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Joe Fonda: New Origin

By Mike Jurkovic
June 11, 2019
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On New Origin veteran bassist

Joe Fonda

bass
b.1954

" data-original-title="" title="">Joe Fonda and drummer

Harvey Sorgen

drums

" data-original-title="" title="">Harvey Sorgen—(

Ahmad Jamal

piano
1930 - 2023

" data-original-title="" title="">Ahmad Jamal, Dewy Redman) boldly return to the passion that forged Dreamstruck (Not Two, 2018), their unstoppable trio excursion with

" data-original-title="" title="">Marilyn Crispell.

Sworn architects of reverberant depth and the collective accord separating us from AI, the vets team this time with the equally free thinking European clarinetist Christophe Rocher —

Paul Rogers

bass

" data-original-title="" title="">Paul Rogers,

John Stevens

drums
b.1940

" data-original-title="" title="">John Stevens—to unravel the Gordian Knot presented by the music of New Origin. "Read This," one of four Fonda originals that give the term inside-out new meaning, arrives with a stumble-step rumble, Rocher venturously claiming his space within the ever-veering Fonda/Sorgen flight path.

"African Roll Mops" (the second of six trio composition/improvs) is a four minute selfie of how perceptively and nervy these guys turn on a dime. With a flurry of rhythmic clatter and staccato lines and squeals from Rocher, the tune becomes a shamanic, purely primal snake dance engine. Rocher's "Berceuse (Lullabye)" with its sinister elastic curlicues, wouldn't lull anyone gently off to sleep and when, forty seconds before the piece culminates, the clarinetist begins a series of creepy, breathy crinkles that climb the spine, why would you?

Fonda, it can be argued, is the catalytic, free jazz heart of New Origin, and his fierce bowing launches "For Perry" (American clarinetist

Perry Robinson

clarinet
1938 - 2018

" data-original-title="" title="">Perry Robinson to whom the disc is dedicated) while Rocher skronks with tenor sax fever.

Ornette Coleman

saxophone, alto
1930 - 2015

" data-original-title="" title="">Ornette Coleman's "Broken Shadows" receives an ominous imagining. The highly structured shuffle "ZCSNY" (that finds Fonda extrapolating from Howling Wolf's "Spoonful") is a delicious push and pull inspiring some of Rocher's most vibrant lines.

Rocher's elephantine blasts, Sorgen's thunder, Fonda's foundational darkness, and the music's animated tangles coalesce to make Fonda's eleven minute standout "Song For My Mother" an often caterwauling charge of group-think. Probing the nocturnes of emotional depth, the tune suddenly (well at the 9:23 mark anyway) turns absolutely hymn-like in its resolution, proving the music of New Origin to be always becoming.

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Track Listing

Read This; Surely Attended; African Roll Mops; Berceuse; For Perry; Broken Shadows; Song For My Mother; Gastronomy; ZCNSY; Me; Platte Cove; Cosmonosis.

Personnel

Joe Fonda

bass

Christophe Rocher: clarinets; Joe Fonda: bass; Harvey Sorgen: drums.

Album information

Title: New Origin | Year Released: 2019 | Record Label: Not Two Records

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Entropy Gallery
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Feb 25 Wed

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Ibeam Brooklyn
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Feb 26 Thu

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Bop Shop Records
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Feb 27 Fri

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Erie Art Museum
Erie, PA

Mar 3 Tue

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James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA

Mar 4 Wed

Eastern Boundary Quartet

Middle Tennessee State University, Wright Music Hall
Murfreesboro, TN

Mar 5 Thu

Eastern Boundary Quartet

Middle Tennessee State University, Wright Music Hall
Murfreesboro, TN

Mar 7 Sat

Eastern Boundary Quartet

Charlottesville Jazz Society
Charlottesville, VA

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