Myra Melford Extended Ensemble: Even the Sounds Shine

For this International Women's Day, this post highlights the vastly underappreciated pianist and bandleader Myra Melford, whose extended ensemble's recording of Even the Sounds Shine, recorded in 1994 and re-released on Hat Hut Records in 2003, is astounding in its compositional complexity, richness and diversity and in the playing by a remarkable quintent, including trumpeter Dave Douglas, alto saxophonist and clarinetist Marty Ehrlich, bassist Lindsey Horner and drummer Reggie Nicholson.

The title is taken fom a poem by Fernando Pessoa and Myford wrote in her liner notes that "I have this habit of collecting seemingly unrelated buts of information: a title, a texture, a melody or phrase, that somehow in my subconscious belong together.  It's through creation that the different elements become juxtaposed or integrated into a whole."  She was in Portugal just prior to recording the album and came across Pessoa's reference to "in broad daylight even the sounds shine," though it went beyond an apt title to some thing that struck Melford "as an idea that expresses music and as an idea that I'd like to express through my music."

She was later in Austria for a music festival and heard a bird singing in such a way that is sounded like a melding of Ornette Coleman and another underappreciated master, violinist Leroy Jenkins, and Melford transcribed what she heard.  She added that the next morning "I awoke to the most beautiful sounds I've ever heard" and that the bird and other animals were singing and making other sounds so that "the texture had a clarity, vitality and gentleness to it that was very moving."

There is an abundance of all three of those attributes on this amazing album and her trio of the time is enriched and diversified by the stunning playing of Douglas (whose work in John Zorn's Masada project has been featured here before) and Ehrlich (who has also been mentioned through his association with the great Julius Hemphill.) Nicholson, too, has appeared in this blog through the appreciation of two recordings by the sublime Henry Threadgill.  As for Melford, her incredible solo work, reminiscent of Cecil Taylor and Marilyn Crispell, but definitely with her own imprint, and her compositional brilliance, are wonders to behold.

There are few women in jazz who get the credit they deserve and Myra Melford is one of those who should have far more recognition for her achievements.