Chris Cheek, Bill Frisell, Tony Scherr, Rudy Royston, natural music among friends: Videos, Photos

It all started with a photo, titled “The Duck Hunter on the Kutenai River” taken by ethnologist Edwards Curtis, and the two meanings it contains: the reflection of the canoe on the river and the gaze of its occupant towards the horizon.

A suggestion that led saxophonist Chris Cheek to the music of “Keepers of the Eastern Door“, (Analog Tone Factory), an album recorded with his old companion in the Paul Motian Band Bill Frisell, bassist Tony Scherr, and drummer Rudy Royston with an original lineup that includes originals as well as covers from different worlds and eras, from the Beatles to Henry Purcell, Olivier Messiaen and Henry Mancini.

In reality, the idea behind the genesis of the album has an even more complex history, and draws inspiration from other vintage photos of Curtis and the contrast between that world of Native Americans, the environments frequented by Cheek at a young age in St. Louis, Missouri, and the urban realities of Boston and New York, where the saxophonist developed the first important steps of his career as a musician, in the 90s with Motian, Seamus Blake and other musicians.

“I felt a strong distance between the natural world and the highly industrialized society in which we live, says Cheek, and I began to think of the definition of the “Guardians of the Eastern Gate” as a metaphor for people who try to preserve a way of life based on traditional values, less materialistic and more respectful of the environment in which we live”.

The title refers directly to the Mohawk tribe belonging to the Iroqui confederation, originally settled in the eastern region of New York state on the border with southern Canada and Vermont, and engaged in the fight against the process of European colonization since the mid-18th century.

These ideas of Cheek have found, in 2024, an ideal landing place in the intentions of saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh and pianist and sound engineer Pete Rende, fresh from starting an American record label based on a totally analog approach and which prides itself on not using computers to produce music, the Analog Tone Factory.

The album is therefore the account of a band gathered in a room, at the Power Station in New York to play live, recorded on a two-track analog tape, mastered with an analog process to preserve all the warmth and the natural and deep sound of the session.

The result reflects the initial intentions of its creator, music that lights up and develops with great naturalness starting from the initial, lively “Kino’s canoe” with the theme proposed by the saxophone and the free interventions of Frisell’s guitar and Royston’s drums, up to the final, intimate ballad “Go on dear”.

In between we find a bit of everything, interpreted as in a small party between friends who meet again after years and are happy to share chats and instrumental dialogues: the fascinating slow blues by Henry Mancini “Smoke rings”, the contemplative atmospheres of a composition for choir by Olivier Messiaen, “O sacrum convivium“, the clear melody of “On a Clear Day” written by Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner for the 1965 musical of the same name.

And, in a sequence that might seem incongruous but is plausible thanks to the original treatment of the musical material operated by the group, a song taken from the eighteenth-century baroque repertoire of Henry Purcell “Lost Is My Quiet”, and a reconstruction of the Beatles hit “From Me To You“, which reconnects to the frequent homages to the four from Liverpool who often appear between the strings of Frisell’s guitar.

The title track, an original piece by Cheek, has a slow and processional development, with Royston’s percussions that draw a thin, tribal rhythmic perimeter within which the calm and intense dialogue between the guitar and the sax takes place, based on the mutual exchange of ideas and brief melodic cues, essential and anti-virtuosic, in the style that unites the two soloists.

It is music that, following the presentation notes of the album, suggests a form of spiritual communion with nature and a relationship of respect with the planet we inhabit. “I’m reluctant to use the term spiritual,” Cheek says, “but that’s the word used to describe a realm that exists but we can’t see or quantify. Traditional native cultures are aware of that dimension of reality that we’ve lost touch with today. Seeing that figure in the canoe suggested to me a parallel world that supports what we have in our hands, but it’s hard to talk about it.”

So let’s just let the music of Chris Cheek, Bill Frisell, Tony Scherr and Rudy Royston speak in this sense too.