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Following up his debut album Meditations on Mingus (“Ingenious wrinkles along with dazzling and deeply realized performances from all” — Neil Tesser, Jazziz), bassist Ethan Philion pivots from a larger 10-piece unit to a spry, economical quartet on his brilliant sophomore release Gnosis. The spirit of Charles Mingus is present, most clearly in the quartet’s treatment of “What Love” (Mingus’ epic deconstruction of the Cole Porter standard “What Is This Thing Called Love”). But the focus on this new outing is original music, played with drive and ceaseless invention by alto saxophonist Greg Ward, trumpeter Russ Johnson and drummer Dana Hall joining the leader on bass.

“The title Gnosis refers to intangible knowledge, the things we learn from the qualities of an experience rather than explicit teaching,” explains Philion. “In religious settings the term often means a knowledge of a spiritual presence. For me, improvising with a group that is connected through deep listening and a shared mindset gives me the sense of touching something inQinite. Playing with Russ, Greg and Dana has given me a deeper knowledge of music, and of myself, in ways that transcend any speciQic guidance.”

Johnson and Hall were integral to the Meditations on Mingus ensemble. Ward, leader of the acclaimed Rogue Parade, had a major inQluence on Philion in his Qirst few years as a Chicagoan. “I studied with Dana while working toward my master’s from DePaul University,” the bassist recalls, “and I learned from Greg at his weekly jam session at the Hungry Brain and from performing with him.” The connection with Johnson is more recent but no less important: “Russ’s playing was already a source of inspiration by the time we started working together. I'm fortunate to work with him often in this group, in my Mingus project and in his quartet with Mark Feldman and Tim Daisy.”

When The Washington Post hails Philion for his “well-honed chops and astounding musicality,” one can point to the leader’s raw, virtuosic bass solos on “The Boot” and “Sheep Shank” as shining examples. “‘The Boot’ is named after a walking boot I had to wear for an ankle injury during the pandemic,” he says. “It highlights this group's unrelenting force and energized interaction. All the band members are amazing, virtuosic improvisers but also incredibly sensitive listeners, eager to offer each other space and room to express themselves. The tunes I wrote for them include both composed material and free improvisation, and everyone is so adept at making those seemingly disparate elements feel connected.”

“Nostalgia” ushers in a calmer mood as Philion deploys “pinch harmonics,” an extended technique codiQied by the late master Stefano Scodanibbio and others. “This allows me to play multiple harmonics in different areas of the Qingerboard at the same time by Qingering and plucking individual notes with the same hand. ‘Nostalgia’ was the Qirst piece I wrote where pinch harmonics transformed from a technique into actual music, and since then I’ve found numerous ways to incorporate it into my playing. Russ plays the melody freely in a way that captures the feeling of nostalgia I was thinking about. For me, nostalgia can be a warm feeling and a tortured longing, and I think Russ and Greg’s playing of the melody, and Greg’s building solo, captures those elements.”

“Comment Section” and “Gnosis” highlight Philion’s work with the bow in starkly different contexts. The Qirst is an unbridled improvisatory statement, cresting toward what Philion calls a “drunken quarter-note motif that ends the piece.” This, he adds, “represents the unending number of people sharing their bigotry and hatred in comment sections everywhere.” “Gnosis” opens in almost chorale- or hymn-like fashion, with bow and brushes, though it grows to a more agitated swing and a dual trumpet/sax solo, culminating in another of Philion’s robust unaccompanied turns.

There are two recordings of Charles Mingus’ deeply exploratory “What Love,” one in the studio (Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus on Candid) and the other live (Mingus at Antibes on Atlantic). Having tackled Mingus masterworks in a larger ensemble setting, Philion Qinds the quartet just as potent a vehicle for a piece originally performed by Eric Dolphy (on bass clarinet), Ted Curson, Mingus and Dannie Richmond in 1960. Philion characterizes it as “a partially free and partially highly composed improvisational setting. During the shutdown I was obsessed with both of Mingus’ renditions and knew I wanted to play the piece with this quartet. It offers so many opportunities for us to move around in wide open spaces and morph repeatedly into different moods.”

