Jeremiah Cymerman: Citadels & Sanctuaries

  Primarily a clarinetist, Jeremiah Cymerman also has a way with electronics. Witness his new solo effort, Citadels & Sanctuaries, with ten tracks dedicated to composers and performers who have been important to his development. It’s an interesting selection, largely devoted to modern classical composers including Toru Takemitsu, Alvin Lucier, and Morton Feldman, plus a few names that will be familiar to a listener coming to this album from the jazz side of things. Bill Smith played clarinet with Dave Brubeck in the Fifties, and went on to compose under the name William O. Smith. The composition dedicated to him, From the Metaphysical to the Transcendental, leads off the set with a smooth melodic line and orchestral sounding electronics. The piece’s hushed demeanor relaxes the listener, which makes the piercing electronics and wildly overblown clarinet of Spheres of Humanity (for Alvin Lucier) even more startling than it might be in another context. The strangeness continues with The Absolute and Its Tearing (for Horaţiu Rădulescu). Here it’s the clarinet jumping up into higher tones, complete with circular breathing techniques, while the electronic effects make me think of a pack of race cars in competition. Another dedicatee, clarinetist Tony Scott, started out with Benny Carter and Claude Thornhill in the Forties, then played with Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday and led his own bands in the Fifties. In 1964, he recorded Music For Zen Meditation for Verve, generally considered the first “new age” album, which is likely to be what he is most remembered for. Cymerman’s tribute to him, For As Long As Grass Grows, puts the clarinet at the calm center of swirling electronics. With the Old Breed, a joking title dedicated to the fierce modernist Nate Wooley, is the noisiest of the batch, with fearsome electronic textures that could be out of a monster movie soundtrack, coupled to a soothing organ tone that’s way down in the mix. Manifesto, written for the Romanian composer Iancu Dumitrescu, is curiously absorbing, with what sounds largely like tightly controlled and contoured feedback. I suppose that there’s some clarinet in there, but it’s hard to pick out from the mass of sound. For a minute of two, I swear I could have been listening to the Grateful Dead, circa 1969 (!). The finale, Conscious Faith, is for innovative saxophonist and instant composer Evan Parker. A slow-moving mass of bell-like tones, a quivering bass line, and washes of synthesized sound surround Cymerman’s processed clarinet. It concludes with everything fading out except for the ghostly notes at the very top of the clarinet’s range as the listener exits Cymerman’s very personal soundworld and goes back to the noises of everyday life. Citadels & Sanctuaries is a powerful collection, well worth investigation. 

5049 Records; Jeremiah Cymerman (cl, elec); Brooklyn, NY, November 2020; From the Metaphysical to the Transcendental (for Bill Smith)/ Spheres of Humanity (for Alvin Lucier)/ The Absolute and Its Tearing (for Horaţiu Rădulescu)/ Broken Language (For Morton Feldman)/ Between Always and Forever (for Toru Takemitsu)/ Knot of Breath (for Mario Diaz de Léon)/ For As Long As Grass Grows (for Tony Scott)/ With the Old Breed (for Nate Wooley)/ Manifesto (for Iancu Dumitrescu)/ Conscious Faith (for Evan Parker); 47:24. www.5049records.com