When Eri Yamamoto, William Parker, Chad Fowler, and Steve Hirsh settled in for their first recording session together, there wasn’t much conversation beforehand. The engineer simply shouted “rolling” and sparks flew. But they weren’t steel mill sparks: The music unfolding in that moment was more like a crackling campfire, smoke rising slowly, points of light lifting lazily into the breeze — and foreshadowing a greater heat to come.
Such an image is apt for the airy chords with which Yamamoto kicks off the title tune of Sparks, the quartet’s 2022 album on Mahakala Music. After her piano begins, like wind chimes playing standards, Parker and Hirsh fall in as if walking up from the woods, and then Fowler’s saxello enters, do-re-mi-do, like a sprite carrying memories of a folk song.
“Spontaneous folk music,” says Yamamoto with a ripple of laughter, recalling the phrase Fowler used to suggest the quartet’s point of departure that day. And she responded immediately to the premise, as Yamamoto herself has created hybrid free/composed jazz that “gracefully bridges the worlds of post-bop and free jazz,” according to Time Out New York, with her “evocative songs without words.”
A classically trained pianist with a vibrant improvisational streak, she’s long performed and recorded with William Parker, a composer in his own right and a mainstay of the New York free jazz community. Indeed, playing a session with Parker, who has pursued an unparalleled vision of free jazz since before his days with Cecil Taylor, and whose quartet recordings in this century are legendary, was an inspiration to all. “I’ve played on nine or 10 albums with William as a leader,” says Yamamoto. “He’s really been an eye-opener for me. It was like he reminded me, ‘Ah, I can be free!’ And he always writes great melodies, which is very natural for me: Start with a good melody, and have a lot of open space.”
With only those sentiments guiding them, the players created the album on the spot. And like a strong line in visual art, a spontaneous, striking melody typically jumpstarts each performance on Sparks. That’s always been at the core of Yamamoto’s playing. “Growing up in Kyoto, I was surrounded by a lot of traditional Japanese music, with very minimalist melodies. I started writing music when I was 8, and I still write the same way. It all starts when I hum some melody. But even with my composed tunes, my approach is to leave a lot of space for musicians to go beyond the form.”
While drummer Steve Hirsh, a native New Yorker now living in the Minnesota woods, was amazed at the meeting of minds at the 2022 session, he wondered if lightning like that could ever strike twice. “The CD came out in April of last year, and we had a release show in Brooklyn — our first public performance. The place was packed. And before we went on the bandstand, I was sitting there thinking to myself, ‘Well, we’ve played together exactly once, in the studio, and the magic definitely happened. I wonder if it’s going to happen again. Maybe we’re just a one-hit wonder.’ So we get on stage, and literally four notes into it, I was like, ‘Okay, we’re good.’ And every time we’ve played it’s like that. We just played last week at Roulette in Brooklyn, and it was the same thing. The music just soared. The chemistry is really something. The way our sounds combine is really exceptional.”
He’s not alone in thinking that. Now Mahakala Music (Fowler’s prolific imprint based in Arkansas) has released Sparks Quartet Live at Vision Festival XXVI, a show the group performed a few months after their first live appearance together. Born in a spur-of-the-moment recording date, the group has taken on a life of its own, as Hirsh applied for and received a grant from South Arts’ Jazz Road initiative for the current tour. And, like the ephemeral flickers for which the group is named, each performance is unique, unpredictable, and exquisite. “William describes it as painting sound on the silence,” says Hirsh. “Somebody tosses the color out, somebody makes a sound, somebody responds, and then we’re off. The other players hear where you’re going, they hear your intent, and they meet you there.”
Sparks Quartet plays The Green Room at Crosstown Arts this Thursday, November 9th, at 7:30 p.m. For more details, visit crosstownarts.org.