Public On Sale: Fri, Jan. 23 at 10 am
In the waning days of 2024, Julian Lage began what he calls a writing sprint. Lage has long been prolific: In the three decades since the documentary Jules at Eight identified him as a prodigy, Lage has made a dozen records with his own bands and duos, and three times that many with leading lights of his artistic orbit, like John Zorn, Gary Burton, and Charles Lloyd. But Lage was preparing for a four-day residency at SFJAZZ, plus the premiere of a new quartet of old collaborators and friends who had strangely never recorded together: Lage with steadfast bassist Jorge Roeder, dynamic drummer Kenny Wollesen, and vaunted keyboardist John Medeski. As he thought about their qualities as players and hypothesized about how they might interact, he set a timer for 20 minutes, wrote a tune, recorded it once, and then began again.
Lage called one particular tune he loved during that sprint, “Storyville.” It’s quick, flickering riff felt like an invitation for conversation, exactly the kind of thing he hopes to find in such a sprint. “My dream with composing, really, is to have something to talk about once we’re together,” he says. “It’s not the end-all, be-all.” Hearing what the quartet created with the piece in the studio is like watching a pot of water boil and observing not the chaos but the order, the way every molecule is pushing against the other with purpose.
That is the spirit of Scenes from Above, Lage’s second full-length album with the producer Joe Henry and his first with this striking quartet. Where 2024’s Speak to Me was Lage’s grand statement as an improvising bandleader capable of helming a relatively large ensemble through a diverse set of tunes, Scenes from Above is about being a band member himself, about Lage exploring the tunes he has written with a crew he has built with that entirely in mind. Its nine tracks frame a brilliantly open experience, with four astounding players giving and taking space in equal measure as they explore these songs in one space, in real time.
“Neither of us were interested in making Speak to Me II. That record has its own character, and there’s a great liberation in that,” says Henry. “That was an idea that exists, and we don’t have to babysit it any longer.”
After his assorted writing sprints, Lage had already whittled down the possibilities to maybe 50 pieces from perhaps twice that many. He began sending selections to Henry, and they talked about four or five that felt like essential pieces of this frame. Then they wondered about how they might add color and motion to that picture, less about what was missing and more about what felt important for this band to emphasize.
Also, Lage was in a deep period of thinking about what he calls folkloric music, from the songs of Susana Baca and early calypso numbers to the American blues and Béla Bartók’s integration of Romanian and Hungarian tunes into his own work. His writing reflected those touchstones. And as the two-day session at New York’s Sear Sound began to near, he also thought about texture and timbre, about how he could use his instrument to avoid the familiar terrain and potential pitfalls of the guitar trio-plus-organ configuration. By choosing an acoustic guitar rather than an electric on a particular tune, for instance, could he lure Medeski into unexpected spaces?
“Keyboards are often a drag — we play too many notes. I can play a lot of notes, too,” Medeski says, laughing. “Julian really thinks about things, has a lot of intention. But it’s a beautiful combination of caring about the concept and direction and of being free and in the moment.”
Scenes from Above radiates both qualities in tandem. Opener “Opal” is a gorgeous invocation, Lage’s thoughtful and patient lead unfurling beneath a rhythmic bed so rich and supportive it feels like cultivated terra firma. Wollesen and Roeder gallop slowly and steadily as Medeski and Lage exchange thoughts, subtle shifts in the organ’s hum and glow prompting the guitarist to move in unexpected directions. The quartet sizzles during “Talking Drum,” Medeski stabs his organ between the beat until he lifts up to ride alongside Lage and, as it were, discuss the melody. There is, as Lage had hoped, plenty to talk about. It is as close as Scenes from Above gets to groove and jam, but there is a gleeful resistance to it, too, of never sitting still with a solo or rhythm. They get into the idea and get out, too excited by what may still happen to belabor anything they’ve already found.
By the time they reach the end of “Something More,” this quartet is a band that has instantly found its rapport. Sad and sweet, this feels like a four-part prayer, a shared wish for better days ahead. That they handle a song like this with such finesse and warmth on a first or second take, as with every track on Scenes from Above, remains a testament to the concept, to freedom, and, between them both, to trust.
“I came in with a desire to present this as an egalitarian thing, rather than ‘I’m the leader — let’s build something around me,’” Lage confirms. “This is music that’s connected to our own growth and development individually and within our relationships with one another, with no sense that anybody’s expecting anything.”
In spite of the caliber of players on Scenes from Above, the tracks hover around the four-minute mark, the result of the restraint they felt in a studio where they could play quietly and still be heard. The exception, though, is “Night Shade,” the album’s exquisite seven-minute centerpiece, suffused with a Medeski organ run that feels like gospel gold and a series of Lage solos that suggest brilliantly gestural blues. But is it really an exception? Listen again and notice the many instances in which the music crests like a wave, about to crack open into something that resembles chaos. But they hold steady there both times, both to be heard and to hear others. That is what makes Scenes from Above so poignant and timely — four dazzling instrumentalists in a room, talking to one another but never actually over one another.