links Perth Amboy. NJ, to Staten Island, NY) from 1985 is also a sharp reminder that Hemingway has stuck loyally to this instrumental format. “I have retained an instrumental relationship or thread between each incarnation of the quintet. In relation to the third generation of the group, which I retained for quite some time in the 90s, the chair that was [multi-reedist] Michael Moore is now occupied by Oscar Noriega, Wolter Wierbos and the trombone, with Ellery Eskelin, both tenor instruments, Ernst Reijseger and the cello with Terrence McManus on guitars, and Kermit Driscoll with both acoustic and electric basses. Part of the reason for keeping this economically impractical size group going is an affection for the compositions which have collected over the many years of this project, and a curiosity to explore it some more or not let it simply collect dust or worse. And that is partly why I revisited a couple of earlier pieces on this recording.”

“In the title track of this recording the intention with the horn parts is to change the more typical roles and have the two horns function kind of like rapid timbale accents over a continually shifting foundation (also counter melody) of bass and drums with the guitar given the linear exposition. I have experimented in previous quintets with similar orchestrations using horn parts in a drum-like way, also using repetitious sounding (but actually through-composed) material as a rhythmic backdrop to multiple layers of linear material.”

This is the kind of talk that frightens non-swimmers: through-composed? continuously shifting? multiple layers? These aren't qualities that a purist looks for in jazz. Hemingway's music and playing have never been single-aspect pursuits of novelty but rather the steady unfolding of a central profound idea, articulated as a player on what looks like a simple, 60's retro kit, but with growing complexity, layers and levels of contrary motion. However, reassuringly, it all in some sense comes back to rhythm and the dance.

“There is also the kwella thread, not that any of these South African oriented pieces are intended as authentic kwellas, just that they reflect one of my magnetic source points as a listener and composer, one that never seems to lose its relevance and/or place in a program of my quintet works'.
Hemingway often refers to records as 'productions'. In the past, and largely for economic reasons, the quintet recordings were culled from live performance. That is not to say that they sounded like on-the-fly snapshots of a band in motion and on tour, but they did have a documentary immediacy that is less in evidence on this patient and virtuosically­ detailed production, the result of more than 100 hours in the studio, adjusting and positioning the music so that this mobile- and elemental-sounding title actually disguises a highly polished artefact.

It is a temptation and vice of music critics and the writers of liner-notes that sometimes metaphoric parsing of titles takes the place of real musical observation. Hemingway concedes that many of his titles have no literal meaning but are simply phonemes ('Sumna', 'Asamine') that catch something of how a piece of music sounds. Sometimes, though, there are more personal associations, and it's worth affirming them lest anyone hears this music as concerned merely with abstract forces. My grandfather thought there is a morality in mathematical discipline and a higher morality in the underlying patterns of nature. He linked it invariably to mortality. Hemingway had a similar epiphany when his father-in-law was stricken with a final illness. It is the epiphany that lies behind 'At Anytime'. “It came to me in an almost complete form as I pulled into the parking lot of a hospital. I was in a very particular state of awareness -hopefully we all experience it at some point - where I was keenly aware of how fickle this whole proposition of being on the planet is. l mean this in a very emotional way, that the structure we construct out of our families and significant life experiences that help us navigate the planet, make it real and "stable" is ultimately quite temporary and not so real at all in many ways, were here and then were not. So I was just appreciating this moment and the whimsy of it all got expressed in this theme.”

There is something of the same philosophical mode in Riptide itself. “Partly this title expresses the contrary motions, speeds and layers of action in the thematic material and the general energy and intensity of what a riptide feels like when you're hopefully surviving it as a swimmer, it is a test of one's capacity to remain cool in a potentially life threatening situation.” Being caught up in Riptide both is and is like being caught in a rip current. It has much of that heady excitement that comes not from being out of control but being controlled by a force you don't immediately understand. It is always a counter-intuitive moment, and one's proper reaction to it is counter-intuitive. Even if you have never previously heard Gerry Hemingway's music, even if it sounds at first unfamiliar or lacking in the usual reference points, do not flail or panic, don't attempt to fight its pull and swim inshore. Instead, surrender in full consciousness to its directional flow. You will come back to land. But changed.

Brian Morton 2012