Geoff Goodman “Jazz + Haiku” (Double Moon 2011)

Geoff Goodman – guitar
Fjoralba Turku – vocals
Kiyomi – recitation
Till Martin – saxophone, clarinet
Henning Sieverts – bass
Bill Elgart – drums

Website:
http://www.geoffgoodman.com/html/cds.html

Concept and project albums, especially double concept albums, tend to be interesting on first listen, but once you get the idea, it’s over. Geoff Goodman’s “Jazz and Haiku,” though, is the exception that proves the rule. This CD is a gorgeous, evocative combination of two beautiful artistic forms whose richness and revelations deepen with each listen. Of course, that’s what haiku and jazz are both all about—depth of insight. Goodman and band deliver that and then some. They have found the right resonating frequencies for the two artistic forms.

For people who live in Japan, the concept of Japan often feels distorted or enervated when filtered through western concepts. Goodman and band, though, have fully grasped haiku’s complexities, nuances, and feelings and, though this sounds strange to say, its rhythms. The jazz is neither hard bop nor free jazz, which would be too much for the poems. Instead, they make music that is delicately textured and even-tempo-ed, reminiscent of ECM chamber jazz, but fitting for the haiku’s meanings and essence. The musical motions fit the syllabic patterns by enhancing them; the jazz and haiku each draw out more from the other.

The haiku are wonderful selections from the masters of the genre: Basho, Buson and Issa. The haiku are recited in both English and Japanese, back and forth at times, overlapping at others, and sung to a melody, other times being poised deeply within the total musical sound, other times set out front in the sound. The words are put into a delightful assortment of aural contexts. It is also nice that Goodman knows how to play with the words, letting them fall into the music as often as adapting the music to the structure of the haiku.

Haiku is one of the fascinating contributions of Japanese culture to world literature. Both jazz and haiku are forms that revel in the eternal moment. Jazz and haiku are about powerful, peak moments that are both immersed in the present, but extend far beyond singularities. Both forms demand a high degree of concentration, meditative and mindful, relaxed and intimate. The haiku and jazz work with interior depths, worlds within the sounds and meanings. The combination of jazz and haiku allows the chance to see and hear and feel and realize something new. Whitney Balliet called jazz the sound of surprise and Goodman’s lovely musical-poetic interface shows how haiku is also built around surprise.

Jazz and haiku is a match made perhaps not in heaven, but in the intensity of the present moment. Or maybe they meet up in places more poetic and jazzy: standing by a moss-covered pond, leaning over an old piano, waking to a brisk frost, sighing with realization, riding a wave of passion in a smoky club. The CD inspires such poetic responses by working with moods, atmosphere and intuition as well as with words and melodies and forms. Or rather, the group has found a marvelous balance of all those elements. This inspired set of poem-songs, there is no quite right word to catch the freshness of this blending, is a marvelously rare work. It is a meditation on the beauty of jazz and haiku and a gorgeous path towards insight about them both.

(October 30, 2011)