At 81, master drummer Andrew Cyrille shows no signs of slowing down. He signed to ECM for 2016's brilliant quartet offering Declaration of Musical Independence, which included guitarist Bill Frisell, pianist Richard Teitelbaum, and bassist Ben Street. For 2018's Lebroba, he delivered a trio outing with the guitarist and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. Cyrille returns to the quartet format on The News, with Street, Frisell, and pianist David Virelles (replacing Teitelbaum, who died in 2020). The drummer, pianist, and bassist all worked together before on Virelles' masterful 2012 album Continuum. Cyrille's remarkable diversity and focus have been displayed with many leaders, from Coleman Hawkins and Walt Dickerson to Carla Bley and Cecil Taylor. While he is a sublime timekeeper, Cyrille is better known as a time stretcher and space maker. His playing trademark is not force or swing, but indelible presence.
"Mountain" is one of three tunes that was penned by Frisell, whose impressionistic Telecaster allows melody to fall from a smaller palette of chord voicings that begin in a major key, then fall slightly outside as Virelles and Street embellish around and through them. Cyrille frames the tune with singing cymbal work, low-tuned snares, and tom-toms that find a dance rhythm in the minimal melody. In an exchange with Virelles during the pianist's solo, Cyrille moves underneath with layered cymbals and hi-hat to draw the music from ether to foreground. While the drummer acts as a textural investigator during the first half of Steve Colson's "Leaving East of Java," he becomes both interlocutor and engine during its second half, subtly yet insistently pushing the band forward. Frisell's Monk-esque blues "Go Happy Lucky" offers the guitarist soloing along the melody with Street, while Virelles and Cyrille flow together behind the groove. "The News" is a conceptual piece Cyrille initially cut during the 1970s as a solo percussion work. Here he places a newspaper over the snare and toms, then plays them with brushes. Frisell adds fragmented chords, and restrained yet rumbling distortion, while Virelles layers droning synth under his piano as Street alternates between single notes and bowed chords. The pianist's "Incienso" emerges from a minimal melody that weds Brazilian folk music and post-bop as the band creates a spacious groove in the margins. "Dance of the Nuances," co-composed by pianist and bandleader, loosely threads together ambient and experimental music with electronics around a haunting minor-key melody. Cyrille introduces the closer "With You in Mind" by reciting a tender poem. Virelles and Street enter in duo, framing the elegant yet elliptical balladic structure and harmony economically. Frisell and Cyrille enter halfway through. The guitarist expands the melodic invention as Cyrille adds hushed snare and cymbals, gently carving out space inside the lyric. As a whole, The News is a master class in the less-is-more approach to drumming as well as ensemble play. Brilliant.