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Peter Mulvey 2006 A knuckleball leaves a pitcher's fingertips, and what happens next is anybody's guess. Batters (and catchers) will tell you that what, from the stands, looks like a straightforward toss is actually a floating, dancing mystery, impossible to pin down. Its path is unpredictable; it is a hidebound enigma. The Knuckleball Suite was recorded in two and a half days, with a cadre of world-class improvising musicians who had not rehearsed a single note of the songs together. It is not Jazz, but it is a Jazz approach. The years of study and refinement, theory and practice, are present, but are shrugged off at the doorstep of the studio. In there, it's rapport and intuition, spontaneity and spark. What gets spoken is the barest essentials: "Tag it twice?", "End on four to one, yes?" What is unspoken is every leap, listen, and turn. And what remains is usually take two, sometimes take three. Each track is a warm, large-format photograph of a gifted musical posse, caught in the very moment of Making It All Up. Out of thin air. For real.
1. Old Simon Stimson
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