Altoist John Gruntfest has rarely appeared on disc, though he’s a longstanding veteran of the West Coast free jazz scene. This new batch of records remedies this situation by making available a couple older, unreleased sessions, as well as two new recordings by his current trio, which features drummer Jack Duval and tenor saxophonist Megan Bierman. Alignment, the first of the trio discs, isn’t a bad place to start for the newcomer. The 16-1/2-minute opening track, “Alignment Viewing,” is classic energy music. The horns open with raw and celebratory pentatonic fanfares, then uncork a relentless dive-bombing motif that carries through the rest of the piece. The next piece, “Planets Spinning,” is presented in two consecutive takes, and offers a sharp contrast in mood: feathery, cooled-out saxophone counterpoint and gentle percussion. The long “Planets Dancing” is altogether funkier, built over Duval’s compulsive, swaying almost-groove. Alignment is recommended listening for fans of unvarnished, gutsy improvising; its only flaw is the excess of alternative takes, especially the unnecessary extra 14 minutes of “Alignment Viewing” tacked on at the end.

Body of Pain, recorded a few months later, is a Gruntfest-Duval duo album for the most part, though Bierman contributes tenor on the last track, and chimes in on balafon on another track. The ironically titled opener, “Dick Cheney’s Blues,” is sad to say a real slog: an incendiary 18-minute squall “in which we visualize the illegitimate Bush-Cheney gang returning to Mordor where they belong,” as the sleevenotes put it. I’ll heartily second the political sentiments, but that doesn’t make this 18-minute blast of spleen any more listenable. One you get past that track, the album turns unexpectedly calm. The music is very spare, and often quite beautiful: Gruntfest plays with a singing purity, like a distant free-jazz cousin of Sonny Criss. But he has trouble sustaining interest as a soloist over this duration, and the lone two-horn track, “Stones in the River,” is easily the most satisfying piece.

The Free Music Festival Orchestra disc, dedicated “to all the great SF free players of the 70s,” documents a one-of-a-kind performance from the 1979 San Francisco Free Music Festival. The sleevenotes are pretty sketchy: what follows is gleaned from an email Gruntfest sent me after I lobbed him a few queries. The disc documents the first performance by a group that convened in various shapes and sizes between 1979 and 1983. The exact personnel on the date are now impossible to determine; Gruntfest says there were about 70 people. Even the partial record he has of participants runs to almost 40 names, including himself and three-quarters of ROVA (no “R”) among many others I don’t recognize. The four tracks on the disc are alternate takes of a single composition: three takes from the rehearsal, and the actual Festival performance. On the latter there is an additional layer of activity: in Gruntfest’s words: “Master Oki from Japan, 8th degree black belt karate and creator of Shintaido, showed up and requested a spot during the festival. As there were no open times they asked me if Master Oki could perform with the orchestra. I met with master Oki and explained that I expected something ‘special’ to happen. He replied, ‘Me too.’ So Shintaido performed their martial arts demonstration in the evening while the orchestra was performing and you can hear the rhythm on the floor in ‘FMF’ 4.” Their stomping provides the piece’s only percussion; the instrumentation otherwise seems to be exclusively winds and strings.

The four takes are each about 10 minutes long, and broadly similar in outline. They begin with a huge, shuddering unison – which is positively overwhelming on the first-take, a little more reined-in on the others; it gathers in energy and tension before discharging in a grandly seesawing motif, which Gruntfest identifies as “a transcription I did of a Venda ocarina duet from South Africa.” There are key differences. On takes 1 and 4, sectional transitions occur gradually, with much bleed-through and some productive chaos. Takes 2 and 3 are shorter, with the sectional divisions clearly marked, which is rather less effective on the whole. Gruntfest experiments with different weightings of the instruments and harmonies from take to take: take 3, for instance, has the richest exposition of the ocarina transcription, with a lovely deep saxophone line; take 4 is dominated by brass fanfares. What remains constant between the versions is the listener’s sense of glimpsing something tremendous through a bright sonic haze (the musicians’ improvised overlay on Gruntfest’s basic structure). As with Alignment, listeners may find the disc’s succession of alternate takes excessive; but it’s nonetheless an extraordinary document of its kind. The sound-quality is surprisingly good; and the groovy period cover art by Dori Seda is irresistible: Gruntfest is shown waving his hands in the air as long-haired musicians blow intently; above and around them, elephants rampage through billowing clouds.

Like the other three discs, Ritual Birth, recorded live in 1989, demonstrates Gruntfest’s very personal and idiosyncratic take on free jazz. He opens proceedings way offstage, his pealing alto barely audible over the audience noise. Taking his place in front of the mike, he fires off a brief introductory solo. The full eight-piece band then kicks in, firing off a round of bumping, fractious solos. None of this gives much warning of what’s to come: after a quarter of an hour the band leaps into a spirited rendition of “Mack the Knife,” and the rest of the disc is vibrant midsize-group jazz showcasing the leader’s quirky, good-humoured arrangements. Just over half an hour long, the album isn’t a major document but is nonetheless rather appealing. It’d be good to hear more of Gruntfest’s work in this idiom.

Four discs is a lot of music – too much, perhaps. I’d suggest that curious readers plump for Alignment and the Free Music Festival Orchestra disc, despite my reservations about the plethora of alternate takes. None of these four discs is perfect, but they’re all worth a listen, and one hopes that Gruntfest has more in his trove of tapes for future release.

Nate Dorward

Cadence, February 2004