Marilyn Crispell

One of the CDs I picked up on my recent (well, not so recent anymore) binge was Marilyn Crispell's Vignettes. Crispell, apparently, was a protegée of Cecil Taylor, and played for many years with Anthony Braxton, but since those people represent the one corner of jazz that I feel like I will never have the mental cojones to explore, I first stumbled upon Crispell's music through her Amaryllis, which she recorded for ECM in 2001 with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian. I picked it up on a whim, but it proved to be one of those transforming experiences where every note was close to magic. It has remained a favorite ever since. I missed the intervening Storyteller, another trio date, but when I heard about Vignettes, her first unaccompanied record ever, I believe, I had to check it out.

Like Amaryllis, Vignettes is a mixture of completely free improvisations and compositions, or at least something resembling compositions. The free improvs are short pieces named “Vignette I” through “Vignette VII,” sprinkled throughout the disc in twos and threes. They have no melodic or rhythmic structure at all. Clusters of notes, some dense, some sparse, they speak in an intensely private language that I suspect would lose even the most ardent fan of musical chaos. I have not heard Crispell's playing with Braxton, but based on what I know of the Free Jazz movement in general, the “Vignette” pieces are Crispell's most direct link to her past with the likes of Braxton and Taylor.

The compositions are titled more conventionally, are longer in duration, and, to my ears, absolutely sublime. Most are Crispell's own, though two -- “Cuida Tu Espiritu” and “Stilleweg” are credited to other composers, neither of whom I know. I use the term “composition” somewhat loosely here – there is still plenty of improvisation – but there is distinctive melodic material on all of these tracks, not so much in a head-solo-head format, but recurring throughout each piece, usually altered, inverted or displaced, but almost always recognizable.

Emotionally, the unifying factor for the “conventional” works on the album is probably a sense of inner peace in Crispell's playing. The tempos here, as on Amaryllis, are predominantly slow, sometimes exceedingly so, but the former record was full of tension and urgency despite this, while Vignettes is far more relaxed, with Crispell sounding like she is in far more harmony with whatever is going on in her head than she was seven years ago.

This is the kind of record for which the random access of a CD player (or, these days, an iPod I suppose) is essential – once you program out the Vignettes, Vignettes becomes a masterpiece.