Hailed by Downbeat for a tight, nimble sound “like one big, polyphonic low-brass organ,” Joe Fiedler’s Big Sackbut returns in triumphant form on its third release, the explosive Live in Graz. Following up 2012’s Big Sackbut and 2013’s Sackbut Stomp, Live in Graz finds the unique four-piece band — three trombones plus tuba — in an exuberant concert setting, letting loose with a set of Fiedler originals and finely wrought arrangements of music by Charles Mingus as well as Fiedler’s late friend, the sorely missed trombone pioneer Roswell Rudd. “Taking up the mantle of the legends that preceded him,” writes noted trombonist Jacob Garchik in the Live in Graz liner notes, “Joe combines bravura technique, total freedom playing inside and outside the changes, endless imagination, and deftly penned arrangements, which exploit the rhythmic side of the instrument so well that you don’t miss the drums.”

Key to the rhythmic drive of the group is the rock-solid tuba of Jon Sass, who filled in for Big Sackbut regular Marcus Rojas on the band’s December 2019 European tour. A Harlem native residing for decades in Vienna, Sass quickly formed a highly effective rapport with Fiedler and trombonists Ryan Keberle and Luis Bonilla. His parts playing is airtight, and the groove he maintains behind each individual soloist is consistently gripping. “Jon showed up at the hotel, he’d done all his homework and he was the greatest guy,” Fiedler recalls. “His resume’s a mile long and we had a million mutual friends. He’s been the #1 sub for all these American tours — Lester Bowie, Ray Anderson, all these people would call him up. As our tour progressed Jon really started taking chances and making the music his own, and you can really hear that starting to happen on Live in Graz.”

In a low-brass group (with antecedents in orchestral music, jazz, Latin and also the black church, as Garchik explains), the tuba “can’t skate at all,” says Fiedler. “You can’t just lay out for a couple of bars.” To varying degrees, the endurance aspect of the gig extends to each trombonist as well. Fiedler, Keberle and Bonilla play lead, second and third trombone roles respectively, but it’s become more common for Bonilla to switch from third to lead for certain melodies and other passages where Fiedler can briefly rest his chops.

Fiedler’s overriding goal, however, is to feature three distinct solo trombone personalities, more than a blended trombone-choir approach. “Usually in a jazz group, the difference between soloists is really stark,” Fiedler says. “I wanted to have that even though we’re playing the same instrument.” To that end, the first four tracks on Live in Graz each feature a different unaccompanied soloist at the top: first Sass (“Peekskill”), then Fiedler (Mingus’ “Devil Woman”), Bonilla (“I’m In”) and Keberle (Roswell Rudd’s “Bethesda Fountain”).

 “Devil Woman,” from Mingus’ Oh Yeah, is one of a number of tunes Fiedler arranged for a possible Mingus solo trombone outing, but it works beautifully as a Big Sackbut vehicle. “I think that might be Ryan’s best solo,” the leader says. “His understanding of the harmony, that altered blues thing, he’s really at home there. That solo goes down to the bottom of the horn, and the fluidity he has in that register is just lovely.”

Fiedler’s “Peekskill” and “Ways” are marvels of rhythmic punctuation and textural contrast, capturing the band at peak power and expression. “I’m In” and “Chicken” are originals that Fiedler recorded previously in a trio context with bass and drums (on I’m In and Sacred Chrome Orb, respectively). Both gain a new dimension with fleshed-out harmony and counterpoint. Of Bonilla on “I’m In,” Fiedler enthuses: “The very first thing Luis plays, he develops that motif so beautifully. Later in the song when it’s just him and Jon, he comes back to it — I didn’t even catch that live, but when I listened back I was like, ‘Man, that’s brilliant.’ The connectivity of it was just so mature and I was really blown away.”

With the passing of Roswell Rudd in late 2017, it was only fitting for Fiedler to dedicate Live in Graz to his memory and to include three of Rudd’s compositions: “Bethesda Fountain” (from the 1976 album Blown Bone), which Fiedler describes as a Charles Ivesian “imaginary musical walk” around the Central Park landmark; “Yankee No-How” (from Rudd’s 1966 debut Everywhere), a song Fiedler calls “unbelievably electric in the cycling of the main riff,” with a deceptive form and tautly swinging solos; and finally “Suh Blah Blah Buh Sibi” (from 1975’s Flexible Flyer), with its brassy call-and-response theme, sturdy walking bass lines from Sass and irreverent mini-canon at the end, with all three trombonists scat-singing the title — as Sheila Jordan once did — while Sass continues to vamp.

The closing “Tonal Proportions,” by Fiedler, is also in fact a tribute to Rudd, stemming from their first encounter back in the day: Rudd handed Fiedler a business card offering private instruction, but specifically instruction in either “tonal proportions” or “rhythmic proportions.” “I thought that was just magical,” Fiedler says, and so he wrote two tunes using those very titles. “I wanted to have a haunting melody for Roswell, a kind of a chord-change tune that would seem to suit him.” It’s a moving sendoff to a man Garchik calls “the godfather of the sometimes abstract but always expressionist Big Sackbut ethos,” firmly establishing Fiedler’s group as one of the most distinctive on today’s scene.

CREDITS:

All compositions by Joe Fiedler (Joe Fiedler Music-BMI) except:
“Devil Woman” by Charles Mingus (Jazz Workshop Inc. BMI),
“Bethesda Fountain”, "Yankee No-How”, and "Su Blah Blah Buh Sibi” by Roswell Rudd (Roswell Music BMI)

Recorded December 12 & 13, 2019 at Tube’s
Recorded by Fabio Schurischuster
Mixed & Mastered by Dave Darlington at Bass Hit Studios
Design by Jamie Breiwick
Special thanks to Ryan, Luis, Jon, Sigi, Fabio, and Tyler
For Shari and Cleo
Dedicated to Roswell Rudd