Clockworks

New York and Paris-based composer-saxophonist Patrick Zimmerli has pursued overlapping careers in jazz and classical music for over two decades. His 1992 jazz quartet project Shores Against Silence (finally released on Songlines in 2016 to critical acclaim) was inspired by his love of avant-garde modernist composers such as Babbitt, Carter, Stockhausen and Boulez. In Clockworks he draws on some of the contrapuntal techniques and concepts he developed back then to craft an hour-long suite that embodies different perceptions of time in music - as Zimmerli puts it, to give time the kind of satisfying shape it so often lacks. His complex polyrhythmic structures and melodic variations are improvised on by his brilliant quartet (Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus on piano, Chris Tordini on bass and John Hollenbeck on drums). Clockworks combines the considered precision and overarching formal construction typical of classical music with the flair, sound, energy and performative ethos of jazz. It is the latest product of Zimmerli's unique third stream path and it offers today's jazz composers much food for thought. On a more basic level Zimmerli aims to take listeners on a varied and satisfying emotional journey, one filled with optimism and uncommon beauty. Zimmerli's career as a composer of classical as well as classical/jazz hybrid music has gained him worldwide recognition. Since 2011 he has undertaken several recording projects with Nonesuch, composing or arranging music for Brad Mehldau, Joshua Redman, Luciana Souza, and others, including a concerto for Redman and strings to be released this year.