Umwelt by Denman Maroney

Umwelt is the third album Denman Maroney has made since moving from New York to France in 2020. All three include Scott Walton (bass), Robin Fincker (reeds), and Samuel Silvant (drums). The first two comprise The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, also on Neuma, which also includes Emilie Lesbros (vocals). Umwelt includes Guillaume Orti (reeds) instead of Lesbros.

Umwelt is German for the perceptive capacities of species. In his book An Immense World, Ed Jong says we might better save the world by sensing the senses of other species.

“Hyperpiano,” Maroney’s inside-the-piano method, appears only in Andale, but temporal harmony, his compositional tool, is ever present. (qv, denmanmaroney.com) Iteratio, Isotrope, and Long Odds are through-composed; the other tracks include improvisation. Iteratio, Sea Set Wheat and Long Odds were written for Maroney’s trio with Ratzo Harris and Bob Meyer; Sea Set Wheat they recorded for the Bandcamp album Martingale. Isotrope was written for Diane Moser’s Composers Big Band. The other pieces were written for this quintet. Andale and Simplexity were written separately but go together well. Two Up, One Down was inspired by the 3+4+5 vamp on John Coltrane Quartet’s version of My Favorite Things. Lilt just wandered in. The title Rolling Evermore comes from Wordsworth’s Ode:
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

“How could I have missed this fantastic composer, a sort of Conlon Nancarrow who can swing like Thelonious Monk; a return to the origin where jazz reclaims its polyrhythms and complex polytemporalities?” – Drame.org

Denman Maroney is known for his "hyperpiano" techniques (playing the keys with one hand and the strings with other using slides and bows of metal, plastic, rubber, and wood) and his “temporal harmonies” (composing and improvising in multiple tempos). He has recorded for Outnow, Porter, Innova, Clean Feed, Nuscope, Kadima, Cryptogramophone, New World, Mutable, Victo, and Erstwhile among others.

denmanmaroney.com