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This is music composed specifically to unfold through collective improvisation, which means that the form of the music itself is directly shaped through mutual interplay among its participants, and that collaborative drama contributes centrally to the musical narrative a listener hears.

This approach to coordinating music poses a deliberate alternative to the relative one way flow of information that passes between composer & performer in much euroclassical practice as well as to that genre’s orientation toward the construction of sonic monuments, a propensity also shared by much pop music. Pop formulations furthermore have tended to compress rhythmic scope down to basic denominator background beats. And, while much contemporary improvised music may emulate open form as developed through jazz, the root African elements & attitudes out of which this evolved have many times been distilled out.

Collective improvisation can also be recognized as a theatrical personification of the dynamics of polyrhythm - that intricately sophisticated African model of coordinated multiplicity. Polyphonically organized music is able to integrate divergent voices, levels, directions & narratives; but the wave matrix of polyrhythm’s gravitational convergences & suspensions further enriches each moment of music with a holographic sensation of depth. This especially charges & activates the gaps & silences that envelop musical gestures & encourages attention beyond linear & sequential interpretations of activity to include more multidimensional perceptions of time & movement.

This music often explores making polyrhythm central to the organization & participation of the entire ensemble. One strategy has been to code polyrhythm into the music via a stacking of interrelated countermelodies that places each instrumentalist in a position of direct responsibility for the composite ensemble sound. The countermelodies - & the relationships among them - provide a thematic interface that supports both extemporized development & communications among improvisers as the music progresses. MetagrooveTM is an allied compositional process that associates successive, contrasting polyrhythmic constellations (i.e. grooves) to create a overall groovic resonance (in other words, a meta- groove).

Each voice in this ensemble maintains an equal distinct narrative foreground persona; & it follows that much of the compositional focus has been on developing music through the rhythm section. As Bakongo scholar Fu-Kiau Bunseki has put it, “Treble voicings represent our world, but bass patterns come from the spirit.” The bass not only carries on an independent melodic narrative at a pace appropriate to its register, but often functions as conductor of the ensemble, cueing shifts from one metagrooveTM constellation to the next. These shifts are also multidirectionally jointed, allowing an overall form to wrap around itself & construct an ensemble narrative that’s more oriented toward immersion than linear progression from beginning to end.

It’s also natural that drums figure prominently in a music that explores rhythmic harmony & multidirectional movement. Some listeners may at first be disoriented by percussion’s abundant role here. But, as a trap kit enables the playing of as many as four simultaneous lines, it can also be considered as contributing more than one instrument to the ensemble. The non-tempered tones enunciated by drums contribute a significant component of this music’s melodic & tonal framework. Even a casual listening to Dou Dou Njaye Rose’s orchestra of sabar wolofs from Dakar, for example, can reinforce a recognition that drums, all by themselves, have more than enough range to enact complete & nuanced statements on as high a level as any music.

Some market oriented & cultural perspectives argue that music shouldn’t overly stretch or challenge listeners’ imaginations. Contrarily, this music aims toward a threshold where some aspect is slipping just enough beyond a listener’s comprehension to invite a sense of wonder & mystery as a small reminder that there’s always something more happening anywhere than is already known & recognized.

- patrick brennan

You could make the case that Detroit in the 1960s changed the direction of American music. In pop music, the immensely popular string of R&B hits from the Motown label raised rhythm above melody in American -- and maybe even world -- pop.At the same time, as the inner-city studios of Hitsville U.S.A. was making "The Sound of Young America," another rhythmic revolution was quietly going on just a couple blocks away. So quietly, in fact, that most musicians are still unaware of it.

patrick brennan is not among them. As a teenage saxophonist, brennan heard firsthand what almost-forgotten players like saxophonist Leon Henderson (Joe's brother) and drummer Bud Spangler were doing in out-of-the-way venues such as the Strata Concert Gallery."What I was hearing was all these polyrhythmic structures that resembled the kind of things that Miles was doing, but they did it in a more deliberate compositional fashion," brennan told me by phone from his New York home."It took me years to decode it, but it made a big impression on me. That and following the music back ... to Africa.

"When asked if being unschooled contributed to his saxophone sound, Brennan described himself as "schooled and a half. I like to play Charlie Parker backwards, but I don't have any feeling that I need to do that in my own music." While this seems to imply that brennan is an anything-goes free improviser of the "energy music" school, the saxophonist doesn't see it that way.True, the music played by his latest Sonic Openings band has energy to burn, most of it emanating from the extraordinary drummer David Pleasant.

But brennan's approach is rigorously compositional."Look, there's no such thing as music without composition, because there's always agreement, right? I slowly started to work with a language that made the whole band think rhythmically like the drummer, so that the tactility and the sculptural elements of rhythm become more prominent."Naturally, Pleasant is central to this concept."When he joined the group, he took stuff that takes people six months to learn and got it in a couple of hours. He's Gullah Geechee [from the Sea Islands of Georgia], born in Savannah, and he keeps these polyrhythms going. He knows exactly what he's doing."Many observers have theorized that jazz, taken to the brink by the rhythmic fury and apocalyptic questing of John Coltrane's late-'60s bands, played itself into a corner with nowhere left to go.

patrick brennan and his elegant and fiery band just may have found a way back out, a sonic opening, if you will.

Erie Times-News ShowCase - October 26. 2006 - -http://www.johnchacona.com

patrick brennan, Najib Sudani, Nirankar Khalsa and company build upon the commonalities of African-American and African-Maghribi music not only at the level of melody and rhythm, but also at a deeper level of interactive structure, each one giving and taking in turn. Sensitive listening on the part of each musician and a willingness to follow each other without being bound by typical genre constraints makes this recording one of the most satisfying and genuinely collaborative Gnawa explorations to date.

- Dr. Tim Fuson

Order Tracks Online at Artist Owned

Many observers have theorized that jazz, taken to the brink by the rhythmic fury and apocalyptic questing of John Coltrane's late-'60s bands, played itself into a corner with nowhere left to go. patrick brennan and his elegant and fiery band just may have found a way back out, a sonic opening, if you will.

Africans gave us a way to see the multi-layered authenticity of human experience through polyrhythm and syncopation. That gift allows us to realize a daily connection to the essential motion of all things.

- David Pleasant

see: IDEAS IN MOTION

composition:
which way what

VIDEO - Local 269, NYC, 2011

composition:

tilting curvaceous

VIDEO - Vision Festival XV, NYC, 2010

ronin phasing

Since moving to New York City in 1975, one-time bassist/painter patrick brennan has crafted a musical path that is open in its candor and indebtedness to all facets of black music. Much like trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, the alto saxophonist brews a thicket of his own distinct musical language that "unlike much contemporaneous vanguard music is built specifically upon the potentialities of swinging and polyrhythm."

For the astute lay person this means moving the expressive expansiveness of trap playing and the drum choir into "the foreground of an entire orchestra's intelligence."

But none of this captures Brennan's subtle humor and wit.

patrick brennan: Rhythms of Passion