Pianist and composer Zack Clarke and cellist Chris Irvine have been building a singular improvisational vocabulary together for over a decade. On Stereotaxi the two bring their intuitive symbiosis to several spontaneous compositions, highlighting the breadth and versatility that flourishes within the growing so-called chamber jazz idiom.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 51:52 | ||
| 01 | Gliding Through | Gliding Through | 2:46 |
| 02 | Fragments of Sunrise | Fragments of Sunrise | 2:24 |
| 03 | Sit Still | Sit Still | 2:56 |
| 04 | Sorrow Song | Sorrow Song | 3:10 |
| 05 | 6 Miniatures | 6 Miniatures | 3:08 |
| 06 | Dancing on Fumes | Dancing on Fumes | 4:54 |
| 07 | Confrontation | Confrontation | 2:31 |
| 08 | Waking in Water | Waking in Water | 4:44 |
| 09 | Volcanic Conniption | Volcanic Conniption | 2:06 |
| 10 | Stride Me to the Moon | Stride Me to the Moon | 4:13 |
| 11 | 4 Short Pieces | 4 Short Pieces | 2:04 |
| 12 | Rise to the Highest | Rise to the Highest | 5:50 |
| 13 | Liquid Abstraction | Liquid Abstraction | 2:49 |
| 14 | Dreams of Weight | Dreams of Weight | 8:17 |
The plethora of sub-genres of improvised music does very little to reinforce what is a fundamental quality of the actual practice of improvising with others — that is, that the shared vocabulary and sensibility between the musicians is a primary factor that shapes the music. Pianist Zack Clarke and cellist Chris Irvine’s Stereotaxi chronicles their symbiotic creations, drawing on a broad palette of stylistic references. One might fold this album into the growing “chamber jazz” category, but that could dilute the rich nuances contained within. A listener can appreciate this music on multiple levels, immersing one’s ears in the specifics of the language the duo occupies at any one moment, or noting their deft skill in crafting multi-layered, mutually supportive frameworks on a dime. Ultimately, what we hear is two musicians who know each other’s artistry intimately, and bring that deep familiarity to spontaneous compositions that arrive at rewarding destinations.
One notable feature of this album is the length of the tracks; in the free improvised world, many performances are set length, with elided transitions between textural sections that connect into larger scale works. Clarke and Irvine choose the opposite approach, and with all but one of the improvisations featured here clocking in under six minutes (and several closer to two or three), the opportunity arises for listener and player alike to understand the music as unfolding in more tightly controlled structures. Within these shorter durations, motivic or textural ideas can be more deliberately managed, creating music that shares a lot with the genre of the character piece.
The album opens with a flurry of energy in “Gliding Through” as both instruments play furtive, tremolando gestures and arpeggiations. Taut, micro-motives emerge before ricochet articulations in the cello diffuse the rhythmic incision. After an intro which places the instruments in their own timbral worlds, the ironically named “Sit Still” evolves through darting responsorial bursts, with each player recalling enough of the other’s material to create cohesion but not too much to bog it down with pat imitation. An internal pizzicato section returns to the opening texture and creates a three part structure.
Read MoreThe duo’s attraction to small forms is further underscored in “6 Miniatures” and “4 Short Pieces”, three and two minute improvisations respectively that include several brief crystalline inventions. The pair writes, “we would talk about the similarities between Bach and Webern, wondering if they would be friends.” The marriage between a compressed reference to counterpoint in the fifth miniature of “6 Miniatures” and the brevity of each miniature suggests that they would get along quite well.
“Fragments of Sunrise” is the first of several tracks that place itself in an quasi-Impressionist, late Romantic aesthetic frame. Clarke and Irvine’s intuitive absorption of the syntax of this music is apparent. That context allows them to insert nuanced details, such as the staccato chords Clarke inserts that gradually infiltrate Irvine’s playing, or Irvine’s subtle flirting with microtonal expressive devices. Those microtones show up briefly in “Sorrow Song” as it leans into a predominantly late Romantic framework, ending with a question mark on an unresolved fifth of an authentic cadence. “Waking in Water” is a rhapsodic fantasy, with tolling keyboard oscillations and a poignant cello melody that floats through lush, tonal harmonies while taking unexpected turns.
