TO BE CONTINUED
Carol Liebowitz, piano 
Claire de Brunner, bassoon
Daniel Carter, tenor, alto, soprano saxophones, flute, trumpet, clarinet 
Kevin Norton, vibraphone, drums, percussion

REVIEW OF POETRY FOR THE FUTURE

To Be Continued comprises four musicians playing 11 instruments between them. The rich textural palette offered by woodwinds, brass, piano and percussion, tuned and untuned, is well deployed by this quartet of highly skilled New York-based improvisers, who move seamlessly from contemplative hush to hard-edged declamation in which the sharp reflexes of the ensemble come into play. Whether the music tends towards the sotto voce or the fortissimo the group has a judicious sense of time and space. The probes and purrs of De Brunner‘s bassoon, its bulbous tones all half-time croak and quack, act as a central component of the arrangements insofar as they make for an unhurried but authoritatively sustained presence in the low register. Many of the other instruments, particularly Norton’s vibraphone hover deliciously around it, emphasizing the mercurial nature of a performance, in which understatement, be it the slightest woody drawl of Carter’s clarinet or a delicately serpentine phrase from Liebowitz, is at a premium. This criss-cross collective energy, issuing creatively from myriad exponents of experimental composition-improvisation, be it Braxton, Lake or Burton Greene, hinges on the listening as well as playing abilities of the artists, who, in this instance, show a lot of admirable restraint. This absorbing session, its sensations as much like breath under water as a cry into a valley, upholds that rich legacy.

Kevin Le Gendre, Jazzwise Magazine
November, 2017