Gnosis was made possible in part by a Special Events Grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. It was recorded October 10th, 2021 by Anthony Gravino at Palisade Studios, Chicago, and mixed and mastered by Anthony Gravino as well.

24 bit / 96k

In-demand Chicago bassist Ethan Philion — praised by bass legend Rufus Reid for his “wonderful internal pulse,” and by The Washington Post for his “well-honed chops and astounding musicality” — has long looked to Charles Mingus as a towering role model. Mingus’ highly physical bass technique, his up-front communicative style as a bandleader, his interest in blending composition and improvisation, his pursuit of a unified voice in both small and large group settings, and not least of all his uncompromising antiracist politics and the way they manifest throughout his oeuvre: these qualities continue to inspire Philion and so many others in the decades following Mingus’ untimely death from ALS in 1979, at age 56.

Now, in Mingus’ centennial year of 2022, Philion is proud to present Meditations on Mingus, a powerfully swinging and inventive set of Mingus masterworks as arranged by Philion himself and performed by a stellar 10-piece ensemble. “My goal was to put together a program of pieces that speak to current events,” Philion states. “The themes of the songs on the album — racism, prejudice, identity, economic inequality — are all still relevant to the world today. These compositions ask listeners to reflect on humanity’s continued capacity for evil, but as Mingus’s psychiatrist Edmund Pollock put it, they are also ‘a call for acceptance, respect, love, understanding, fellowship, freedom — a plea to change the evil in man and to end hatred.’”

The first piece that Philion arranged, “Meditation on a Pair of Wire Cutters,” is also known as “Meditations on Integration” or “Praying with Eric.” Composed by Mingus as a response to inhumane imprisonment in the South, it was a showpiece for the great early to mid-’60s sextet with Eric Dolphy, Johnny Coles, Clifford Jordan, Jackie Byard and Dannie Richmond — the band that Philion declares as “my main inspiration for performing most of this music.” Here it’s Geof Bradfield summoning the spirit of Dolphy on bass clarinet, followed by the fiery dueling trombones of Brendan Whalen and Norman Palm and the elevated pianism of Alexis Lombre. Throughout the set, in the powerful rhythm section tradition of Mingus and Richmond themselves, drummer and Chicago stalwart Dana Hall locks in with Philion at every step, giving the leader’s probing arrangements a firm foundation.

On “Prayer for Passive Resistance” and “Remember Rockefeller at Attica,” alto saxophonist Rajiv Halim brings his raw and virtuosic best as a featured soloist, while on “Self-Portrait in Three Colors” it is trumpeter Russ Johnson weighing in with a distinctly emotive improvisation. Johnson and fellow trumpeter Victor Garcia also play their hearts out on the opening number, “Once Upon a Time, There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America” (a.k.a. “The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers”).

The arrangements break down into three basic categories: “Pithecanthropus Erectus,” “Once Upon a Time” and “Haitian Fight Song” are the most faithful to the original recordings but orchestrated for 10-piece group; “Meditations,” “Better Git It In Your Soul” and “Prayer for Passive Resistance” are essentially composites, with details drawn from a number of Mingus’ recorded versions; and “Self-Portrait” and “Rockefeller” contain new material by Philion himself. “Those pieces were flexible enough that I could shape the arrangement in ways that differed from Mingus but still preserved the feeling,” Philion explains. “It was all about finding way to encourage the types of individual and group improvisation that Mingus was so adept at creating in his bands.”

Philion contends that Mingus’ music, as revered as it is, remains underperformed in our time (with the clear exception of the Mingus Institute bands run by Sue Mingus). With Meditations on Mingus, Philion not only helps to redress that, he also taps into the sense of risk and uncertainty at the heart of the Mingus canon, a spirit heard on recent archival Mingus releases such as At Bremen 1964 & 1975 and Music Written for Monterey 1965 (both central to Philion’s listening diet). “There’s something about not being sure you’re going to play something exactly right that can give performances an edge of excitement that you don’t get when there’s utter certainty,” says Philion. “Mingus’ groups are at their most compelling when they’re well-rehearsed and also not entirely certain about what is about to happen, or if what is supposed to happen will work. The feeling of spontaneity and excitement in those Mingus recordings is what I hope my group achieves when we perform these pieces.”