Rempis/Reid/Abrams

ABOUT

This collaborative trio featuring three mid-career artists with deep roots in the Chicago improvised music scene put forth their stunning and austere debut Ithra in 2018, a chamber-like exploration in which their three voices intertwine seamlessly into one multi-headed unit. Although each member is no doubt comfortable as a soloist, with significant leader credits under each of their belts, here they shirk that approach in favor of a music that is unflinchingly interactive and group-oriented. In this context, solo explorations don’t drive the music, but instead the sum of the three parts together delivers an unstoppable momentum recalling the type of egalitarian interactions pioneered by the trio of Jimmy Giuffre, Paul Bley, and Steve Swallow in the early 1960’s.   The resulting pieces, each one a thoroughly unique and cohesive landscape, deliver a strikingly clear example of what’s possible when musicians with broad interests in all types of contemporary musical expression combine their aesthetics in a non-genre and non-stylistically bound approach. Rempis, Reid, and Abrams deliver a wholly original sound, straddling the intersections of free improvisation, contemporary classical, jazz, and folk musics from around the world, without being contained by the precepts of any one of those influences. All of this begs the question if their music is “freely improvised,” or “instantly composed,” or if it’s a set of pre-existing compositions that the band developed and rehearsed extensively, or if it’s a mix of all of those things? Perhaps it doesn’t matter?

LISTEN

PHOTOS

RECORDINGS

PRESS

Like the Art Ensemble, Air, or Extraordinary Popular Delusions this is a band of potential bosses who choose to work together. Each of this album’s nine tracks is the product of cumulative instant decision making oriented towards the completion of one another’s actions. While there’s no drumming on this record, Abrams, Reid, and Rempis all think like drummers in this respect - they’re forever figuring out how to make the rest of the band sound good. -Bill Meyer, THE WIRE

Three players with deep roots in Chicago’s contemporary jazz scene come together in an unusually empathetic exchange of ideas, where the gap between listening and reacting is practically nonexistent. -Andy Beta, PITCHFORK

Three of Chicago’s most interesting musicians — saxophonist Dave Rempis, cellist Tomeka Reid, and bassist Joshua Abrams — team up for just under an hour of mostly low-key chamber interactions. This music could be improvised, it could be composed, or it could be some combination of the two; what matters is that it becomes three people speaking with one voice. They all come from different places, creatively and otherwise, but there’s an essential Chicago-ness to the collective sound.
-Phil Freeman, STEREOGUM

Ithra is a trio consisting of Rempis on alto and tenor saxophones, Tomeka Reid on cello and Joshua Abrams on bass, and they come together to create a wonderfully evocative and atmospheric album. This isn't a blowout, but rather a deftly arranged series of miniatures, with long tones of cello and bass that arc across the songs presented here, at times giving it a feeling of a chamber music recital or a daring experiential abstract improvisation. The three musicians use their unique talents to develop voicings upon their respective instruments that fit the music perfectly allowing the compositions to evolve slowly and gracefully and granting plenty of open space and liberal interpretations of the source material.
-JAZZ AND BLUES BLOGSPOT