Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Harris Eisenstadt: Canada Day

Harris Eisenstadt: Canada Day

By Clifford Allen
October 4, 2009
View read count

Drummer and composer

Harris Eisenstadt

drums

" data-original-title="" title="">Harris Eisenstadt has, at age 33, a rather lengthy discography and one that's incredibly diverse for a drummer who could have stuck to cutting teeth as an able sideman in contemporary improvisation. As a leader, his story is even more expansive, running the gamut from Senegalese Mbalax to free-bop. Canada Day is a "love letter" to his home country and to the mid '60s music of

Miles Davis

trumpet
1926 - 1991

" data-original-title="" title="">Miles Davis,

Wayne Shorter

saxophone
1933 - 2023

" data-original-title="" title="">Wayne Shorter and

Tony Williams

drums
1945 - 1997

" data-original-title="" title="">Tony Williams. Across a breadth of eight pieces, most of which reference travel, home and experience, the leader is joined by regular collaborators (trumpeter

Nate Wooley

trumpet
b.1974

" data-original-title="" title="">Nate Wooley and vibraphonist

Chris Dingman

vibraphone

" data-original-title="" title="">Chris Dingman) and new conscripts (tenor man Matt Bauder and bassist

Eivind Opsvik

bass

" data-original-title="" title="">Eivind Opsvik).

"Don't Gild the Lily" is both infectious and suspended, a woody vamp set in motion by Opsvik and Eisenstadt, carpeted by glassy mallet tones and cottony tenor slink. Dingman works the taut melody, chewing it in fragments before setting its intervals into a resonant cascade, while Bauder and Wooley provide dirty split-tone backing, using snatches of the noise vocabulary that both have acquainted themselves with through years of cross-genre experimentation. "Halifax" brings into focus a measured minimalism in its easy lope. Bauder's salty, quixotic inversions take the reins over fractured bass and drum set accompaniment, channeling Shorter and manipulating '-isms' through a screwy series of leaps. The rhythm players never cease their drive, for even as notions of conventional meter get disassembled, Opsvik's pliant groove and Eisenstadt's detailed jabs hold the pulse.

It's not too difficult to hear connections between Canada Day and Shorter's The All-Seeing Eye (Blue Note, 1965), which in 2007 the drummer re-imagined as a chamber suite. The themes coolly state and then reexamine the tropes of post-bop, nudging the music into areas of unresolved time, melody and freedom.

Learn more about our star rating system

Track Listing

Don't Gild the Lily; Halifax; After an Outdoor Bath; And When to Come Back; Keep Casting Rods; Kategeeper; Ups and Downs; Every Day is Canada Day.

Personnel

Harris Eisenstadt

drums

Harris Eisenstadt: drums; Nate Wooley: trumpet; Matt Bauder: tenor saxophone; Chris Dingman: vibraphone; Eivind Opsvik: bass.

Album information

Title: Canada Day | Year Released: 2009 | Record Label: Clean Feed Records

PREVIOUS / NEXT

Fred Frith: To Sail, To Sail, Pas de...
< Previous

He and She
Next >

Support All About Jazz

All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.