The late Mal Waldron was one of jazz’s most original and expressive colourists. He ignored the conventional emphasis in jazz on fleet melodic invention: a typical Waldron solo contains nothing one might call a “line”. No other pianist could make his mere choice of range on the keyboard count for so much, to the point where it became a key structural component of Waldron’s music. He would work over a tightly restricted set of notes in the middle of the piano, his right hand tirelessly kneading them over and over again into the same two or three patterns. These middle-register musings might to begin with seem half-private, but as Waldron gradually inched up the keyboard it was as if he was pushing them with gathering force and insistence into the light. If the tone of his music was dark, it was also often tender and far from monochrome: in those moments when he reached up into the treble for a contrast of colour and mood the results were delightful or, sometimes, profoundly moving. Waldron’s concentration on texture, shape, colour and weight rather than melodic invention could make one think of natural phenomena: the shifting dialogue of sky and sea and clouds. It is no accident that one of his staple compositions – beautifully revisited on this recording – was “The Seagulls of Kristiansund,” a seascape evocation that ends with mimicked gull cries. Meteorologists classify clouds as stratus, cirrostratus, cumulus, and so forth, and one might well classify passages of his music in a similar way – dark and threatening; wispy; delicate; serene. If the analogy seems far-fetched, listen to the opening of “Rites of Initiation”, which could easily – right from the opening raindrop plink! – pass as a tone-poem depiction of a gathering storm.

Two tracks on One More Time feature Waldron as a solo pianist, a format in which he was too rarely recorded. By conventional standards he had a modest technique (which is more of a comment on the expressive limitations built into such standards), but no other pianist, for instance, has found subtler shadings in a tremolo. For proof just listen to “All Alone,” six minutes almost entirely given over to the device, from the opening thrum on middle E to the wistfully broken treble octaves that broach the theme to the bright, billowing haze of notes that closes over its final cadence. “In the Land of Clusters” employs a favourite Waldron device: a chordal shape is grasped in each hand and shifted chromatically up or down the keyboard. Sometimes the hands work in contrary motion, sometimes in the same direction but at different speeds – the auditory equivalent of moiré patterns.

On the disc’s remaining six tracks Waldron is accompanied by the bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel. Waldron’s approach to rhythm and musical space encourages bassists to avoid conventional “walking,” and Avenel is an excellent partner for him on open-ended vehicles for improvisation such as the spontaneously conceived “Rites of Initiation” and “The Seagulls of Kristiansund” – slowly rocking one- or two-chord tunes that Waldron could easily sit and unpack for much longer than he does on this occasion (some previous recordings of “Seagulls” have been over 20 minutes long). On other tracks Avenel’s accompaniment is occasionally less appropriate, cluttering up the music with bursts of hyperactivity – understandably enough on “Blues for JJ’s Bass,” but with less justification on “You” and “Waltz for Marianne.” Two tracks are graced by appearances from Waldron’s musical partner of 40-odd years, Steve Lacy. “You” is a balmy, rather old-fashioned-sounding waltz; Waldron’s classic “Soul Eyes” is for most of its length a piano-and-bass performance: Lacy slips in right at the track’s end, like an old friend dropping by to say hello, or farewell.

This CD was recorded in January of last year, and released in October; in December, Waldron died of cancer at the age of 76. He contributes a brief, almost unbearably poignant comment to the liner notes: “Measured against eternity, our life span is very short, so I am extremely happy to have this record as a high point of mine.” But he wasn’t ready to go gently into that good night quite yet: he made sure that the liner notes also included contact details for his booking agent.

Nate Dorward

Cadence, June 2003