Adam O’Farrill – For These Streets

Conceived several years ago when he read Henry Miller’s rousing and anguished Tropic of Cancer and John Steinbeck’s dusty classic of the Depression era The Grapes of Wrath and had Charlie Chaplin’s late silent romance City Lights on repeat view, on his new album For These Streets the trumpeter Adam O’Farrill seeks to channel some of those artistic currents which animated life in the 1930s.

As the sensuality and bitterness of Miller and the tender romanticism of Chaplin’s little tramp began to permeate his dreams, O’Farrill embarked on a fuller exploration of the decade’s literature from the experimental wash of Virginia Woolf’s self-styled ‘playpoem’ The Waves with its six soliloquising figures to the poetry of Octavio Paz and music from Igor Stravinsky to Olivier Messiaen to Duke Ellington. In fact as he toured from city to city as part of an ensemble led by Mary Halvorson, it was the era’s classical music which he frequently imbibed which bears sweet fruit on For These Streets as the opening composition ‘Swimmers’ features melodic lines drawn from Stravinsky’s last European work Dumbarton Oaks while other pieces interpolate or are inspired by Messiaen’s organ essay Diptyque, Maurice Ravel’s jazz and Basque-infused Piano Concerto in G major and Carlos Chávez’s ten preludios for piano.

Adam O’Farrill – whose grandfather Chico O’Farrill and father Arturo are both jazz luminaries whose compositions and orchestrations have done much to develop notions of Afro-Cuban and other forms of Latin jazz, while his mother Alison Deane and brother Zack are also talented musicians – tends to move in a circle of Brooklyn transplants which includes Mary Halvorson and the vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, with his trumpet playing a starring role on some of the best records of the past year. He featured on the compelling and joyous albums Mountains by Micah Thomas and Home by Daniel Prim y Su Parampampan and is also part of the pianist Hiromi Uehara’s newfangled electric quartet Sonicwonder, which she describes as her heaviest and funkiest project to date.

Yet far from being swept up by a whirlpool of ideas and influences, O’Farrill moves steadily at his own pace. For These Streets feels more circuitous than Halvorson’s billowing Cloudward while eschewing the lava flows and copper-rich complexity of Brennan’s dazzling Breaking Stretch, or for that matter the chamber aspect of Pith by the drummer Tomas Fujiwara with its self-contained swing. The guitarist, vibraphonist and percussionist – all frequent collaborators – join O’Farrill on the trumpet and flugelhorn as David Leon on the alto saxophone and flute, Kevin Sun on the tenor and clarinet, Kalun Leung on the trombone and mellower euphonium and Tyrone Allen II on the double bass complete the octet.

That ensemble boasts a fine array of styles and temperaments, with Mary Halvorson’s wiry and staggered six-string and Patricia Brennan’s penchant for glistening or roiling dynamic shifts knitting together nicely with O’Farrill and David Leon’s background in Afro-Cuban counterpoint, which the woodwind player demonstrated last year on his album Bird’s Eye where DoYeon Kim on the gayageum and the shaded percussion of Lesley Mok helped to articulate his thoughtful exploration of folk themes. Sun and Leung have also worked with O’Farrill before amid their collaborations with the likes of Jacob Garchik, Lesley Mok and Juanma Trujillo while Tomas Fujiwara is an almost vanishingly subtle presence behind the drum kit, never pushy or bolshy yet always in the right place.

Thick with horns as O’Farrill, Leon, Sun and Leung make for a tantalising quadruple threat, the compositions on For These Streets often feature a melodious and high-pitched top line on flute, clarinet or the alto saxophone which airs over the bellows and growls of the trombone and trumpet. Brennan chimes away mostly with a degree of concision and restraint and the bassist Tyrone Allen II can sit in or play more sustained tones like on the standout track ‘Migration’, while Halvorson offers typically wiry fills and moments of bolder juxtaposition. Yet all in all the ensemble is used sparingly, often splintering off into duos or trios whether it’s the trumpet, guitar and bass on ‘Streets’ or a reedy patter of percussion and winds.

On the waltzing ‘Nocturno, 1932’ a flute solo finds Leon in fine fettle before O’Farrill plays a kind of slumping bassline on his trumpet, as the bandleader is joined by saxophone and brittle dry percussion before the composition suddenly shifts into a languorous and cinematic close through the layered horn section. That’s followed by ‘Scratching the Surface of a Dream’, an effort to reach the wellspring of O’Farrill’s imagination where the brass smooches and sputters out as Halvorson occupies an unusual role as a steadying force, while the probing and wistful ‘Migration’ emphasises Allen’s bowed bass before segueing into a cascading vibraphone solo by Brennan.

‘Speeding Blots of Ink’ either confirms or belies its quixotic title as it drips and then spurts from the pen out onto the page and ‘Streets’ picks up the pace a little, now more burnished and bronzed even as Halvorson seems to express a series of logical uncertainties, wandering down blind alleyways and animating the piece with dollops of anxiety. Scampering, mousy strings in the middle of ‘And So On’ are succeeded by some riveting blasts from the trombone, then a squirming passage of vibes, drums and brass which melts away even as its charming flow still gets tangled up in roots and sediment.

A tender lullaby on the vibraphone opens ‘The Break Had Not Come’, which also posits some of the textures and shapes of indie rock, while ‘Rose’ abounds in trills as though briskly tracing the flower’s sharp stem and nuzzling its soft petals, at once unfurling eloquently then surging through an impassioned climax before a bit of hard rock stomping. Then with ‘Late June’ the album draws to a close, as the ensemble find a groove and tease crescendos. Beyond the music, For These Streets also boasts fine artwork by T.J. Huff of the marginally important 21st-century art movement The Exhumists, both on the album cover and for ‘Speeding Blots of Ink’ which was released by Out Of Your Head Records as the final preview single.