*** What We Live

TRUMPETS

(Soul Note)

The sax/bass/drums trio What We Live don't go after the avant-garde with full-on pummeling assault. Rather, they adhere to a kind of minimalism akin to Japanese calligraphy, where the relation of mark to ground is crucial and any single stroke can change the nature of the composition as a whole. For a collectively improvising ensemble, that can mean aimless meandering or, as one critic calls it, "dog-chasing-its-tail music."

But What We Live (the ROVA Sax Quartet's Larry Ochs with bassist Lisle Ellis and drummer Donald Robinson) are expert practitioners. I don't think they play anything you'd call a "groove" anywhere on this hour-plus album, and the opening piece is 20 minutes long. But the all-important free-jazz "pulse" is something they know inside out. An isolated syncopated three-note bass drone, a repeated, ringing cymbal pattern, the polyrhythmic roll of mallets against drumheads -- all contribute to the subtle tensions that keep these performances, though loose and "timeless," thoroughly engrossing. Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith -- who practically invented this kind of playing, with its dramatic pauses and gestural horn figures -- is in fine, colorful form here. The somewhat more restless but no less astute Dave Douglas is the second trumpet, playing on the last three of the album's five cuts.

-- Jon Garelick