Clarke and Irvine’s debt to jazz appears in unexpected guises. In the middle section of “Confrontation,” Clarke settles into a slow swing feel underneath a bristling cello line of ponticello harmonic glissandi. “Stride Me to the Moon” is more overt, and tongue in cheek, in its connection to the tradition of improvising on American popular song themes, as Clarke lightly alludes to stride techniques on the piano in a lumbering tempo, and Irvine extracts soulful expression from vibrating pizzicato, ethereal overtones, and winding melodic passages.
The final track, “Dreams of Weight,” is the album’s longest, and an opportunity to hear the duo stretch out over a longer temporal canvas. Irvine plays the opening move with a sly gesture including a short-long-short motive that is passed between the two. He pivots soon thereafter to a blues-inflected melody, accompanied by watery chords in the piano. Clarke finds a natural pedal point which ushers in a quasi-modal, Phrygian Dominant-inflected stasis, over which Irvine pushes and pulls with microtonal shadings and poignant double stops. Later, Clarke uses the same pedal point for cascading Messiaen-esque chords before Irvine steps into the fore for a long lined, elegiac rhapsody. The track retains a meditative intensity throughout, a thoughtful final offering in an album that alternates skillfully between jump-cut rates of change and slowly evolving textures.
Beyond the aesthetic frames that Clarke and Irvine navigate smoothly lies the most important quality of their successful collaboration. As material shifts and contexts evolve, the two constantly retain a bird’s eye view of how to balance foreground and background, imitation and invention, structural return and new territory. Shared vocabulary is key, but this meta awareness of how to shape a spontaneously unfolding composition is what makes this collection so effective.
– Dan Lippel
Recorded at Samurai Hotel Astoria, NY by David Stoller on December 6, 2021
Mixed and mastered by Dave Darlington at Base Hit Studios, New York, NY
Produced by Zack Clarke
Design by Michael Clarke
Zack Clarke is a New York based Greek-American pianist and composer. He has received international acclaim for his explorations of jazz improvisation, classical, and electronic music, and has been featured on outlets including BBC6, NPR and JazzKultura. An active session artist and performer, Clarke has recorded or shared the stage with a number of prominent artists and has appeared before audiences in the US, Europe and South America. His debut release on Clean Feed Records, Random Acts of Order, gained recognition as a notable work in both US and international publications, including a top ten albums list for 2017 in Freejazzblog. Zack’s second release on the Clean Feed label, entitled Mesophase, drew acclaim for its ability to unite chamber music, electronic music and improvisation. Vertical Shores, his third album featuring jazz trio, was released in 2019, earning a spot in the 14th Annual NPR Jazz Critics Poll. His latest album, the electronic Plunge, released on Orenda records in 2024, garnered further recognition, including a critics choice from Jazziz Magazine. Clarke’s emerging body of work reveals a command of diverse musical styles and a determined pursuit of new ideas through experimentation and improvisation. His music draws from classical, jazz and electronic music, serving to explore the broader concepts involved in improvised music.
Clarke attended The New England Conservatory in Boston, majoring in Jazz Performance, and while there had the opportunity to study with jazz greats Danilo Perez, Fred Hersch, and Jason Moran. Upon completion of his Bachelor of Music degree he moved to New York to study with Kenny Werner and attend NYU, where he earned a Masters of Music and worked as adjunct faculty.
Cleveland-born cellist Chris Irvine is a teacher and improviser in New York City. An advocate for new music, he has premiered dozens of living composers’ works but has moved his focus to free improvisation. Chris’s debut album, Dialectic featuring Zack Clarke, was released in 2013 and is a juxtaposition of solo Bach and spontaneously improvised responses to each movement. He can be heard on Clarke’s record Mesophase and Leonid Galaganov’s Danger and Friends. Chris’s main teachers were Pam Kelly, Richard Aaron, Paul Katz, Julia Lichten, and Fred Sherry. He is on faculty at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and Silver Music in Manhattan.
