Last Desert represents guitarist
Liberty Ellman's first leader date since 2015. Its title was inspired by the world's leading endurance foot race known as the 4 Deserts Ultramarathon, which takes place over seven days and 250 kilometers in the planet's largest and most forbidding deserts; Antarctica's "White Desert" is the last one in the competition.
Ellman's sidemen also accompanied him on 2015's Radiate: alto saxophonist
Steve Lehman, trumpeter
Jonathan Finlayson, tubist
Jose Davila, bassist
Stephan Crump, and drummer
Damion Reid.
Unlike many of his guitar-slinging peers,
Ellman rarely tries to dazzle with technique and intensity. Instead, the identifying signature in both his playing and composing is an intimate, communicative language that balances emotional intimacy and economic melody lines with intricate rhythmic and spatial signatures. Opener "Sip" is a case in point as
Ellman's guitar muses through the intro with nuanced basswork from
Crump, brushed snare, tom-toms, and contemplative phrasing from
Finlayson and
Lehman;
Davila binds it to earth with sparse yet weighty notes.
Finlayson takes the harmonic lead on "Last Desert I" with
Lehman and
Davila accenting his lines with carefully phrased responses.
Crump and
Reid surprise with a lithe, groove-laden vamp before
Ellman leads the frontline horns through an intricate, harmonic passage before taking a chromatically astute solo. "Last Desert II" commences with a quiet blurt from
Davila, some skeletal notes from the guitarist, and a wispy melodic head from
Lehman up front with
Finlayson, as
Reid's beat reveals a more muscular undertone before
Lehman cements it with a tough, inquisitive solo answered by a growling, simmering break from
Davila with arco backing from
Crump. When
Finlayson enters the foreground, the rhythm section wraps him in Latin-tinged jazz-funk. "Rubber Flowers" is an angular yet deft, engaging post-bop jam with killer solos from
Lehman and
Ellman that touch on
Barney Kessel and blues. The influence of
Ellman's boss and mentor
Henry Threadgill (the guitarist is a longtime member of
Zooid and Double Up) is prevalent on "Doppler," with carefully syncopated dialogue between
Davila,
Finlayson, and
Lehman, as
Ellman and
Crump add funky comping before inverting the chart. It's joyous, perverse, and captivating. That approach informs closer "Liquid," too, but with a different emphasis: This is a dance tune from the jump, despite knotty rhythmic and tuba accents.
Ellman's solo smooths the narrative with precise intervallic arpeggios atop horns that punctuate his phrases before entering a near-pastoral phase of repetitive, languid questioning comprised of stacked harmonies.
Davila's short solo is an imaginative masterstroke of melodic invention. Last Desert's compositions offer a harmonic depth and rhythmic breadth in interplay that goes wider and deeper than anything
Ellman has done before. While he isn't the flashiest guitarist or composer, his inherent lyricism, expansive tonalities, and luxuriant textures combine with carefully controlled dynamics that allow his sidemen an in-the-moment vulnerability to the music they play. These traits -- evidenced so abundantly on Last Desert -- reveal
Ellman as one of modern jazz's most skilled and appealing composers and six-string stylists. ~ Thom Jurek