They are out there, in the distant corners of the jazz universe and they’re making albums like this. Lena Bloch is an (eventually) New York resident (via Russia and Israel) and the chances of coming across her work are quite slim so it’s always a joy to hear an album this good from someone you’ve never heard of before, (and in all likelihood, will never hear from again). It’s adventurous, immersive, rich and dense and deeply felt. A piece of work that tears at the heart. I suspect that it started as an intellectual exercise before the emotion and passion took over. The music is Bloch’s settings for poems by exiled Russian Marina Tsvetaeva who lived in Eastern Europe, and later Paris in those febrile decades between the wars and the societies she lived in and the surrounding political upheaval inform her work. Bloch has attempted to capture some of the flavour of those times in her music from the very start. She is not the first person to set Tsvetaeva’s poems to music, several classical composers, including Shostakovich, have also taken her on.
The fearsome opening of
plucked and bowed bass and wailing aerobatic voice immediately raises all sorts
of scares before the bass settles into something more elegant, but still
foreboding to support Kitamura’s dramatic reading of I refuse, a poem of defiance from 1939, explosive piano and roaring
tenor takes us to the outer limits where thunderous drums join in before it is
as if we have rolled down the mountains to the plains. Insomnia is much more subdued with sotto voce bass and drums and
floating soprano which capture both the despair of loss and ghostlike existence
of the insomniac. Marina opens with a
comically buoyant bass line before a piano/tenor stand-off becomes a duel and
Bloch takes off flirting with the higher register, swooping into long, questing
lines with Sacks’ piano providing percussive accompaniment. Such Tenderness is fragile and delicate,
the sparest of music, pulling in different directions, interjections between
the verses of a love poem filled with longing. Tired is the first piece that feels like a purer jazz and provides
some relief from the previous intensity, Even as it breaks down from something
that has the blues in its DNA to something freer and conflicting, there is
still a little reassuring familiarity.
Jack DeJohnette was on my
mind as I listened to the brief solo by Sarin that opens Immeasurable. Sacks and Filiano settle into a groove behind Bloch’s
plummeting sax, digging deeper as the piece breaks apart and Sacks follows her,
pushing further down the spiral before some Monkish piano, all jabs and darts
and blues runs, takes over. The closer, The
Time Will Come, is delivered, firstly, in the original Russian over more
discord and then a clearer reading in English; it’s a promise and a statement
of faith from Tsvetaeva that “For my poems, written so early,……A time will
come.” It’s an optimistic, possibly ironic, note to end on.
It’s an easy album to
have on in the background whilst partially distracted but it is a harder one to
listen to closely. The emotions are raw and uncomfortable at times, it is bold
and compelling; easy listening it isn’t. Bloch has served the poetry capturing
a very deep well of emotion. It has been difficult to identify the poems online
as Tsvetaeva sometimes wrote several poems with the same title and the poems
used for the album are Bloch’s translations, (some with abbreviated titles),
rather than versions that are more widely available on the web. A rewarding
experience, nonetheless.
Extra points for the Irina Dimitrenko’s ink paintings of Tsvetaeva on the cover. Dave Sayer
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