Meditations on solo soprano sax—a real tightrope act !

Tom Hull THE VILLAGE VOICE NY

A glimmering tribute!

Eve Doster Detroit MetroTimes

An 'irreproachable homage !"

Infratunes, Paris

To record an album dedicated to another musician – especially one as recently dead and as revered as Steve Lacy - is a risky business. The risk is greater if it is also an album of unaccompanied playing. If one is too reverential, there may be accusations of cashing-in and/or of plagiarism; if one is too individualistic there may be accusations of lack of respect … and of cashing-in. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t!

So, hats off to Joe Giardullo who has expertly navigated his way between these competing hazards and produced an album that is both worthy of its dedicatee and is excellent in its own right. It features Lacy’s compositions “Prospectus” and “Hurtles” alongside seven Giardullo originals. The transitions between the two are seamless. If one were to listen to this album without any advance information or contextualization, there would be no doubt that it is inspired by Lacy. Giardullo manages to convey the spirit of Lacy without obviously copying or stealing any of his licks. Sure, there are not too many solo soprano players about. (With good reason, given how notoriously difficult an instrument it is.) However, I cannot think of another player who could have made as good a job of a Lacy tribute.

Giardullo’s sound on the soprano sax is as rich and full as Lacy’s, and his playing is just as confident and sure-footed. Giardullo manages to copy that neat trick of Lacy’s; once he had played a line, it immediately sounded logical and "right"…even if he subsequently played it very differently. He achieves the same sort of ying/yang balance as Lacy did between inside/outside, between tradition/experimentation.

This is one of those rare albums where it is pointless to single out individual tracks; all nine here are exquisite, and the album is best listened to in its entirety.

A gem.

John Eyles ALL ABOUT JAZZ

No Work Today is Giardullo’s homage to Steve Lacy, with whom the younger reedman played in 2004. To listen to Weather, one gets a picture of Giardullo’s deep-listening interests, the way a piece of a phrase can be mined for its purely sonic possibilities. No Work Today is an entirely different exercise in instrumental possibility, for it is an investigation into phrases and organization, motifs rather than pure sound. Lacy tunes like “Prospectus” and “Hurtles” are starting points for an extension of Lacy’s idiom somewhere into another place on the soprano spectrum, while Giardullo opens with a composition based on Monk’s “Work” (the title track, its namesake a piece that yielded many Lacy improvisations). Giardullo takes the quirks and snips that Lacy provides and rather than spacing them out, breaking them or bending them (which might be the obvious choice), builds long spiraling lines that are not only more dense than one might expect, but also hit Lacy on another point of the harmonic spectrum entirely. In other words, rather than dissonant voicings and metrical movement, Giardullo appears to be searching for something almost modal. No Work Today pays homage to something similar to the open door that Monk provided for Lacy, namely a view to the other side.

Clifford Allen ALL ABOUT JAZZ NEW YORK 2005

"With this brilliant effort, Joe Giardullo not only succeeds in celebrating one of the finest soprano saxophone masters; he also reinforces his right to be considered among the most accomplished virtuosos in today's panorama. Even more noticeably, he does this without reaching out for transcendence or - worse still - for that sensual deterioration which often lurks behind the apparent freedom given by a doleful destruction of what seemed a bad world of constrictions and was instead the chrysalis of a structural charm. Giardullo wanders around linear sketches whose hard-boned skeleton is perfectly delineated in modal improvisations where silence and notes have veritably the same specific weight; the evidence of this unbelievably limpid dexterity stands out in the gorgeous rendition of "Prospectus", a piece that Steve Lacy wrote using all the notes in the C major scale; in Joe's hands, it becomes a softly confident preparation to a clear-headed dimension of ambivalent intelligence and geometric poetry. Giardullo's own creations "follow the music", as he writes on the liner notes of a beautiful booklet, meeting his dedicatee's concepts and furtherly adorning them with a composed expressiveness brimming with emphatic simplicity even in the moments where the saxophonist lets the reins just that bit necessary to direct the sound towards the fringes of the soprano's range, in exciting attempts to portray the molecular movement of the surrounding air waves.”

Massimo Ricci TOUCHING EXTREMES (Rome)

"Recent months have seen a spate of remarkable solo improv sax albums by the likes of John Butcher, Stéphane Rives, Bertrand Gauguet, David Gross and Martin Küchen, but apart from Sonny Simmons – the wonderful Jewels on Boxholder – few brave hornplayers from the jazz world have gone it alone lately. But No Work Today is soprano saxophonist Joe Giardullo's second solo outing after last year's magnificent Weather (Not Two) and its explicit dedication to the memory of the late, great Steve Lacy invites direct comparison - something not many out there are prepared to risk. Matters religious are definitely not my speciality, but I'm prepared to bet a packet of reeds that if the hereafter exists, Steve is sitting up there digging this album as I write. For Lacy it was all about intervals: no saxophonist, no, scratch that, no musician with the possible exception of Monk (and, I'd add, Misha Mengelberg), explored the magic and mystery of intervals so thoroughly. Transcribe any of Lacy's solos, take it along to your local Professor of Music Theory and watch his/her jaw drop in amazement. It's nice to know that Lacy didn't take his know-how with him to the grave – Joe Giardullo has learnt his lesson well, and done so without copping Lacy's licks (not that that's easy to do). If anything, it's Evan Parker who comes to mind, especially on checking out the circular breathing on "The Touch", maybe along with (though this is perhaps just wishful thinking on my part) the impish melodic somersaults of a Lol Coxhill. Giardullo's readings of Lacy's "Prospectus" and "Hurtles" are masterly, but all nine tracks – the other seven are credited to Giardullo but contain hefty chunks of old chestnuts by Monk and Ellington – are pure joy, and proof, not that any were needed, that there's still plenty of mileage in playing the straight horn straight."

From John Szwed's liner notes: "God forbid, you run out of breath, and the audience may hear it has running out of ideas." That happens a couple of times here. There's no margin for error, no cover for a slip up or the least bit of sloppiness. Solo saxophone (soprano, no less) requires total concentration by the musician, and little less by the listener. Lacy recorded solo a number of times, but even though I have about 25 of his albums, I don't have a solo one (there are at least five) available for comparison. It's tough to do, and its appeal is limited, so it's all the more remarkable how gracefully Giardullo pulls this off.

TOM HULL