Since the beginning of the 21st century, David S. Ware's recordings have moved more toward the notion of composition than free-blowing improvisation. The album Threads is the most fully realized of his scoring attempts yet, and stands out from his catalog as a work of great innovation and emotional power. The David S. Ware String Ensemble is comprised of his quartet with William Parker, Guillermo Brown, and Matthew Shipp, and is augmented by microtonal violist Mat Maneri and classical maestro Daniel Bernard Roumain on violin. Ware's compositions are not subtle by jazz standards. They involve stridently stated rhythmic arrangements, such as those found on Sufic Passages, which inverts and extends part of the line from John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, and is eerily reminiscent of the intro statement of the 1960s Ramsey Lewis Trio with Maurice White in live settings -- check out Hang on Sloopy, Wade in the Water, or Dancing in the Street from Cadet Records for reference. Ware sounds nothing like Lewis, of course, particularly with this instrumentation. Shipp uses a Korg synthesizer on the entire album, and the rhythmic patterns but forth by Brown and Parker are mere jump-off points for explorations in tone, color, and texture. Ware's melodic sensibility is never quite revealed, though it is never absent, either. Here, once a pattern is stated and developed, it is extrapolated upon first by the string players creating modal passages in the middle. Ware and Shipp function either as soloists or contrapuntal rhythmic foils on the track.

1		Ananda Rotation
2		Sufic Passages
3		Weave, Pt. 1
4		Threads
5		Carousel of Lightness
6		Weave, Pt. 2

	Like us on Facebook
	@SoundHound	Follow