Yuriy Galkin's For Its Beauty Alone

Is it just me or are bass players far more adventurous when they also act as band leaders? Discussions of Charles Mingus obviously aside, I feel like bassists understand the rhythmic structures in the music so intimately that they are more prone to tear them down and start over. Whenever I get a contemporary jazz release where the bassist is the leader, arranger and composer, I know there will be thinking as well as feeling. Here we have a young bass player from Russia, Yuriy Galkin, and his new album For Its Beauty Alone. This is not free jazz, since the themes and melodies are consistent and memorable, but it's a circling, probing sound that leads you by the hand and guides you toward both lovely vistas and dark, frightening corners.

Galkin's theme behind For Its Beauty Alone is the idea that we live in "uncertain and unjust times when an absolute power causes suffering to many." The ebb and flow of these twelve compositions are deliberate--Galkin wants to juxtapose feelings of peace and beauty with what he calls "riot-like outbursts." He insists that he's an optimist, and the the "passage always leads back to humanity and love," and yet you might walk away from this album remembering the sadness and regret more than the voices who proclaim that all is well.

Galkin's lived in New York City for only the past two years, and that adds another layer to his ideas of right and wrong. When he talks about absolute power, what does he mean? With every choice, the outcome is slightly different and this moody, troubling music wears a completely different mask. If you believe his ideas were formed in Russia, that creates a kinship to all of the great Russian classical composers such as Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich and Prokofiev, people who know how to match the melodious against the startling. Galkin's compositions take on that classic Russian feel, that sadness that always lurks in the background, and I mean that as a high compliment.

Galkin is noted for working with both the US and Russia as sort of a musical ambassador. He spent many years playing and competing on the international stage, and he followed that road into academia and eventually as someone who could travel to New York City and organize a tour with some of the top American jazz musicians. The last time he toured in Russia, the US Embassy in Moscow sponsored it. This is the music he plays for fans on opposite ends of the planet, so there has to be something almost universal in these songs. At the same time, I'm impressed with the more cerebral content, the ideas that move through the room like ghosts and provide fleeting glimpses of a young man's ambition as well as his concern about the world.