“chapin_thomas_trio”
Thomas Chapin Trio
Night Bird Song
Knitting Factory
It seems to me that the horn was originally invented to mimic the voices of birds. Through man’s desire to chart his environment, one day he found out that blowing through a stick made a sound that was suspiciously like those made by those funny things that flew about over his head. Putting holes into this stick and letting different amounts of air pass through allowed him to change the pitch of the sound, and soon he was matching the shrill cries and whispers note by note. While Tom Chapin, Mario Pavone and Michael Sarin still have the sense of wonder at the sounds their instruments make, they blossom outward, carefully shaping the melodies. I could not conceive of the fact that a single note on this album wasn’t composed, pondered and mulled over for days on end. Every melody is perfect in its own right. Each crystalline note is approached with reverence and delicate hands, softly passed back and forth, until Alphaville, where they play long distance football with the fragile object. They make it sound so easy, moving the melody all around the stereo field, that one wishes to dive into the CD player just to be closer to the music. Those of you familiar with Chapin’s work already have this, for those that aren’t, I ask: “Why not?”
Knitting Factory Works, 74 Leonard St., New York, NY 10013; http://www.knittingfactory.com
