[ TAO16 ]


Jason Stein - bass clarinet
Joshua Abrams - bass
Gerald Cleaver - drums
Boon - guitar on 'Anchor'

With 'Anchors', Chicago-based bass clarinetist-composer Jason Stein arises from a six-year hiatus as bandleader with his most personal, nuanced, and expansive album to date. It was created together with bassist Joshua Abrams (Natural Information Society, of which Stein has been a member since 2017), drummer Gerald Cleaver (whose bona fides run deep & wide), and guest artist/co-producer Boon. 'Anchors' is a suite of great beauty and potency, moving from meditative calms to lyrical buoyancy to gripping intensity and again to a transformative peace found in unity.

=Liner Notes=

Anchors are, so often, symbolic of strength and stability. They reflect our capacity to steady ourselves in turbulent waters, allow- ing us to traverse the deepest seas. With anchors aboard, we can quell our fears, weather the storm, and chart forth. In all their looming weight, anchors allow us to be free.

Jason Stein’s latest release is a luminous tribute to anchors of his own. Here, he honors the practices that enable him to endure and embrace periods of change. Amidst the discomfort of transformation, he reaches into a reservoir of resilience, and invites us to do the same.

With Anchors, Stein emerges from a six-year hiatus as a bandleader to offer his most personal, nuanced, and expansive album yet. Lauded by peers and critics alike for his intrepid exploration of the bass clarinet’s full expressive range, Jason Stein has been an in- tegral part of the free and improvised music community for more than twenty years. His sound seamlessly modulates in form and style, shape-shifting with technical dexterity in swells of rich emotion. The notoriously difficult horn, so often tinkered and toyed with, finds itself in loyal hands.

For Stein, an unrelenting dedication to practice is a sacred pursuit in and of itself. In its repetition and struggle, he understands discipline to be a vessel for expansion. There’s a mentality, here, that’s inherited from the greats. Think Sonny Rollins, playing day after day over the roaring traffic of the Williamsburg Bridge. Seeking not to be heard, but to find something worth saying.

If discipline is an anchor in Stein’s life and musical practice, so too is his innate and insatiable curiosity. What a stroke of luck, then, that he should study under the prolific percussionist and polymath, Milford Graves. As a professor of music at Bennington College, Graves taught his students to reject the one-track mindedness and compartmentalization thrust upon them. He called for an integration of improvisation into every facet of life, fully aware that its teachings in adaptability, flexibility, and deep-listening could trans- form the world far beyond the confines of a sound booth or a stage. Graves stretched and disassembled the boundaries between disciplines, integrating music with the healing arts. In his wake, he left visionary legacies, both vast and varied.

Graves’ enigmatic example shaped Stein’s own path for years to come. When Stein confronted a perplexing injury that threatened to end his career, he realized his musical pursuits could not be divorced from a holistic corporeal practice. Rooted in Graves’ teach- ings, Stein explored a myriad of healing arts, adopting a series of disciplines along the way. Through the regular practice of cold-water plunges and breathwork, he discovered a newfound connection between his body and his instrument. Through the study of myofascial trigger point therapy, Stein was able to locate the source of his injury, and heal it. Decades after his first exploration in the field, Stein is now a licensed trigger point therapist himself, and the healing practices he adopted years ago remain anchors in his life to this day. For Stein, the boundaries between instrument and body continue to blur. Anchors, in many ways, confronts this innate, inevitable, and often fraught connection.

The album is derived from a series of thematic vignettes, blending traditional notation with conceptual composition. The trio explores and emulates each conceptual vignette, often quite literally. As their interpretations take shape, poetic landscapes emerge, both stark and blooming. Stein is joined by bassist Joshua Abrams and drummer Gerald Cleaver, two illustrious improvisers rooted as much in the jazz tradition as they are in contemporary experimental approaches. Abrams’ grounding in multifarious music traditions gives way to a visionary synthesis of styles, perhaps most apparent in his acclaimed ensemble Natural Information Society. Stein has recorded and toured with the group since 2017, and the unmistakable intuitive interplay between these long-time collaborators is a through line on Anchors. Gerald Cleaver, a defining stylist in the international jazz community, works here with Stein for the first time, shaping the record with a skillful prowess as impressive as his distinctive sound. Together, Abrams and Cleaver bring their inimitable sensitivity and discernment to Anchors, illuminating each composition with vivid depth and buoyancy.

