By Michael Ullman

Anna Webber’s latest disc of fascinating arrangements and complex sounds is nothing if not adventurous. 

Anna Webber, Shimmer Wince (Intakt)

Saxophonist-flutist and composer Anna Webber was born in Vancouver, Canada, far from New York City, where she would eventually reside. She was an undergraduate at McGill, and subsequently earned a master’s at the Manhattan School of Music. Her first album as a leader was the amusingly titled Third Floor People Don’t Need to Worry About Anything. Made in 2010, Third Floor People features two trios, called Montreal People and New York People. Webber attaches herself to each to form a temporary, perhaps unstable, quartet. Her next career move was remarkable.  The year after the release of the debut disc she moved to Germany to study big band writing with John Hollenbeck, who would later act as a sideman in her recordings. At the JazzInstitut she would earn her second master’s degree. I surmise she likes to do  — or at least contemplate — things in twos. Case in point: in addition to her two masters, Webber entitled one of her recordings Binary and her big band record, co-led with Angela Morris, is Both Are True (Arts Fuse review) Like Joni Mitchell, she sees both sides now.

Since 2010 she has recorded over a dozen sessions either as leader or co-leader, the groups ranging from trios to big bands. Her new album, again titled humorously, and perhaps a little mysteriously, is Shimmer Wince, and features a quintet that includes Adam O’Farrill, trumpet, Mariel Roberts, cello, Elias Stemeseder, synthesizer, and Lesley Mok, drums. It also features, almost as a sixth member, Just Intonation. Webber chooses the overtone series over the accepted modern system, Equal Temperament, which draws on a compromise of pitches that are designed to make a piano sound good in any key. Many pieces built on Just Intonation stick to a drone that sounds, at least to my ears, as if it is in tune. Webber is more adventurous.

“Wince” begins with a cheery background riff that rolls underneath an extroverted trumpet solo by O’Farrill, who varies his open horn with various muted or squeezed sounds. The track seems to be intent to contrast the solo with the synthesized riff. That solo abruptly stops twice, the first time after less than a minute. Then it resets. After a silence of around two minutes Stemeseder plays long tones and Webber begins her solo as the band seems to be competing to reassert the initial riff. This is where, to my ears, the Just Intonation tuning becomes most obvious: you can hear it in the contrast in pitch and technique between Webber’s lazy long tones and the anxious riffing of the rest of the assemblage.

The backgrounds of these compositions are intriguingly intermeshed. Her ensemble is always busy and ever on the alert. Eventually, O’Farrill takes over the long toned melody as the band behind him revs up in preparation for Webber’s exuberant but strangely tuned re-entrance. Webber dominates the band after that return, even though none 0f the others is silent for long. Webber’s “Swell” begins prayerfully, with a held tone on the synthesizer. Then, in equally placid tones, the trumpet and saxophone enter. Webber plays it straight, whereas O’Farrill lets us hear various wobbles and breaths. Swelling arrives once the synthesist enters with a high-pitched otherworldly near-shriek. Suddenly the texture becomes variegated, though it remains out of tempo. Webber doesn’t let the piece’s evolution end there. Four minutes or so brings another change. Trumpet and sax play a rocking two-note phrase that is repeated with minimal chord changes. Oddly, in a delightful contrast, this section begins to swing, though by way of textures previously unheard.

The range of sounds Webber evokes from a quintet is as remarkable as it is constantly engaging. Her titles are meaningful as well as amusing: the rhythm of “Squirmy” is, like a two-year-old, hard to pin down. “Shimmer” begins with hushed, organ-like sounds made by a synthesizer and even more quiet horns. The range of pitches gradually expands: the sounds include brushes on a snare and high-pitched bird-like squawks. Yet the surface largely remains unruffled, even when Mok enters on tom toms and bass drum. “Fizz” also seems bent around a repeated riff, yet this time it’s a cheerful kind of thing. ESP Records used to have a motto that read something like, “You haven’t heard such sounds in your life.”  I recommend this disc of fascinating arrangements and complex effects partially because I hadn’t heard such sounds in my life.

Michael Ullman studied classical clarinet and was educated at Harvard, from which he received a PhD in English. The author or co-author of two books on jazz, he has written on jazz and classical music for the Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, High Fidelity, Stereophile, Boston Phoenix, Boston Globe, and other venues. His articles on Dickens, Joyce, Kipling, and others have appeared in academic journals. For over 20 years, he has written a bi-monthly jazz column for Fanfare Magazine, for which he also reviews classical music. At Tufts University, he teaches mostly modernist writers in the English Department and jazz and blues history in the Music Department. He plays piano badly.