The Long View is an extended work from reed player and composer Marty Ehrlich that was created to be played in conjunction with an exhibition of six new paintings by abstract/expressionistic painter Oliver Jackson. The piece was developed while Ehrlich and Jackson were artists in residence at Harvard University in 1999/2000. Their collaboration was dedicated to free jazz visionary Julius Hemphill. Ehrlich's composition is a demanding piece that will challenge the patience and endurance of all but the most persevering listener. It consists of six movements and a postlude performed by ensembles that range from a trio to 14-piece reed, brass, and string groupings. The larger settings are conducted by Mark Helias, one of several progressive, contemporary contributors to the project. At times, the music's atonal abandon predominates; at others, the ensemble arrangements and composed structures are in greater evidence. In the main, the music is characterized by stark, clashing, instrumental juxtapositions and ad libbed stretches that offer no rhythmic or harmonic reference points. There are occasional teasers of "straight" jazz playing -- a walking bass, a Gil Evans-like ensemble section, some nice bits from Ehrlich on his various horns -- but these are few and fleeting.
Ehrlich contends that The Long View works as a piece interacting with Jackson's paintings and as an autonomous work. Yes and no. It's easy enough to appreciate how the painter's six new canvasses could serve as a nurturing medium for Ehrlich's piece and how the music could work as an effective aural complement to the paintings. On its own, though, The Long View struggles to reciprocate the demands it makes on the listener.
© Jim Todd /TiVo