JEROME COOPER / A Magical Approach
Jerome Cooper (drums, balaphone, chiramia, Yamaha PSR 1500)
Drummer/percussionist Jerome Cooper's fruitful musical legacy with the Revolutionary Ensemble and stints with saxophonist/composer Anthony Braxton, pianist Cecil Taylor, and others reads like a who's who in modern jazz. This makes A Magical Approach - a new release of Jerome Cooper's multi-dimensional drumming, a very special event. The music on this CD is drawn from two live performances, recorded almost 30 years apart. Root Assumptions was recorded in 1978 while the other five tracks are from Cooper's 2007 performance at an A.A.C.M. concert. Cooper's remarkable agility and captivating musical spirit is enacted throughout these endearing works.
What is multi-dimensional drumming? Imagine a drummer who plays this flute with one hand, bass drum and high-hat with his feet, and triggers drum loops, chord sequences and bass patterns with his other hand. Whether it is written or improvised, the resulting music is closer to world-funk than avant-garde jazz. Divided into many parts and facets, the drum set and secondary instruments Cooper uses and play are all aspects of the drums. In the future, there will be many changes and developments in the area of the mind, so what we (humankind) think and hear, is what we shall see and hear. In order to play the drum set you must be able to manipulate four or five things at one time (i.e. bass drum, snare drum, high-hat, ride cymbals and maybe voice). So an instruments name and structure doesn't stop him from playing them like a drum. You have instruments that are structurally different from the drum, but they have the same characteristic in the approach to the drum (i.e. piano, balaphone and shoes with taps). In order to find the music of the drums, Cooper had to change my assumptions and beliefs about music in relation to the drums, which is sound in the creation of multi-rhythms.
TRACK LIST
Root Assumptions (17:37)
A Melody (10:07)
My Birds (7:48)
3 is to 1 as 4 is to 2 (4:41)
Munich (7:42)
For the People - In Fear - In Chaos (19:10)
REVIEWS
Francis Lo Kee, All About Jazz
Jerome Cooper’s A Magical Approach is a remarkable artistic statement. One of the most focused and dedicated musicians from the post-’60s creative music, Cooper has been releasing solo percussion recordings since the late ‘70s, dividing all four limbs between his drums, balaphone (African xylophone), chiramia (a kind of Mexican/South American oboe) and synthesizer. Over these years, his music has developed, becoming richer in detail and broader in range of expressed feelings and emotions. Though one of the tracks was recorded in 1978, the rest is more recent (from 2007); one has to ask why it took so long for this great music to surface.
For a 67-minute solo percussion performance, it is extraordinarily absorbing with no dead spots. If we consider Max Roach the progenitor of solo drumset music (releasing Drums Unlimited in 1966), Cooper has not only expanded Roach’s language by including other instruments, he’s expanded on Roach’s sense of rhythmic joy and excitement. Cooper’s music also has a sense of mystery. Take for instance the bowed cymbals (punctuated with widely spaced single balaphone notes) in “A Melody” and sense of humor as in the fast section of “Munich”, sounding like a cross between a football fight-song and a cartoon chase soundtrack. On the last track, “For the People - In Fear - In Chaos”, one can certainly hear a yearning, bluesy quality to the chiramia wailing over the string orchestra sounds from the synthesizer, but Cooper is not a composer of ‘program music’. That would be too simple. “For the People …” moves into amazing, fast mambo rhythms that display the drummer’s virtuosity and conceptual brilliance. There is a sense of chaos towards the end of this track as he layers all the previous material with new sounds and furious drum soloing: strings, horns, church bells, flailing kettle drums crescendo until the reappearance of the chiramia’s cry and then the dramatic ending. Embrace the mystery, embrace the magic and do not miss a chance to see Jerome Cooper perform live.
