Tania Gill Quartet: Disappearing Curiosities
Tania Gill

The enigmatically titled sophomore album by Tania Gill's quartet arrives no less than eleven years after its well-received Bolger Station (Barnyard Records). However reticent that might make the Toronto-based pianist appear, the facts argue otherwise. She's a versatile and adaptable player who, for those reasons and others, has become one of the area's first-call players in jazz and experimental circles and beyond. When not playing with the Brodie West Quintet, the See Through Trio, Woodshed Orchestra, Rebecca Hennessy's FOG, and others, Gill also teaches, privately to students and at Humber College and the University of Toronto.

The three Canadians joining her on Disappearing Curiosities—trumpeter Lina Allemano, bassist Rob Clutton, and drummer Nico Dann—share Gill's sensibilities. They're as comfortable riffing on ‘60s Blue Note-styled bop as playing in a freer, explorative style. There are smooth and rough edges in the album's nine pieces, with some showing a lyrical bent and others knottier. In the latter, the playfulness of the leader is matched by the others as they navigate the terrain. Laid down over two days in December 2019 at Canterbury Music and produced by Gill and Jean Martin, the recording's primarily an acoustic affair, but she also expands on the quartet's sound by working Moog synthesizer into the material.

Allemano locks into Gill's writing effortlessly and uses her abundant horn skills as a conduit for the leader's flamboyant writing. A formidable tag team, Clutton and Dann likewise show themselves to be sympathetic to Gill's vision, each attentive to the twists and turns of the music and assured in their contributions to it. All four are dynamic players, quick on their feet and responsive to each other and the character of the compositions.

True to its title, the opening “Marsh Music” feels a little swampy, as if the players are trudging through unstable terrain. A brooding chamber feel pervades the opening minutes as the performance pensively blooms out of Gill's spidery piano patterns before returning to a reprise of the Rota-like theme. “To Montreal” trades ponderousness for cubist energy, with roller-coaster piano joined by bop-tinged horn expressions and a rhythm backdrop that's equally swinging and free. Gill punctuates fast fluttering runs by Allemano with staccato chords while Dann weaves percussive sonorities into the mix, and in another surprise Gill sweetens her own single-note solo with synthesizer. If the later “Climate Striker” is cut from the same cloth as “To Montreal,” it's a hard-driving hell-raiser by comparison—though no less angular and asymmetrical in design.

Aptly titled too, “Jaunty” infuses its swing with jauntiness, though the material catches the ear as much for its wiry Moog timbres as the group's freewheeling attack. The tune leans in a boppish direction, but straight swing is often subverted by the elasticity of the playing—until, that is, the four dig into a driving episode animated by rousing solos from the trumpeter and pianist. The album's catchiest tune, however, is “Frisbee” for its pied piper-like theme and march-driven pulse, the title again smartly chosen for the way its quirky melody circles back. Meanwhile, “Apology” is memorable for an extended bowed bass solo by Clutton and a groove lightly sprinkled with Latin flavour.

Written and performed in a manner emblematic of the artist to whom it's dedicated, “Tangled Branches” is Gill's homage to Geri Allen, the late pianist no doubt an inspiration to the Toronto musician. A nice balance is struck: the performance is suitably reverential but, thankfully, not excessively polite. Only “People Gonna Rise Like the Water” is a non-original, its composer unknown and the song's gospel-tinged melodies directly voiced by trumpet and piano (on the package's inner sleeve, Gill notes it's a song she's led at climate strikes).

February 2022