“Paul Austerlitz / Michael S. Harper:
Double Take, Innova 604”
Cadence Magazine
by Larry Nai

Brother John/We Assume: On the Death of Our Son, Reuben Masai Harper/Here where Coltrane Is/”Bird Lives:” Charles Parker in St. Louis/High Modes: Vision as Ritual: Confirmation/Elvin’s Blues/Last Affair: Bessie’s Blues Song/Audio for Juilius Hemphill/If You Don’t Force It, inspired by Ray Brown/Copenhage, dedicated to Dexter Gordon/4-29-99 for E.K.E./The Latin American Poem for Anani Dzidzienyo/Release: Kind of Blue/Interlude. 55:17.

Austerlitz, b cl; Harper, poet. 4/1/03, 10/31/03, 5/27/03, Providence, RI.

This collaboration between fellow teachers at Brown University, on “Jazz – Poetry Conversations,” as it is subtitled, is simply one of the best such projects I’ve heard. In this intimate setting, the same qualitative questions apply as would in a purely musical – i.e., non-textual – context: How is the writing? What are the rhythms, the colors, the textures like? How well do the artists phrase their delivery?

On every count, Double Take comes up a winner. Harper, a celebrated poet, writes as a passionate lover of Jazz, whose view of the music breathes with an empathy for its everyday practicalities, its mystical qualities, and its singular importance as a Black art. John Coltrane, Ray Brown, Julius Hemphill, Dexter Gordon, and Bessie Smith are a few of the musicians celebrated with uncommon depth, in language that understands how the flying note leaps out of the mundane, and into the numinous. He speaks, compellingly, in a voice that combines authority with a neighborly amiability, delivering his lines in a forceful, no-nonsense manner.

Making the disc even more valuable is Paul Austerlitz’s dark, voluble bass clarinet work. At times (“The Latin American Poem,” “High Modes: Vision as Ritual: Confirmation”) he mirrors Harper’s rhythms with playful, bumptious lines, or evokes the structured lyricism of the subject (“Copenhagen,” a dedication to Gordon), or he teases further magic out of Harper’s lines (the fluttering phrases behind Harper’s description of playing a record of “Alabama” on “Here Where Coltrane Is”).

Coloristically, it’s all in the metal and wind of the clarinet, and the pleasing, rich grain of Harper’s voice.The ears-to-soul atmosphere of these conversations is all that is needed to communicate the power of these simultaneously comforting and challenging texts. Double Take is a rare and rewarding collaboration, highly recommended.