Chris Potter

4 STARS DOWN BEAT MAGAZINE MARCH'13

The Sirens is saxophonist Chris Potter’s ECM debut as a leader, an album of mood and melody inspired by Homer’s The Odyssey – both its epic atmosphere and its timeless humanity. Potter – who has featured on several ECM albums by his mentor Dave Holland, as well as collaborated with Paul Motian and Jason Moran on the contemporary classic Lost in a Dream – has composed a cycle of irresistible songs without words. These pieces are conveyed by a subtly virtuosic, strikingly textured band: with Potter on tenor and soprano saxophones and bass clarinet, plus Craig Taborn (piano), David Virelles (prepared piano, celeste, harmonium), Larry Grenadier (double-bass) and Eric Harland (drums). Potter declaims lyrical lines over the dynamically inventive rhythm section, as the coloristic keyboards shimmer like stars in the night sky.

“This is an unusual record for me – I came up with all the music in about two weeks, writing with a theme in mind,” Potter explains. “I’d re-read
The Odyssey after many years and was inspired to write music with that epic, mythic mood in mind. The Odyssey is all about the big themes set in bold relief – romantic adventure and a return to home, temptation and identity, life and death. But even though those themes take place in this archetypal space, they are things we all deal with today. The stories are ancient, but human emotions never change. That’s why the book still feels real to us. So I aimed for the music to have a lyricism that stemmed from that timeless, very human mood – and there’s nothing more human than melody.”

PERSONNEL:

CHRIS POTTER  soprano and tenor saxophones (bass clarinet on The Sirens)
CRAIG TABORN piano
DAVID VIRELLES prepared piano, celeste, harmonium
LARRY GRENADIER double bass
ERIC HARLAND drums

Recorded September 13-15, 2011 at Avatar Studios, New York

TRACKS
01. Wine Dark Sea
02. Wayfinder
03. Dawn (With Her Rosy Fingers)
04. The Sirens
05. Penelope
06. Kalypso
07. Nausikaa
08. Stranger At The Gate
09. The Shades