Think Like the Waves

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“Think Like The Waves” introduces a group of guitar-oriented albums from Songlines that feature the instrument in a variety of musical settings. In this trio collaboration with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, who had played alongside legendary pianists Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans, guitarist Gordon Grdina connected to the lineage of innovative musical modernists.
– Mark Werlin

Vancouver guitarist and oud player Gordon Grdina asked his mentor Gary Peacock if he would do a trio record. Gary agreed, and helped bring Paul Motian (another of Gordon’s musical heroes). Recorded in Brooklyn in 2006, Think Like the Waves is Grdina’s remarkable international jazz debut, with compelling compositions and deep three-way interaction.

The record combines Grdina’s primary musical interests: mainstream jazz, free-form improvisation, and Arabic classical music. But diversity for its own sake was not his aim: “I wanted to bring together the oud and the guitar because I could hear the oud working so well with these two, and there’s something in the way they improvise which reminds me of the Arabic taqasim, the free-time improvised introduction to the melodic material of a piece. But I’ve tried to make the oud part of my complete musical experience, so that I can take it with me on any musical exploration without any preconceived idea about its musical role.” Many of the guitar tunes tap into a range of emotions on the melancholy and tender side while suggesting a tensile inner strength, which is then developed in different ways in the improvisations.”

From the almost straight-ahead (“Combustion”) to the quite abstract (“String Quartet #6”), the group explores improvisation in its purest form. There are solos, duos, and trio improvisations, but in each case the emphasis is on spontaneity and letting the music go wherever it will. “Music comes not from your head, but straight from what you’re hearing, with all its rhythmic/harmonic/melodic implications, and from having a connection where you’re getting as much of it out through your instrument as you can, without at the time having an intellectual understanding of it. It’s a different kind of thinking where you’re so involved in what you’re doing that your whole body is doing the thinking.”

Many of the pieces balance groove and pulse, strict tonality and a freer harmonic treatment. Grdina seems to draw particular inspiration from the jazz developments of the mid-60s to mid-70s: Jarrett, Paul Bley, Ornette… “There’s just something in that music that I gravitate towards, something about its simplicity and complexity all at the same time. Keith always sounds so fluid, and fluidity is what I hear in Ornette’s writing and playing as well. It’s not trying to be clever or complex. If it is complex that comes out of the need to express the melody more richly. In their music and improvisation, tonality is being stretched to its furthest point while still being tonal. Music like that, and by composers like Berg, Webern and Bartok, is what I’ve been particularly interested in.”

Gordon Grdina – guitar, oud
Gary Peacock – bass
Paul Motian – drums