Kind of dour: There is a particular, slate-grey stillness that settles over a room when a long-endured storm has finally spent its fury – a quietude born not of peace, exactly, but of exhaustion and lingering residue.
It is this precise, liminal atmosphere that envelops Mist, the exquisite final panel in the Mat Maneri Quartet’s sombre triptych for Sunnyside Records.
Where its predecessors, Dust and Ash, glimpsed the dense, opaque architecture of active mourning, this new offering delivers a suite of lighter elegies, measured out at a tempo so deliberately slow it feels almost sacramental.
Maneri was born in Brooklyn 56 years ago. The son of saxophonist Joe Maneri, Mat’s key albums include his landmark solo debut Trinity (2001), early foundational records with his father like Three Men Walking (1996), his trio work on So What (1998), and widely praised modern collaborations like Transylvanian Concert (2013) with Lucian Ban.
What’s here is deeply, unrepentantly elegiac music, yet beneath its muted surface lies a pale, luminous grace.
At the centre of this quiet congregation is Maneri’s viola, its microtonal drift carrying an ache and a fastidious tenderness so palpable it mimics a physical touch.
Flanked by Lucian Ban’s austere piano, John Hébert’s sombre bass, and Randy Peterson’s spectral drumming, the quartet does not seek to violently exorcise grief, but rather to map its fading contours, turning old sorrows into something weightless, melancholy and entirely necessary. Highlights include a spirited tribute to Paul Motian, and the final, questioning resolution of ‘Missed.’