Joe Fonda Quartet: Eyes on the Horizon

That four musicians who’d never played together as a quartet could make such a coherent album owes in part to bassist/flutist Joe Fonda’s past collaborations with pianist Satoko Fujii, with drummer Tiziano Tononi, and with his mentor and the record’s inspiration, trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. That an avant-garde session, rife with abstract structures and free improvisations, could have such a comforting effect on a listener is more surprising. The sometimes-thick textures of Fonda’s composed sections open up into airy spaces for solos and duets that encourage calm reflection. Fonda’s exquisitely defined double bass and Fujii’s sharply faceted piano occasionally spin off notes at blurred velocities, with Tononi’s tight, disciplined percussion magically locking in. All three get ample opportunity to express their distinct voices. But all paths lead to Smith, the now 82-year-old AACM and CMIF (Creative Music Improvisers Forum) veteran, in honor of whom Fonda organized the 63-minute recording and wrote five of the seven pieces. Smith’s now piercing, now cozy trumpet tone, his manipulations of timbre, his playfulness with pitch, and his jagged, conversational phrasing act like gravitational forces holding all the elements together in a constantly expanding and contracting galaxy of sounds.