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Frank Lowe Duets Across Jazz History
by Joe Milazzo
January 2001
There's a strange and beautiful humility in Frank Lowe's music. On
Billy Bang's Valve No. 10 (Soul Note, 1987), the tenor saxophonist
takes a solo on John Coltrane's "Lonnie's Lament" whose form is never
smeared or obscured by the long shadow the composer has cast over
three subsequent generations of improvisers. It is a supremely moving,
soulful solo Lowe plays all the same, abstract yet lyrical, blunt
but nuanced in its slow articulation, and expressed with a timbre
that can be as dense and dark as cast iron, as tough as sinew and
still somehow breathy around the edges. Lowe is one of the great communicators
in improvised music, as anyone who has heard his Exotic Heartbreak
(Soul Note, 1981) can attest. Like any dedicated listener, Lowe sounds
as if he is engaged with his own awe at the forces music can unleash.
His playing often evokes the response: "Yes, he's one of us." Few
figures in the history of the music express the hard-won verities
of their experiences with the dignity, intelligence and passion that
Lowe can muster at his best.
 Three
new compact discs place this sensitive but unsentimental player in
duet settings. Far from being simply intimate, all three recordings
explore and explode the ramifications of inwardness. Short Tales
is Lowe's third recorded meeting with Algerian / French bassist Bernard
Santacruz—Latitude 44 (Bleu Regard, 1995); After the
Demon's Leaving (AA, 1996)—and the first made by both men
absent the company of the late master drummer Denis Charles. As the
title suggests, these pieces are almost parable-like in scope. Santacruz
is very much a bassist in the Wilbur Ware / Charlie Haden (not to
mention John Lindberg) tradition, with his own highly individual concept
of "walking" and "a groove". This is most apparent on a quietly stunning
version of Don Cherry's Old and New Dreams favorite "Mopti", which
achieves a pleasantly unorthodox swing. Santacruz's broad tone and
broad rhythmic gestures make for a stimulating contrast with Lowe's
own often complicated, starkly demarcated rubato strategies. Many
of the pieces here follow a common format, as the two players begin
with a unison statement, pursue their own paths of exposition, and
return to state a sympathetic denouement. Lowe probably reaches the
peak of his eloquence on Santacruz's jauntily melancholic "Walk in
Matosinhos", although the tenor saxophonist's own brief (57 seconds)
"Nothing but love" is a masterful example of melodic concentration,
communicating a profound emotional experience with the most circumscribed
of means. In fact, the performance could almost be heard as a trio
performance, with Lowe transforming his tenor into both a baritone
and a soprano in order to say what has to be said. Short Tales
is further evidence that Lowe continues to sharpen his considerable
abilities, and that, despite the size of his oeuvre, he has really
yet to repeat himself.
 Lowe
the composer is even better represented on another recording of miniatures,
Don't Punk Out; the discovery here of his heretofore unknown
"Inner Extremities Suite (for solo guitar?)" qualifies as a major
one. Recorded in 1977, this recording finds Lowe in the company of
a very young Eugene Chadbourne. The session's original producer, Martin
Davidson, has fleshed out the original release with previously unheard
solo performances by each participant, Chadbourne's from 1979, Lowe's
from this year. As a writer, Lowe is capable of loosely-jointed tunefulness
in the manner of Monk, Coleman and Lacy. The opening track here, "Composition
for David Murray" is so effective precisely because it is so candid
and song-like in ways the dedicatee rarely is in his own work. Don't
Punk Out is actually made a better listening experience by virtue
of its slightly clattery mix, as it helps to foreground Chadbourne's
contributions, most of which are made on an unamplified instrument.
His gnarled, bottleneck flourishes and jagged strumming on a reading
of Albert Ayler's "Ghosts" fall just short of complete and delightful
irreverence. "Ghosts" is a key track here, as Lowe requested its inclusion.
His interpretation juxtaposes licks that reference bop and hard bop
harmonies as well as tricks out of a rhythm-and-blues bag with Ayler's
essentially aharmonic rapidity of articulation. But even in the relatively
tight confines of a two-and-a-half minute free duet such as "At Reel's
End" (literally cut short by the tape's running out), Lowe and Chadbourne
map out some fairly expansive spaces. The events recounted in "Fright",
while hardly specific, are all the more uncanny for being so. Both
men resort often (if tastefully) to the spontaneous extraction of
non-tempered sounds from their instruments, and yet these performances
are remarkably uncluttered. This is cerebral, even at times "cool"
music, more experimental than Short Tales but also, at times,
more insecure. (Then again, even the friendliest of proximities can
be somehow awkward.)
 There's
nothing tentative about Duo Exchange, one of several re-issues
of sessions originally produced by drummer Rashied Ali for his Survival
label during the loft jazz, DYI heyday of the 1970's. Duo Exchange
dates from 1972 and reveals Frank Lowe still in the process of purging
the overt Coltrane-isms from his improvising. The two collectively
extemporized compositions here are not mere sequels to the cosmological
visions of Ali's 'other' saxophone-drums duet record, Coltrane's own
Interstellar Space. If anything, "Exchange Part 1" and "Exchange
Part 2" are less orchestral, less unrelenting, and less flowing than
the performances from that earlier record. The scale of Duo Exchange
is more human; though there are moments of anguish and triumph commensurate
with those on Interstellar Space, the context here is very,
very different. Of particular interest in these performances is just
how Lowe responds to Ali's virtuosity, his split-second ability to
free-associate shards of metric patterns and his kaleidoscopic sense
of percussive coloration. Lowe often lets go of his phrases such that
his notes somehow fall in those small open cells of silence in Ali's
otherwise overpowering detail. The more closely one listens, the more
it becomes obvious that Lowe is assembling a steady beat from the
wailing pull of his tenor sax against the coruscating push of Ali's
kit. In this setting, Lowe is the chorus—the rueful and wise
narrative agent—and Ali the flamboyant actor personifying the
tragically incongruous circumstances that befall the individual as
they follow the trajectory of hubris. It is clear even from this brief
recording (barely over half an hour in length) that Frank Lowe is
one of the most unique of "free" players, as his playing demonstrates
how deeply he comprehends the serious risks involved in his aesthetic.
Frank Lowe's art is a super-realistic one, because it is an art open
to life and life's endlessly proliferating decisions, each of which
is possessed of an integrity and gravity that is to be honored.
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