When is an improvisation more than an improvisation? When a spontaneous collaboration gels into something that’s more the sum of its parts. Pianist Zack Clarke and cellist Chris Irvine have been improvising together for more than a decade. Their new album Stereotaxi is certainly unpredictable, with plenty of unexpected juxtapositions, subtle musical jokes, and “wrong” notes. But each of these 14 improvised duets, many of them no longer than a typical pop song, has a discernible semantics. Each has a color palette, and each creates and sustains a mood. Most of the time the two musicians match modes. Most of the tracks reckon with jazz, and I don’t mean free jazz – and they’re not self-indulgent.
There’s quite a bit to unpack on this album. The tracks range from the frenetic (“Gliding Through,” “Volcanic Conniption”) to the pastoral (“Rise to the Highest”) and melancholy (“Fragments of Sunrise”). Part of the especially jazzy “Sit Still” suggests a ballad, while in the appropriately named “Sorrow Song” Clarke’s gliding touch on the piano recalls Bill Evans‘ artfulness.
“6 Miniatures” crams a rainbow of cello techniques into just over three minutes, which cruise by like a miniature “Carnival of the Animals.” Clarke and Irvine repeat this exercise in the more subdued “4 Short Pieces,” where the cello keens sadly over arpeggios out of the Romantic tradition. In “Rise to the Highest” Clarke improvises accompaniment that suggests Chopin and perhaps Fauré under Irvine’s emotionally charged melodies.
The cellist reaches outside the standard playbook of techniques in several tracks, like “Volcanic Conniption,” the slithery “Confrontation,” and, with subtle harmonics, the song-like, shimmery, and gripping “Walking in Water.”
Clarke and Irvine improvise with a remarkable synchronicity. A quintessential example is “Dancing with Fumes,” one of the albums’ most affecting numbers – I was going to say “tunes,” meaning “songs,” that’s how together and formed-sounding the track is. Despite unorthodox intervals it reads like a lost jazz standard. Another example is the slow march “Stride Me to the Moon,” which, far from featuring stride piano, transfixes with gentle chordal development.
The longest track is the last. In “Dreams of Weight” Clarke hews mostly to traditional jazz harmonies while Irvine roams from traditional to 12-tone territory and back.
Stereotaxi from Zack Clarke and Chris Irvine is an unusually solidified improvisational album that starts in jazz, progresses through multiple other traditions, and emerges as something new and quite exhilarating.
— Jon Sobel, 4.22.2025
Stereotaxi is a consuming new album from pianist Zack Clarke and cellist Chris Irvine, both blending modern classical and jazz with stirring effect here. Clarke grabbed our attention last year with the album Plunge, which incorporated electronic elements alongside his piano work. Stereotaxi adds further depth to his beautiful piano sounds, with the collaborative cello work of Irvine. Their instruments impress across both cohesively melodic standouts and wonderfully unsettling sequences that resemble a duel of two instruments.
Opening track “Gliding Through” is an enveloping introduction to the two musicians’ compelling interplay. The cello and piano are very dynamic instruments, and these two performers showcase precisely that on “Gliding Through” and within Stereotaxi. Clarke’s piano work on the opener ranges from brisk trickling to sporadic clangs, while Irvine’s cello emits an emotive ferocity in moments of both passion and subdued intrigue.
The ensuing “Fragments of Surprise” showcases a more elegant unfolding; the cello presents a weeping melancholy, comparatively, while the piano work sends chills in its icy, dreamy solemnness. The album quickly showcases a tendency for both delectably gripping chaos and melancholic reflection across the first two tracks. Stereotaxi continues to captivate thereafter, from the aptly titled heartrending lushness within “Sorrow Song” to the cinematic-feeling “Confrontation,” where eerie cello bursts pair enthrallingly with colorful piano playing; shades of Ryuichi Sakamoto show in its eclectic production.
