The title of this recording is apt. Saxophonist Dave Rempis, vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, bassist Joshua Abrams, and drummer Tyler Damon sustain direction and momentum throughout its three lengthy tracks, which are excerpted from a concert that transpired on August 31, 2023 at Elastic Arts in Chicago. But it could just as easily be called Cusp, since it captures the precise moment when the quartet’s leader transitioned from one career phase characterized by intense community engagement to another that will focus upon articulating a mode of improvisational music-making that’s taken decades to develop.
Besides his dogged work as a musician and label proprietor, Rempis is an indefatigable organizer. He’s had a strong hand in the production end of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival and Pitchfork before that, and for 21 years he ran a weekly concert series presenting improvised music for the Elastic Arts Foundation. The latter affiliation came to an end the night that this music was played, when Rempis booked himself to play the final concert of his tenure with Elastic Arts. It fell on the same weekend as the Chicago Jazz Festival, which has often been an occasion when he would choose to play with one of his more enduring ensembles in some smaller venue after the main festival closes for the night. But this time he picked a new combo, albeit one with deep roots. Rempis, Adasiewicz, and Abrams are part of a cohort that came onto Chicago’s jazz scene in the 1990s, and they’ve been appearing on records together in varying combinations for nearly two decades. Damon and Rempis have been frequent collaborators since 2017, when their trio Kuzu (with Tashi Dorji) was first born on Elastic’s stage.
This web of associations is key to the character of the music on Propulsion. Everyone here understands what Rempis is after, and knows how to make it happen. The essence of his aesthetic is a convergence of the micro and macro. He’s committed to total improvisation. The music is made in the moment that is played, and the selection of personnel is his chief compositional decision. But that’s still very much a compositional act, since Rempis wants his improvisations to develop cohesive forms shaped by the imagination of every contributor. Even an unaccompanied passage, such as the incandescent, circular breathing-fueled four-minute line drawn by Rempis’ alto that opens “Egression,” is simply part of a larger, collectively conceived work. While his keening instrumental voice pushes forward, a calmer vibraphone melody wreathes it, and a seething maelstrom of bowed bass and Sisyphean drumming first fuels the progress and then resolves it as the music gently lands night quite fourteen minutes later.
Music like this doesn’t work unless all parties involved are tuned into each other from moment to moment. But it also requires musicians with sufficient recall where the music has recently been to make contributions that make sense as part of a larger developmental arc. While nothing quite matches the experience of being present when such music is being willed into existence, Propulsion comes close enough to deliver the feeling as well of the sound of committed co-creation.