The record begins with “Anchor I”, a duet between guitar and bass clarinet. The piece carries the listener in phrases that circle and swirl in waves, rhythmically unbound. By the record’s end, “Anchor II” settles into a sense of stillness – a peace found in unison. These meditations cultivate a sense of intimacy that permeates through- out the record, each an anchor of its own.

In “An Origin”, Stein considers the root of suffering. A single note pulses again and again, embodying the agony of chronic pain. Morphing only in timbre, it seems the note may never end. As the piece unfolds, overtones begin to distort the pitch, slowly breaking the note apart in an anguished search. Abrams’ somber, unnerving interlude buries the listener in a searing sense of hopelessness, begging the question, “What is the source of this pain?” Pain felt in one part of the body can originate, undetected, from another. In “An Origin”, Stein seeks its source.

In “Crystalline”, Stein contends with the destructive power of stagnation, a form of suffering so often self-imposed. Here, the conceptual composition calls on the trio to “consider the process of ice freezing as a proxy for relationships and development.” Throughout the piece, the band’s interpretation mirrors this metaphor, shaping sounds as delicate and jagged as the formation of ice. Abrams’ high arco and Stein’s altissimo flit amidst Cleaver’s shimmering symbols, light and unfettered. Slowly, an interlocking harmonic structure takes form, giving way to a clear, cutting geometry. Water molecules that once flowed freely slowly reconfigure, and lock into place.

As Stein descends into his final note in “Crystalline”, we feel the claustrophobia of ice forming around us, and the sinking sense that we are stuck. Low and ominous, he recedes, leaving Cleaver’s solo to echo across the desolate landscape left behind. Seemingly strong in their rigidity, the bonds between molecules are, in fact, more fragile, once reconfigured as ice. And isn’t this akin to our own faulty defenses? When we ignore our instincts, denying ourselves the very changes we need to evolve, our bodies retract. Restriction and stagnation fuel our own fragility. Better to be like water, then; too soft to break.

In response to these explorations of suffering, Stein introduces the listener to two centuries-old practices that cultivate alignment in his own life. “Cold Water” and “Holding Breath” explore these physical rituals of deprivation, which teach us to confront a painful truth - that discomfort is sometimes necessary for growth. When we endure a cessation of breath for minutes at a time, or immersion in cold water, our resilience is illuminated. Through an understanding of hormesis, we know that the body benefits from selective biological stress. As we learn to relax amidst unsettling deprivation, our brainwaves shift, altering our perceptions. From the doldrums, we break free.

“Cold Water” explodes in a chaotic, reeling burst. Frenetic and surging, splattered with shrieks and cries, Stein’s masterful use of multiphonics mimics the mind’s desperate attempts to find calm amidst the physical turmoil of a cold plunge. In “Holding Breath”, the bass clarinet’s strained spurts open into rich, rolling arpeggios, mirroring the dissipation of distress into a deep calm. Stein’s most experimental and non-idiomatic playing on the record gives way to a soaring sense of reconnection, as Abrams’ walk and Cleaver’s swinging stride emerge and hit their groove. Bound to breath and cold water, Stein finds a sense of arrival - an alignment all his own.

As we navigate our lives, seeking relief from our suffering, there are anchors we reach for, and those we stumble upon. “Boon” is an ode to the moments that give us new life when we find ourselves untethered. Here, rapid lines dance across the harmonic landscape, dreamy and daring, an embodiment of the freedom we experience when we are willing to embrace transformation. No matter our path, or the practices we keep, time transcends - the tides take their turns - and beauty permeates the world around us, unbothered. Stein’s incandescent compositions are an invitation to relish in the blessings of the universe, lift our anchors, and chart forth, heart in hand.

– Boon, Chicago, March 2024