All About Jazz Rosetta review, January 2007
Here is a string ensemble for the new century! Bassist Stephan Crump is known for his association with pianist Vijay Iyer and he has taken some of the personal and novel qualities of that collaboration and somehow found a striking new way to express powerful feelings about what it is to create music and, further, what it is to be alive in these times. The original fragments out of which these more full and deep creations were formed, emerged in the period after September 11th, 2001. The works are colored by loss and tragedy but soar forth into a celebration of survival, friendship and love.
Crump is a powerful leader offering the other stunning players - guitarists Liberty Ellman (acoustic) and Jamie Fox (electric) - a solid base from which to create dazzling textures. Crump puts down strong grooves and inventive solo statements and his friends find their way in and around the intricacies. The soundscape is sparse and yet vibrant and rich with color. The compositions sound orchestrated and finely drawn, yet they have an openness which suggests and then allows the most open improvisations.
The set opens with a perfect, simple vehicle for these players - the short repeating form of "Tag" sends these sensitive and masterly musicians into the atmosphere for a lovely simultaneous improvisation. And then after this airy flight, the players come down to glorious earth for the dark, deep "Were it a Loss", which can be heard and felt as a dirge, but never loses a sense of the transcendent power of music. Just a few tunes later, Crump celebrates the growth and shapes of "Kudzu" from his native Tennessee. It's a twisty groove that finds these three coming together in a delicate dance. It's stunning to think that these three instruments can create such a rich world of imagination and color. And this world can take on epic proportions - as on "Our Survival" in which the guitarists draw new worlds out of the coming together of the tune's sections. Ellman shines as a soloist but he does so thanks to the palette that the others have helped create.