Take Five: Carvings, Commandments

A bracing new single from Mary Halvorson, and four more bangers.

Mary Halvorson’s Amaryllis, putting in the work. (Courtesy of the artist)

Hello there! I hope you had a restful weekend. In my household, we just enjoyed spring break — no travel, just a lot of cooking, a few movie nights, fellowship with a visiting family member. So now it’s about catching up and charging ahead.

Take Five is my periodic roundup of recommended listening, one track at a time (but usually within the context of a new or forthcoming album). This feature is now a special for paid subscribers, but I’m including the lead item above the break today for everyone to enjoy. First, a few notes:

• Requiescat in Pace, Pope Francis. Because of where he came from and how he represented it to the world, my morning soundtrack was Albores, an album by the wonderful bandoneon master Dino Saluzzi (who, like the late pontiff, was born in Argentina of Italian descent, inheriting a deep feeling for tango). This album was released in 2020, and it opens with a heartfelt elegy for a friend.

• The Jazz Journalists Association has posted nominees for its 2025 JJA Awards. I’m honored to be even in the conversation for a Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism. And I’m thrilled that The Gig is up for “Blog of the Year” — a nod that has everything to do with the community we’ve built here. Thanks for reading, subscribing, spreading the word. And congrats to my fellow nominees!

• I hope you’re aware of the Japanese edition of Playing Changes. The publisher, ele-king Books, has posted Part 1 of a lively conversation I had over Zoom with music critic Narushi Hosoda and master translator Mariko Sakamoto. The interview has been translated into Japanese. 楽しんでいただければ幸いです!

• Last week the drummer, sound philosopher and activist

  Damon Krukowski
  joined a number of colleagues in testifying before the NYC City Council on behalf of the Living Wage for Musicians Act. He has posted his testimony to Substack, and I strongly encourage giving it a read. (Did you know that Krukowski is the son of jazz singer Nancy Harrow? Somehow I didn’t!)

Take Five: Carvings, Commandments

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Mary Halvorson, “Carved From”

A couple of weeks ago, we got welcome news of a new studio album from the ever-intrepid guitarist Mary Halvorson. About Ghosts is due out on Nonesuch on June 13, and will mark the third release by her Amaryllis band. The only advance music I’ve heard is a single, “Carved From,” but it’s enough to indicate both a glowing continuity and the exhilaration of a leap into fresh terrain. A video released with the single features animation by Robert Edridge-Waks, building on DM Stith’s album-cover art. (The colors remind me of the Easter eggs we dyed over the weekend.)

Halvorson is fond of fanfares, and “Carved From” begins accordingly. The Amaryllis front line, comprising trumpeter Adam O’Farrill and trombonist Jacob Garchik, is further upholstered by two guest saxophonists, Brian Settles and Immanuel Wilkins. The rest of the band — Halvorson, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, bassist Nick Dunston, drummer Tomas Fujiwara — kicks into a tumble-dry cycle, riding the forward edge of a polyrhythmic triple meter.

Halvorson lays into her improvisation with a familiar meld of hard plectrum attack and shrewd, warping decay. Wilkins follows with an alto solo whose bristling tensions are more a matter of intervallic line. The adventure wraps up with another figure for the horns, underscored by a sparkly timbre you might not place: a Pocket Piano by the artisanal synth designers Critter & Guitari. “I was trying to find an additional layer to build into the compositions, the whole time being like, ‘I’ll throw it out if I don’t like it,’” Halvorson says in a press note. “But John Dieterich, who mixed the record, incorporated the synth perfectly. It felt like a subtle layer had settled there, which could almost escape one’s notice. Sort of like the ghost member of the band.”

The track list for About Ghosts includes several other tunes — “Eventidal,” “Amaranthine,” “Absinthian,” “Polyhedral” — that I heard Amaryllis play at Solar Myth last year. In my review of that show for The Gig, I remarked on the striking equipoise that Halvorson extracted from these wobbly Jenga towers. “There’s an inherent comic edge to the off-kilter adroitness of her orchestration,” I wrote, “and a feeling of wild abandon that camouflages the pipette precision of an alchemist.” I can’t wait to spend more time in this sound world — when About Ghosts drops, and when Amaryllis returns to Solar Myth as part of a September tour.