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Review

Mosaic

Subterranea

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by Ian Mann

December 29, 2016

/ ALBUM

With its mix of jazz and classical elements and ambitious compositional ideas “Subterranea” represents an impressive and authoritative leadership début from vibraphonist and composer Ralph Wyld.

Mosaic

“Subterranea”

(Edition Records EDN1077)

Ralph Wyld is a highly gifted vibraphonist, percussionist, composer and educator based in London. He studied jazz at the Royal Academy of Music and has since become a well established figure on the capital’s jazz scene performing in a wide variety of bands and in a similarly broad range of musical contexts.

Wyld is also a trained orchestral percussionist and has played at the BBC Proms as well as touring internationally, including festival visits to China and Brazil, as principal percussionist with the National Youth Orchestra.

Wyld’s jazz credits include small group recordings with pianist Tim Richards and saxophonists Samuel Eagles and John Martin. He also appears on the album “Live at Cheltenham Jazz Festival” by the mighty Troykestra, the large ensemble constructed around the trio Troyka that drew heavily on Royal Academy personnel. Wyld also featured on “The Rochester Mass”, the most ambitious recording to date by the James Taylor Quartet, which saw JTQ augmented by a forty strong cathedral choir plus additional horns and percussion. 

The vibraphonist has been a key member of groups led by trumpeter and composer Yazz Ahmed and he also been part of the bands Klammer, led by pianist Rick Simpson, and Come Back Stronger led by drummer JJ Wheeler. He also forms part of the unusual drummer-less co-operative Pacha Yana with its distinctive vibes/violin/trombone/bass instrumental configuration.

In addition to the above activities, plus many more, Wyld is also the leader of his own group, the innovative sextet, Mosaic. The band is mainly comprised of former Royal Academy personnel and includes James Copus on trumpet and flugelhorn, Sam Rapley on clarinet and bass clarinet, Misha Mullov-Abbado on double bass and Scott Chapman at the drums. These young musicians are all in demand presences on the London jazz scene as prolific small group sidemen or as part of larger ensembles such as the Patchwork Jazz Orchestra. Mullov-Abbado is a bandleader in his own right and released “New Ansonia”, his début recording as a leader, on the Edition imprint in 2015.

However, other then the leader,  perhaps the most distinctive component of Mosaic is cellist Cecilia Bignall who previously collaborated with Wyld on a project celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland”. The project, featuring original music by Wyld and Bignall was premièred at the Daunt Books Literary Festival in 2015. 

As a writer Wyld was honoured with the Dankworth Prize for Jazz Composition in 2015, the same year in which he won the Kenny Wheeler Jazz Prize. It was the award of the Wheeler Prize that helped to finance the recording of “Subterranea” and it’s particularly appropriate that Wyld should acknowledge the late Wheeler as a particularly profound and significant influence on his music stating;
“Winning the Kenny Wheeler Prize, after having been so inspired his music, was a real honour , and the opportunity it gives me to release this record on Edition is incredibly exciting, not least because the label features so many artists I admire and look up to. “Subterranea” has allowed me to bring together some of my favourite musicians and breathe life into the music”.

I’ve been lucky enough to witness Wyld performing live on a number of occasions with the Samuel Eagles and Yazz Ahmed groups plus Troykestra and already know that he’s an exciting and highly accomplished vibraphone soloist with a complete mastery of the four mallet technique. He follows in the footsteps of Jim Hart and Empirical’s Lewis Wright, the two other outstanding British vibraphonists to have emerged in the 21st century and, indeed, it’s the slightly older Hart who has acted as a mentor to Wyld and who acts as the producer on “Subterranea”, working in conjunction with an exemplary engineering team featuring Oli Jacobs, Alex Bonney and Chris Lewis.

Prior to the release of “Subterranea” I was already familiar with Wyld’s considerable abilities as an instrumental soloist, so from a personal point of view it’s his skills as a composer that most impressed me here. Besides Wheeler Wyld also acknowledges the influences of such jazz composers as Gil Evans and Dave Holland as well as contemporary classicists such as Steve Reich, the late Steve Martland and Patrick Nunn.

The result is a music that embraces both jazz and classical influences, often complex and tightly structured (Mosaic is a particularly apposite group name), but still with scope for soloists like Copus, Rapley and Wyld himself to express themselves. The sextet format allows for a rich range of colours and textures and although the music is often deeply interwoven the chamber style discipline is balanced by episodes of vivid improvisation. Although not cited as a direct influence I was sometimes reminded of the music of Claudia Quintet, the ensemble led by New York based drummer and composer John Hollenbeck.

