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This review is part of the Musings Collection - see the index here.
Ganelin Trio: Poco-a-Poco
(Leo: CDLR101)
Vyacheslav Ganelin (piano, basset horn, dulcimer, guitar), Vladimir Tarasov (drums), Vladimir Chekasin (reeds, wooden flutes, ocarina, voice)
The Ganelin Trio are a group more often name-checked and written about than actually listened to, more's the pity. They have enormous kudos as revolutionary Soviet free jazzers, playing their wildly idiosyncratic music in the dark days of Khruschov. It's easy to think of them as lone souls battling for "freedom" (which usually, in such discourses, means "Western freedom", even "American freedom). Listening to their music seems almost spurious, as if the idea of them were enough, and the idea of fugitive tapes smuggled across borders, of LPs released in the West without names of the musicians, to protect the innocent.
It seems thus, anyway, until you hear their music which, once heard, never leaves you. It's not much like American free jazz, despite how things look on paper: melodic "head" arrangements, swirling solos, a sax-piano-drums trio pounding out intense improvisations to a pounding pulse. No, it doesn't sound much like the music one imagines when reading such a description; it sounds like the Ganelin Trio, and nothing else on earth sounds much like that.
This is, of course, not a new release but a re-issue, and in fact a re-issue of the earliest recording (1978) of their music to have appeared in the West. Like its successors, this is a live recording with startlingly good sound. Fortunately here the musicians are identified, right down to the details like Ganelin's beautiful spell on basset horn. Elsewhere, Chekasin enchants with ocarina and wooden flutes and Tarasov plays a thrilling drum solo. Now when was the last time you heard one of those?