Minor Prophets Review - Cadence Magazine

Bill Donaldson, July/August/September 2008

As a musically distinctive farewell tribute to the city of his residency for the past 12 years, Johannes Wallmann’s Minor Prophets balances a dynamism present throughout all of its tracks, whether overt or subtle, that appears to have expanded his imagination beyond his initial classical studies in British Columbia. Indeed, Wallmann has developed a style that formed from numerous perspectives, considering his years spent in Münster, Vancouver, and New York City. Now, Wallmann is moving on to the San Francisco area, where he will direct Jazz studies at California State University East Bay and no doubt will absorb that region’s Jazz feel too. The quintet on Minor Prophets consists of long-time collaborators, who participate in a nostalgic, but forcefully played, sendoff, and Wallmann looks back on his friendships and experiences in New York before his departure. All of the music on Minor Prophets is Wallmann’s, but the combination of undulating placidity combined with calmed excitement reminds one of the music on Ingrid Jensen’s more recent recordings perhaps due to Jensen’s presence on Minor Prophets, and perhaps due to the frequency of their joint performances. Straightaway, Minor Prophets bursts forth at the album’s start with rapid-fire unison melody lines and Sean Conly’s tumbling bass reinforcement in a surging post-Bop style. After 43 seconds, trumpeter Jensen issues the first solo of the album with her by-now well-known smolder, the burn always seeming to be under the surface of her finely articulated work. Then it accedes to Wallmann’s propulsive statement and Geoff Countryman’s chattering and wailing tenor sax work of occasional overtones and winding improvisational lines. In contrast, the next piece, “Loving Day,” proceeds with dark, shadowy atmospherics in flowing two-part harmony – though with occasional brightly blurting accents as if subterranean fire occasionally can’t be suppressed for long – much like the Nordic sensibilities of some of Jensen’s recent recordings. But when it is time for soloing – as solos, according to Jazz custom, often must occur after a theme is stated – Wallmann shines with a glowing statement of rippling inventiveness, still confident above the characterizing vamp which he too continues with his left hand. “Invocation: Wunschtraum” provides a showcase for Countryman with an extended fervently performed, spiritually based introduction that sets up the feeling for the tune’s remainder. The melody of “Invocation: Wunschtraum” turns out eventually to be quite uncomplicated though harmonically affecting, and thus memorable after the track is over. “Invocation” occurs again at the album’s end – though shortened from the “Wunschtraum” versions’s seven minutes to the concluding “Wunschtraum”-less track’s less than two – thereby allowing Countryman to address the theme rhythmlessly as a duo with Wallmann. “Belonging” is another melodically based song, incorporating still the leisurely melancholy of some of the other tunes and allowing the musicians to shape the notes with care. “Of Stories Lost (For Adrian)” appears to be an extension of “Belonging,” or at least to have been composed in the same time period. Their slow tempos are approximately the same, as are the minor-key darker hues that the compositions evoke, particularly as Jensen delivers the theme. Leave it to “Magic Beans” to lighten the mood of Minor Prophets with a moderate swing reinforced by Conly’s walking bass lines and individually the quartet members’ relaxed interpretations of the changes, most engagingly by Countryman with his loosened-embouchure approach and his staggering of the beat. By the time this review is published, Wallmann may have moved to San Francisco, taking the New York feel incorporated in Minor Prophets with him, as he adds another layer to the style that he has developed.