Baseball Noise and Free Improvisation
Three improvisers turn ballpark chatter into a deliberately odd, funny, and rewarding record.
Yankees opens with the kind of sparse, scratchy interplay that makes you lean in: Derek Bailey's guitar skittering in short, bright fragments, John Zorn's alto saxophone darting in and out with a mischievous edge, and George Lewis's trombone grounding things with warmer, more deliberate phrases. Nothing settles into a steady pulse for long. The mood keeps shifting between playful and tense, and the textures are mostly thin and dry, which gives each sound room to register. It is free improvisation, but it leans toward wit rather than sprawl.
The record is a meeting of three players who were each carving out their own corners of the avant-garde at the time. Zorn was making a name for himself in New York's downtown scene, Bailey was the English guitarist who had long championed improvisation as its own discipline, and Lewis brought a serious background in both jazz and experimental work. Released on Celluloid in 1983, it was the first recorded meeting of Zorn and Bailey, and it became a stepping stone to later projects, including the 1993 album Harras with William Parker and the News for Lulu sessions with Lewis and Bill Frisell.
If you want a starting point in this part of Zorn's catalogue, this is an accessible one, lighter and funnier than much of his more abrasive work. Critics responded well. AllMusic reviewer "Blue" Gene Tyranny gave it four stars, praising its subtle, droll takes on baseball sounds, and The Penguin Guide to Jazz called it one of the great improvisation records of its decade and a record to cherish.
