(Reprinted from the January 2022 issue of Downbeat magazine)
Ten years after Craig Taborn introduced Avenging Angel, the studio album that first captured the composer’s singular approach to improvised solo piano, he releases Shadow Plays (both on ECM). This time he recorded live, in the Mozartsaal of the Vienna Concert Hall, while on tour in early 2020. The evening then was billed as Avenging Angel II, an extrapolation of the earlier achievement.
To hear Taborn in person is a riveting experience and, listening to the seven tracks on this new release, it’s easy to tap into the immediacy of his concert playing. Such immediacy foregoes any tendency to analyze, but certain ideas leave a visceral impression in the ear: The high-pitched ostinato on “Birds Templar,” for instance, flutters like wings against the deep chordal movements below. The exchange of wild improvisation with snippets of contrasting swinging bits underscores the agnosticism of “Conspiracy of Things.” And the sweetly melodic “Now in Hope,” the final track, hints at the blues and the jazz waltz without fully embracing either.
Taborn titles his improvised pieces after the fact, so he isn’t playing to a literal theme as he works on stage. Thus, if you hear fleeting dissonances juxtaposed with well-articulated arpeggiation in “Discordia Concors” or “Concordia Discors” (Latin for “harmonious discord” and “inharmonious harmony,” respectively), it’s because Taborn was responding to an inner prompt, not an outer one.
The title cut serves as the masterstroke of all these efforts: At more than 18 minutes, it’s the longest and most dramatic of the collection. Here, he places brusque chords and skittering interjections alongside flowing melodies and intervallic repetition, transcending toward a cusp where these opposing impulses no longer seem to conflict. The line where shadow and light converge, Tabor seems to say, is a thin one.
Shadow Plays: Bird Templars; Discordia Concors; Conspiracy Of Things; Concordia Discors; A Code With Spells; Shadow Play; Now I Hope. (01:16:21)
Personnel: Craig Taborn, piano.