1986 · Album
I Have The Room Above Her
Recorded 1986 · JMT · Produced by Manfred Eicher
Motian's Intimate Chamber Music Moment
A drummer composing and leading, creating spaces as important as the notes themselves.
Paul Motian wasn't thinking like a drummer when he made I Have The Room Above Her (1986). He was thinking like a composer, which meant thinking about silence, about what gets left out, about how four musicians can sound like they're having a private conversation you're lucky enough to overhear. This album sits somewhere between chamber jazz and contemporary classical music, without really belonging to either camp. It's a record that trusts you to listen closely and doesn't apologize for moving slowly.
What makes this different from Motian's other work is how deliberately sparse it is. These aren't your typical jazz changes or heads and solos—these are composed pieces where the melody matters less than the texture, where a single note can have as much weight as a phrase. The tunes breathe in ways that can feel unsettling at first, like there's too much air in them. But that air is the point. Motian's drumming here is almost reserved, which if you know his playing at all, tells you everything about what he cared about on this session. He's not dancing around the kit. He's part of the architecture.
This isn't the album to start with if you want to understand Motian the sideman or Motian the swing player. It's a late-career statement from someone who'd spent decades learning to listen. It won't be everyone's thing—it's genuinely austere in places—but if you're willing to meet it where it is, it's a genuinely moving record about compositional restraint and the power of negative space.
Who's playing
Where next?
More by Paul Motian
All 14 albums →
The musicians on this record
Before We Were Born 1989
Bill Frisell
plays guitar here
plays guitar here
Solid Steps 1986
Joe Lovano
plays tenor saxophone here
plays tenor saxophone here
