‘Breaking the Shell’ Offers a Jazz Summit from a Multigenerational Trio of Musical Mavericks

A multigenerational gathering of jazz musicians of the highest order, Breaking the Shell features drummer Andrew Cyrille, guitarist Bill Frisell and pipe organist Kit Downes, collectively navigating 11 tracks of ethereal originals and indigenous folk songs from around the globe. 

Now age 84, Cyrille was still in his teens when he played with pianist Cecil Taylor (who he worked with for 15 years). Cyrille was a driving force in 1960s avant-garde jazz, notably as a collaborator with trumpeter Ted Daniel, saxophonists David S. Ware and Jimmy Lyons and a series of other deep-cut sessions, enjoying a vital decades-long career as a leader and side player. Since the late ‘70s, Grammy Award-winning guitarist Frisell has played with artists as disparate as drummers Paul Motian and Elvin Jones, bassist Charlie Haden, and was a key cohort in saxophonist John Zorn’s 1980s ensembles. Versant in jazz, rock, country (and with Zorn’s Naked City, full-tilt grindcore) and all forms in between, continuing onward with his present trio, the 73-year-old Frisell is known for his languid, rounded style, inexplicably recognizable while able to adapt into a variety of settings. At age 38, British-born Kit Downes trained on the pipe organ via a classical-music education, but early on he began working with an unpredictable roster of collaborators, including electronic artists Squarepusher and Leafcutter John, while finding a home as a contemporary artist of the ECM Records imprint. 

Much of the inherent ambience of the session Breaking the Shell is due in no small part to the recording setting: in this case the 1820-constructed The Church of St. Luke in the Fields located in NYC’s Greenwich Village. But it’s the trio of players who invoke this jazz baptismal, bringing their past and present motivations to ignite the soft blue flame of the Norwegian folk song, “Sjung Herte Sjung.” Over a shimmering drone by Downes (courtesy of the cathedral’s Baroque-style organ, which boasts 27 stops and 1,670 pipes), Frisell coaxes and jabs out a dark-tinged melody of minor-seconds and flamenco flourishes, while Cyrille assembles and discards percussive rattles and rumbles that creates a kind of alien take on swing. Opening and closing with a similar uncertain magic, the five-minute ebb and flow of “Sjung Herte Sjung” contains an odd musical logic, no doubt propelled by Cyrille, Frisell and Downes’ shared histories of performing expansive, unpredictable music which, like the remainder of Breaking the Shell, gently cracks open 21^st-century jazz.

Breaking the Shell is available on all streaming platforms and can be purchased on vinyl, CD and digital download formats.