Yonatan Kretzmer / Reuben Radding / Sean Conly / Mike Pride

Surprisingly unreleased for six years, which may account for its title, Mis-Take is a distinctive take on Free Jazz that extends the typical saxophone-double bass-drums trio to include a second bassist. While hardly the first player to do so, Israeli-American tenor saxophonist Yoni Kretzmer uses the accomplished skills of bassists Reuben Radding and Sean Conly to provide airy or earthy textures to the seven tunes here by have them continuously switch from Arco to pizzicato and vice versa. These string strategies nicely contrasts with the saxophonist`s supple reed work as well as the notable drumming of Mike Pride, who can be savage or sympathetic as the situation demands.

Pride, whose associates now include Jason Stein and Peter Evans, distinguishes himself with an extravagant solo on “Doubt There For”, where rebound ruffs, triangle pings, cymbal clatter, opposite sticking and pinpointed rolls causes shouting encouragement as he plays. As one bassist expands his work from sul tasto squeaks and the other from thickened chording, Kretzmer smears the exposition into altissimo-pitched vibrations of corkscrew slurs and growling cries climaxing with multphonic puffs in an Ayler-like mode. Conversely there are a collection of sequences throughout the disc where the drummer’s nuanced rim shots or topside patterning merely indicate and advance the exposition, but stay enough in the background to allow enough space for the bull fiddlers, each a veteran of New York’s free scene, to foreground their movements. “Paper Clip” for example has one bassist producing guitar-like twangs from his top strings, while the other concentrates on decorative bowing. At the same time the saxophonist’s tongue stopping, reed whistling and flutter tonguing defines the theme through a dot-dash narrative that easily blends with Pride’s percussion pitter-patter.

The session is completed by the penultimate “Three”, an eloquent demonstration of close-knit, relaxed string set elaboration and the final “In One Spot”, where Kretzmer demonstrates that toned-down buzzing and blowing can produce as profound a bluesy swing as earlier, more-frenetic R&B-like linked slurs have done. Confirming this way that the quartet’s capability neglects no part of a proper showpiece, Mis-Take is a disc that obviously deserved release.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Jotting 2. Sprinklers 3. Ways Away 4. I Doubt There For 5. Paper Clip 6. Three 7. In One Spot

Personnel: Yoni Kretzmer (tenor saxophone); Reuben Radding and Sean Conly (bass) and Mike Pride (drums)