Jazz by Any Other Name

Occasionally, a disc arrives that really does fall outside of easily identified categories, with content that really should just be called music. If one wanted to pin a label on Dance Of The Three Legged Elephants by cellist Matthew Barley and pianist Julian Joseph, then jazz is the one that comes most readily given Joseph's jazz credentials. As jazz tries to forge a new direction and identity for itself, with the line of Afro-American pioneers that swept from Armstrong to Coleman hitting a dead end with the puritanism of Marsalis, it is not stretching a point too far to call this jazz. The tracks that are not Barley / Joseph originals are by jazz figures like Jaco Pastorius and John McLaughlin, or figures sometimes influenced by jazz like Brazilian Antonio Carlos Jobim or Ravel ( no christian name necessary for Maurice ! ) But there are nods in the direction of Cage's prepared sounds and while Barley's cello is often played in a style very much in the jazz violin tradition, he also experiments with found sounds and Joseph also demonstrates his classical training. In some ways, this is a follow up recording to that made several years ago by the duo with Barley's wife Viktoria Mullova but edging a little further out into experimental territory.