In One Breath

A pretty incredible recording by a quartet of Russian improvisors living way out in the boondocks -- in the Ural mountains, one thousand miles away from Moscow, in Ekatarinburg, the place where czar Nicholas II and his family were murdered in 1918. The band's nationality and manner of performance naturally bring to mind the more famous Ganelin Trio, the Soviet Union's best-known contribution to Free Jazz. AMA certainly has much in common with Ganelin. Their music is an amalgam of various strands of contemporary classical forms, indigenous folk musics, and jazz. Pianist Anatoly Tlisov's playing is all scraggy atonality with an unmistakable streak of romanticism at its core.
Alexander Brykin manages to use the electric bass in a way that's wholly appropriate within the mostly acoustic context. Saxophonist/clarinetist Vladislav Talabuyev is a free expressionist with chops and taste, and the mostly unobtrusive drummer Valery Zhilin embroiders the pulse-free performances in a sensitive and creative way. The group dynamic is exceptional. Perhaps because of their &outsider& perspective, AMA's music has the effect of being wholly uncontrived. Unstructured free improv is old news, yet AMA manages to transcend many of the genre's limitations by virtue of a fresh outlook.
AMA Jazz，A quartet based in Ural, Russia (3,000 miles from Moscow), AMA Jazz (Association of Musicians of Avant-Garde) consists of Vladislav Talabuyev on saxophones and clarinet, pianist Anatoly Tilsov, electric bassist Alexander Brykin, drummer Valery Zhilin. Their music (much of it not influenced by American jazz) is quite original and has thus far been ed only on a 1995 Leo Lab CD.