“Waking in Water” also dazzles in its variety of gorgeous serenity and intense escalations, being another thorough example of the duo’s impressive songwriting and musicianship — on full display throughout the riveting Stereotaxi.
— Mike Mineo, 3.06.2025
On Stereotaxi, pianist Zack Clarke and cellist Chris Irvine flex their considerable muscles as players and improvisers. It's not the first time the two have worked together, Clarke having appeared on Irvine's 2013 debut album Dialectic and the cellist doing the same on the pianist's Clean Feed release Mesophase. Stereotaxi has elements of both releases in its DNA: it has the chamber music and improv dimensions of Mesophase (not, however, its electronic music component) and the improv aspect of Dialectic, which includes unscripted responses to material by Bach. In building on the duo's backgrounds in jazz, improv, experimental music, and classical, the fourteen pieces on Stereotaxi invite the label chamber jazz, as reductive as that label (or any, for that matter) is.
An alumnus of The New England Conservatory and NYU, Clarke is a New York-based Greek-American artist of omnivorous appetites, someone as capable of issuing a jazz trio recording (Vertical Shores) as an experimental electronics-based one (Plunge). Born in Cleveland, Irvine is a NYC-based teacher and new music advocate who's on faculty at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and Silver Music in Manhattan. Clear evidence of the rapport the two've developed and the sensibility they share is heard in the ease and authority of these performances, which are in most cases concise statements lasting two to three minutes at a time. That makes for focused and taut expressions that are free of the meandering waywardness that sometimes weakens the impact of a long-form improv. The duets by Clarke and Irvine are clear and direct in the paths they follow and directions they pursue.
The album begins with a burst of energy in “Gliding Through,” each player scampering at rapid speed and entwining assertively with the other. Attentive listening is immediately evident in the complementary paths they carve out and the dynamics they shape in tandem. Much less frenetic is the quasi-classical “Fragments of Sunrise,” which stakes out a contemplative space with sparse piano chords and minimal bowed phrases. “Sit Still” reinstates the animation of the opener, the title subverted by darting flurries of piano and pizzicato textures.
While classical composers aren't overtly referenced, there are moments during the classically tinged settings where echoes of Bartok, Messiaen, and Debussy might be heard. The jazz dimension emerges in places surreptitiously, in “Confrontation,” for example, where the pianist's playing hints at swing. There are also times when a fellow jazz explorer is suggested by the playing; in “Dancing on Fumes” and "Stride Me to the Moon,” Irvine's plucking calls to mind Hank Roberts, who one might presume to be a kindred spirit.
Irvine exploits the sound potential of the cello in drawing upon a large number of techniques, from glissandi and harmonics to multiphonics and pizzicato. While Clarke doesn't venture inside the piano, he too draws on the extensive expressive history associated with his instrument. Hear, for example, the oceanic swells he generates alongside Irvine during the evocative tone painting “Waking in Water.” Contrasts of mood and tone are also plentiful, with some pieces exuberant roller-coaster rides and others inward-looking meditations. Such differences are sometimes cued by titles, the plaintive reflection “Sorrow Song” and the furious battle-grounds that are “Confrontation” and “Volcanic Conniption” cases in point.
The focus on brevity is taken to an even further extreme when “6 Miniatures” and “4 Short Pieces” collect micro-compositions of varying character under collective titles. In exceeding eight minutes, “Dreams of Weight” naturally stands apart from the others, and it is fascinating to witness how the two interact over a longer stretch of time and navigate the way forward in tandem. In being improvs, the material grants unbounded freedom to Clarke and Irvine and liberates them from having to focus on replicating notated charts and fashioning their performances in accordance with them. Even though most of the pieces are compact, the two venture far afield when the customary constraints are absent, and both appear to fervently embrace the opportunity to exchange conventional notions of harmony and tonality for freer modes of expression.
— Textura, 5.15.2025
New Focus Recordings is an artist-led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, and composer/engineer Ryan Streber in 2004, formed …Read More …
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