Dave Rempis has been an important determine on Chicago’s improvised music scene for greater than 1 / 4 century. However whereas his contributions are enduring, they aren’t mounted. Early on, he was a part of a cohort of musicians who moved to town with the intention to add their voices to a rising musical group that nurtured new expertise, but additionally projected a global outlook.

At age 22 and recent out of faculty, Rempis joined the Vandermark 5, to which he contributed high-energy, instrumental versatility (he performs alto, tenor and baritone saxophones) and a readiness to confront any problem put earlier than him. By the point he based the Rempis Percussion Quartet in 2004, the saxophonist had already established himself as a live performance organizer and bandleader in addition to a stalwart aspect individual. These days, he’s an instigator for change and progress, shaping the aesthetics of festivals that time the place the music goes subsequent and forging new connections with musicians in different cities. 

However Rempis doesn’t accomplish that on the expense of outdated connections. The 2-CD Harvesters testifies to his capability develop inside enduring artistic relationships. In its early years, the RPQ’s mixture of unfurling, improvised melodies and dense, surging rhythms made it one of many metropolis’s most reliably thrilling live performance tickets. Since 2009, when Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten joined Rempis and founding drummers Tim Daisy and Frank Rosaly to type the lineup that persists to this present day, they’ve shifted scenes from a ceaselessly gigging hometown combo to at least one that will get collectively on the highway, since there’s at all times at the least one member residing at the least a thousand miles from Chicago.

Harvesters, their eleventh launch, was recorded throughout a week-long French tour. “All the pieces Occurs To You,” the tumultuous 29-minute improvisation that opens the album’s first disc, is drawn from the RPQ’s first evening taking part in collectively in 4 years (no thanks, COVID), however each its peaking vitality and intuitive, mercurial shifts of tone and assault attest to the quartet’s bond. There’s no rusty chops, no blown cues, only a mind-meld so astute that the progress of its spontaneously generated sounds feels inevitable. Should you’ve been questioning if the band nonetheless has it, marvel no extra.

However the advantage of time-forged cohesion will also be a pitfall; for this type of music to maintain its flame, it has to shed its habits. So, for the primary time ever on document, there’s a visitor on an RPQ document. French trumpeter Jean-Luc Cappozzo brings an instantaneous change to the music, which turns into extra layered and spacious, forgoing momentum in favor of inward-looking exploration. Greater than half of the second disc was recorded with out an viewers, the primary time since 2010 that the group has made an album and not using a crowd to cheer it on. The deliberate, exploratory “Little Fascists” lingers lengthy over sparse cymbal exchanges, charged bowing and Rempis’ elongated, melancholy tones; it’s one of many quietest issues the group has ever executed, however no much less compelling. On Harvesters, the Rempis Percussion Quartet proves its capability to journey new paths as decisively and productively because the acquainted avenues of residence.

—Invoice Meyer