The opening track “White Horses” acknowledges the influences of both Reich and Martland with judicious nods of the head in the directions of Reich’s “City Life” and Martland’s “Horses of Instruction”. Wyld’s choice of title also alludes to an image of waves breaking and the music ebbs, flows and swells in a manner conducive with that vision. Reich’s fondness for tuned percussion is reflected in Wyld’s work on vibraphone but it’s Rapley who emerges as the first soloist with his sinuous clarinet followed by the leader’s vibes. Chapman’s nimble drumming ensures that the improvised sections have a vigour that contrasts well with the more disciplined, chamber style passages that bookend the piece. The influences may be readily apparent but Wyld shapes them into into something fresh and exciting that is very much his own. 

At over twelve minutes duration “Kaira Konko” is the album’s lengthiest track. The piece takes its name from a scout lodge in the Soma area of The Gambia and means “Hill of Peace”. Wyld explains that his objectives for the music were for it to reflect the contrast between the camp and its emphasis on community and refuge, and the harshness of everyday life in much of Africa. The piece begins in a gently reflective mood with the deep, wine rich tones of Bignall’s cello combining effectively with the ethereal shimmer of the composer’s vibes in a quietly sumptuous opening passage. In a piece divided into two clearly demarcated sections, ‘movements’, if you will, Wyld’s twinkling, arpeggiated vibes introduce the second part with clarinet, trumpet and bass subsequently joining to create a series of interlocking melodic and rhythmic patterns and motifs. The arrival of Chapman’s drums signal the emergence of Copus as a soloist, his fluent trumpet extemporisations gradually becoming more animated and forceful as the piece progresses. Wyld follows on vibes, his solo chartering a similar course as the music builds in intensity around him, before eventually fading away to facilitate the return of those gently percolating, interlocking group arpeggios.

“Interlude 1” is a piece of luminous beauty that shimmers on the horizon like a mirage. Wyld provides no explanation as to the inspirations behind this piece and I suspect that it may have been largely improvised. The melancholy sound of Bignall’s cello is prominent throughout and I would surmise that Wyld is also using a bow on his vibes to generate some of the other worldly sounds that permeate the piece. Mullov-Abbado may well be playing arco too, and the whole episode has a cinematic, noirish quality where atmosphere is key in the absence of any real rhythmic or harmonic movement. 

The title track is the piece that won Wyld the Dankworth Prize for Jazz Composition in the “small band” category. Intended to conjure up images of underground rivers and caves this is an appropriately episodic piece that develops gradually and organically and possesses a strong narrative arc. Richly textured it contains a fascinating array of sounds and features the hugely talented Mullov-Abbado as a soloist, this time playing pizzicato. He’s followed by Rapley’s gently probing clarinet and the leader’s flowing vibes as the music gathers momentum around him.

“Interlude II” is a second improvised episode, darker hued and more intense than the last with bowed sounds again predominating, primarily double bass and vibes I’d surmise.

The concept behind “Cryptogram” initially sounds pretty limiting with Wyld using the letters in his name to determine both the chords used in the piece and the pitches in the melodic line. The idea was instigated by the composer Patrick Nunn who has also completed a series of musical cryptograms. The music itself is more energetic and vibrant than one might expect, very tightly knit and bristling with energy but with space enough for an astonishingly agile bass clarinet solo from Rapley plus a further feature for Copus on trumpet. 

The closing “Reprise” brings together strands from several of the earlier compositions to create a brilliantly realised ensemble finale. There’s the enchanting interplay between vibes and cello, richly textured ensemble passages featuring brass, woodwind and strings and snatches of complex, tightly meshed group interplay.

With its mix of jazz and classical elements and ambitious compositional ideas “Subterranea” represents an impressive and authoritative leadership début from Wyld. The writing is consistently intriguing and the playing consistently excellent throughout. There’s little in the way of conventional jazz swing and it’s possible that some listeners may find it all a little bit too academic and bloodless. However I’m sure there are many more that will find it adventurous, intriguing and stimulating and the reviews thus far have been universally positive. I certainly enjoyed it and hope that Wyld be able to put a tour together in 2017 to present his music to the broader British jazz public. He’s a young musician and composer that deserves to be widely heard.     

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