From the first Ayleresque thrum and steeped ritual of ‘Miserere’ to the wailing blues, doleful horns and overlayed piano on ‘Wonderful Words Of Life’ whose wispy middle section soon scrambles to a rapt climax, and from the percussive roils which shake up ‘Inhaling and Exhaling’ to accompany a reading from a book called Solo Gig by the avant-garde guitarist Davey Williams to ‘Ut Queant Laxis’ whose overtures to the didactic hymnal are carried away on the airs of the shakuhachi-like bass flute, a stellar and multi-generational group of players tread a misty line between Gregorian chant and Downtown experimentalism on the full-length Miserere, a quixotic jazz album whose noxious vapours might emanate from a terraced paddy, a spice bazaar or a wine-soaked brasserie whose musty tablecloths are flung out onto the rain-damp street.
The saxophonists Chad Fowler, George Cartwright and Zoh Amba, pianist Chris Parker, bassist Luke Stewart, drummer Steve Hirsh and vocalist Kelley Hurt holed up in Little Rock to connect musical communities as far-flung as Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Washington DC, Minnesota and New York, with Fowler and Amba also airing their spellbinding proclivities as flautists, the Curlew founder Cartwright wielding the electric guitar, and Parker’s intonations adding to the sense of liturgy as they abut or echo Hurt’s coiled calls. Described as an attempt to evoke ‘both desperation and hope in a time rife with strife’, the title ‘Miserere’ which is Latin for ‘have mercy’ refers to the setting of Psalm 51 which was originally composed in the 1630s for exclusive use in the Sistine Chapel during the Tenebrae services of Holy Week. Replete with Gregorian recitations and late-Renaissance polyphonies, the traditional Tenebrae service in the Latin Church took place over three days and was marked by the gradual extinguishing of fifteen candles, then a ‘strepitus’ or great noise which occurred in total darkness.
