Udu Calls

Udu Calls is the first duet recording either of these musicians — sax and reedman Danielle Cavallanti and drummer and master percussionist Tiziano Tononi — has ever made. The format is solidly improv, but they do borrow some actual tunes from aboriginal source material and master composers from black music, such as Thelonious Monk ("Ba-Lue-Bolivar-Ba-Lues-Are"), Barre Phillips, and the Reverend Gary Davis ("Death Don't Have No Mercy"), as well as use certain trademarks of other musicians in tribute to them, such as Andrew Cyrille, Max Roach, Michael Carvin, and the late Jim Pepper. For an improv record where a ton of drums, gongs, bells, shakers, zithers, temple bells, and such get used alongside a host of reeds and woodwinds, this is an amazingly lyrical album. The constant pulse of Tononi carrying the horns and flutes up and out of the frame of music and into the reference of life itself is remarkable. When both players move to percussion instruments, as they do frequently, the effect is chilling. It is as if the drums and percussion instruments were singing to one another, cascading down around each other in a sweeping tunnel of pure, unadulterated music. And on the aforementioned tunes, such as "Death Don't Have No Mercy," the element of the blues is so sweet and sorrowful and so completely saturated with loss and meaning, which the listener is forced to react to with his or her heart as well as his or her ears. On the straight-out improvs we hear a more texturally varied version of what John Coltrane and Rashied Ali were attempting to do on Interstellar Space, which is just as exhilarating. This one is a winner. Period.