There is a certain poise about this release. I was expecting it to be far more avant garde, whatever exactly that means. It isn’t although there are passages that verge on that direction. But it operates in a space which is certainly modernistic, in its dour, floating textures and a language that draws more on minor tonalities, unfinished sentences and a blueness.
Higher and higher – the Elevation approach continues to be convincing: Lucian Ban (piano), John Hébert (bass), Abraham Burton (tenor sax), Eric McPherson (drums)
Romanian pianist and composer Lucian Ban, 57, moved to New York in 1999 to study at The New School, immersing himself in the city’s jazz and wider creative communities. He formed Elevation with New York saxophonist Abraham Burton in 2006 as a vehicle for his compositions, bringing together his European musical heritage and experience of the city’s jazz scene. The quartet has since become a long-running vehicle for Ban’s music, with bassist John Hébert and drummer Eric McPherson completing the current line-up. Alongside Elevation, Ban’s work has ranged across jazz, contemporary classical music, European folk traditions and free improvisation, with collaborations including Mat Maneri, John Surman, Alex Harding and Evan Parker.
Elevation’s recorded history includes Mystery (Sunnyside, 2013), recorded live at Cornelia Street Cafe, and Songs From Afar (Sunnyside, 2016), which brought Romanian folkloric influences further into the group’s sound.
Back in the day: In the video Elevation – Lucian Ban (piano), Abraham Burton (tenor sax), John Hébert (bass) and Eric McPherson (drums) play the powerful ‘Farewell’ which was on their album Songs from Afar issued a decade ago.
The overt Romanian element here is found on ‘Golden Oriole’ featuring the ancient sounding folk vocals of Gavril Tarmure that work very movingly indeed.
Ban and Burton have also recorded as a duo on Blacksalt (Sunnyside, 2021), and the real dynamo of interest on this latest is certainly to be found in the core rapport of piano and sax. I kept thinking of Coltrane and McCoy Tyner in mood if not completely style.
Ban’s interest in reinterpreting the music of Romanian composer George Enescu has produced Enesco Re-Imagined (Sunnyside, 2010) and Oedipe Redux (Sunnyside, 2023).
This new album just issued was recorded in August 2024 and includes compositions dedicated to Abdullah Ibrahim, Andrew Hill, Larry Willis and Billy Strayhorn.
It is a recording that connects the pianist’s Romanian background with the history and continuing possibilities of New York jazz without making either side feel like a separate point of reference.
Ban certainly develops his ideas fully. On the Hill piece ‘Serenade for Andrew’, the improvisation goes deeper once the theme has been stated, opening out gradually rather than simply moving into a conventional soloing sequence. It is far more serene than I remember Hill sounding when I heard him live towards the end of his life, at a festival in Finland with musicians like trumpeter Byron Wallen in his band, as if Ban has gently ironed out some of the abstractions that could emerge more obliquely in Hill’s playing without in any way cheapening the effect. Burton’s very fine, spiritualised saxophone playing adds further to this complexion of rhapsody and artistic exposure at this portion of the album.
There is a vulnerability too on ‘Cristina’s Hope’, a tune also worth hearing on Ban’s album Ways of Disappearing (above) where it is a bit more gospelly soulful. Here the feeling is more exposed, with the melody given room to breathe and the improvisation retaining a sense of fragility rather than pushing towards resolution. It is one of those pieces where Ban’s restraint becomes part of the expression, allowing the emotional weight to accumulate without overstating it.
It isn’t all dreamy and melancholic. There is a punchiness to the title track, ‘Rush’, while ‘Congestion Tax’ brings out the more experimental, avant garde side, full of darting clusters and cross-patterns.
I’d pick out ‘Chakra’ too for its Coltranian solemnity. Ban has recorded the piece before with Alex Harding, and hearing it again here suggests a composition with enough depth to accommodate different readings rather than simply being revisited. Neglecting Ban should be banned! Because a remarkable artist proves himself yet again in so many disparate ways with this fine set of musicians.
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