Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.American pianist and composer Myra Melford has long found inspiration in, and connection with, art forms outside jazz. This London gig’s warmth, edge and sense of the slightly surreal presented new compositions in an ongoing project focused on the work of American artist Cy Twombly. Melford’s approach to the Twombly aesthetic eschews sonic portraiture and seeks common elements in methods, traditions and core concerns. Like Twombly, Melford is located in her field’s avant garde, and, paralleling his methods, she combines a sense of immediacy with a close attention to compositional form. Song titles such as “The Wayward Line”, “Interlude 1: To Dribble, to Smear, to Splash” and “A Line With a Mind of its Own” captured Twombly’s aesthetic in words. Spidery piano, off-kilter riffs and brash beats made the connection in sound.Although the initial spark for Melford’s interest in Twombly was a 1994 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, work on her first edition of Twombly-inspired work, the album For the Love of Fire and Water, only started in earnest in 2019. (It was released in 2022.) That album used a multi-layered quintet to investigate what lay behind the painter’s seemingly rushed scrawls and tactile daubs, but here she conjured multiple textures from an impressively mobile trio. Regular drummer Ches Smith doubled on vibraphone to create an extra layer of sound and Londoner Neil Charles, an impressive stand-in for bassist Michael Formanek, was equally adept on strings and bow. This was gig three of a short European tour — the previous night, the band played in Rome — and Charles’s ability to play freely while following a complex score was impressive. The evening began with an elliptical bass riff that leaned into the blues and cracks from Smith’s brittle snare drum in unexpected places. Melford added a series of lines, a two-note motif gathered force, the pulse quickened and then came a burst of expressionist jazz, with Melford rushing round the keyboard, slamming two-handed chords and looping quick-fire rhythmic motifs.As “Drift” developed, themes switched from piano to bass or reappeared in altered form, and a magical interlude was conjured when bowed bass combined with shimmers of vibraphone. Melford’s piano aesthetic stands in the percussive left-field lineage of Ellington, Monk and Cecil Taylor. Themes and solos come with sharp angles, wide intervals and lines that are contoured in unexpected shapes. At this performance, she developed them fully with an underlying sense of purpose and control that was matched by her accompanists. Smith’s pared-down approach to drumming strips rhythmic complexity to its essence and, played at volume, complemented Melford’s chordal slams and looped rhythms with spaced rimshots, hissed cymbals and tight rolls. Charles, meanwhile, surged or relaxed underneath and pulled the pulse this way and that.But it wasn’t all Sturm und Drang. There were playful funky rhythms and moments of calm. And with every piece in motion, the evening delivered the coherence of a series of variations on an underlying, if somewhat abstract, theme. Her single pause for announcements introduced “Dry Print to Twombly”, the last number of the set. Explaining the painter’s connection to her music, she said: “There’s lots of different kinds of lines, gestures, that sort of thing.” Vibrantly delivered with an unerring sense of form, it made for an enchanting night.★★★★☆vortexjazz.co.uk
