Four Voices, One Room, 1978
Sirone's first album as a leader is a spare, bold meeting of flute, cello, bass and drums that refuses easy comfort.
Artistry opens with the sound of four instruments finding each other rather than settling into a groove. Sirone's bass sits low and deliberate, James Newton's flute floats above it in quick, bright lines, Muneer Bernard Fennell's cello pulls the textures toward something darker, and Don Moye's percussion keeps the whole thing moving without ever getting in the way. The tempos shift often, and the mood tends toward spacious and slightly tense rather than warm. It is not a record to put on in the background.
Recorded on July 5, 1978, at Generation Sound in New York City, the album was released in 1979 on the Of The Cosmos label. It was Sirone's first release as a leader, and the lineup gives you a good sense of where he was coming from: the free-leaning, collectively improvised world of the loft scene, with Moye and Newton carrying much of that lineage. The liner notes by Stanley Crouch frame the record as part of the wider jazz debates of the time.
The reception has been warm but mostly from listeners who went looking for it. AllMusic reviewer Michael G. Nastos called it "very enjoyable," and the site gave it 4.5 stars. Phil Freeman of Burning Ambulance called it "a stunning album unlike anything else of its era." It is not a canonical record, and it is not the place to start with the avant-garde of the late 1970s. But if you want a small-group document of that scene, from a bassist who was just stepping forward, it is a good one to find.
