#Kyle Bruckmanm

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Kyle Bruckmann / Tim Daisy / Philip Greenlief / Lisa Mezzacappa — Semaphore (Relay Recordings)

Tim Daisy photo by Ken Vandermark/ Kyle Bruckmann photo by Peter Gannushkin 

SEMAPHORE :: Kyle Bruckmann / Tim Daisy /Phillip Greenlief / Lisa Mezzacappa (relay 033) by Timothy Daisy // Relay Recordings

Semaphore is the latest manifestation of the enduring musical connection between Kyle Bruckmann and Tim Daisy. They live a half-continent apart in San Francisco and the Chicago area, and they might not get together for years. But when they do, they not only pick up where they left off, but keep the conversation growing.

The two men’s association originated when Bruckmann, who plays oboe and English horn, started the band Wrack in 2002. This was right around the time that he left Chicago, where he had been the city’s first-call double reeds improviser for half a dozen years, for San Francisco, where he still resides. That might seem like a weird time to start a band, but Bruckmann wasn’t leaving because of problems with Chicago’s music scene. Quite the contrary, he had some unfinished business, including a determination to write and perform music that combined classical forms with new jazz, and he knew a circle of Chicago-based musicians whose skills and aptitudes made them perfect for the project. One of them was Daisy, who at the time was best known as the drummer in a variety of projects led by Ken Vandermark and Dave Rempis, but who was also striking out on his own as a leader. He brought propulsion, swing, formidable improvisational chops, and a cornucopia of ornamental sounds to the combo’s distinctive chamber music-meets-muscular jazz sound. 

Wrack finished strong in 2014 with the record …Awaits Silent Tristero’s Empire, but Bruckmann and Daisy kept renewing their connection every few years.  Semaphore flips the Wrack script by having Daisy head out to Bruckmann’s turf to play with some Bay Area improvisers, bassist Lisa Mezzacappa and tenor saxophonist Philip Greenlief, and adds chapters to it by having the two men split the writing. Both leaders like to fit a lot of action into a composition. Bruckmann’s “No Mean Feat,” which opens the album, features Daisy sizzling on cymbals while Mezzacappa manages the momentum by alternating ascending phrases with sudden rests. The composer and Greenlief strike a balance of muscularity and astringence that brings to mind Prince Lasha and Sonny Simmons without sounding much like them. After building tension, the group expends it with a surging groove and sequential horn solos. Then comes another rest, followed by an intricate pas de deux between oboe and bass, and then the piece resolves with a sauntering ensemble passage reminiscent of the Vandermark 5 c. Acoustic Machine. 

Next up is Daisy’s “Big Horse Lounge,” which opens with a splendidly grouchy-sounding synth line played by Bruckmann, and then eases into a sequence of time-free, muted exchanges by continuously shifting subgroups of the quartet. That dissolves into a charge led by Greenlief’s rippling, high-register attack and fueled by the combustible Mezzacappa-Daisy team. Players drop in and out, and velocity subsides, before the whole ensemble reconstitutes for a voltage-illuminated finale that imagines Brown Rice-era Don Cherry dabbling in gamelan sounds. 

Each of the five pieces that follows explores, with varying degrees of expansiveness and pith, a variety of musical territories. This music is packed with event and transformation, as though its makers knew that they had to get a lot said before parting ways again. But the music never feels gratuitously crammed; in fact, its fluid transitions between sections is part if its appeal. With Semaphore, Daisy and Bruckmann have forged a distinct new group identity by exploring new instrumental and personnel combinations while reaffirming the interest in intricate composition that they have shared since the first Wrack CD.

Bill Meyer