Recording of the Week, Mark Guiliana, 'the sound of listening'

Grammy-nominated drummer Mark Guiliana is the secret ingredient in many great artists’ records. A well-travelled session drummer, he’s collaborated with a wealth of modern jazz artists, contributing to recordings by Tigran Hamasyan, Avishai Cohen, Brad Mehldau and Gretchen Parlato. He and Mehldau even had a one-time collaboration that saw them delving into avant-garde jazztronica sounds as Mehliana: Taming the Dragon back in 2014. Despite his well-earned jazz cred, one of Guiliana’s highest-profile collaborations was performing on David Bowie’s final album Blackstar, alongside other local New York jazz musicians like guitarist Ben Monder and saxophonist Donny McCaslin; quite the name to have on your resumé.

On top of all of this, Guiliana finds time to be an accomplished solo artist in his own right as a multi-instrumentalist and leader of a jazz quartet, releasing self-penned music since the early 2010s but active for a good decade longer than that as a sideman. the sound of listening (stylised in lowercase) isn’t even the first album he’s released under his own name this year – that would be Music for Doing, a mostly solo affair with a handful of guest features where you’ll hear Guiliana overdubbed several times over himself on a variety of different instruments. Other recent projects of Guiliana include the retro-fusion stylings of Beat Music, at times some of the more outlandish of Guiliana’s musical output, which released the album BEAT MUSIC! BEAT MUSIC! BEAT MUSIC! featuring pianist Jason Lindner, keyboardist BIG YUKI, and bassist Tim Lefebvre back in 2019.

the sound of listening sits on the more low-key end of Guiliana’s musical endeavours, sharing more in common with his quartet albums Jersey and Family First, with the latter even featuring the very same line-up as this new album. The musicians in question joining Guiliana on the bandstand are pianist Shai Maestro – who previously worked with Guiliana as a member of Avishai Cohen’s trio – saxophonist Jason Rigby, and bassist Chris Morrissey; a decidedly more acoustic offering than Music for Doing, recorded as straightforwardly as jazz can get with the quartet standing a few feet from one another.

These four have been playing together for some time now, and serve Guiliana’s original tunes well; his compositions are dynamic despite the record’s muted tone, rarely finishing where they started after many twists and turns. The melodious progression on ‘everything changed after you left’ is a prime example, building from its softer opening into a driving climax, while tracks like ‘under the influence’ start with the foot on the gas already. The tunes feel very rhythmically-informed (understandably given Guiliana’s main instrument), often based around repeating ostinatos and syncopated melodies, while ‘the most important question’ has Guiliana, Maestro and Morrissey totally in-sync with the off-beat rhythms as Rigby takes centre stage for a solo.

This isn’t a wholly acoustic affair, though; the title track is one of the more electronically-informed numbers on the album with its snappy, minimal drum beat and crunchy synthesiser tones, while ‘the courage to be free’ sounds like you could’ve plucked it off an early Moog album from the 1970s. Mark Guiliana’s musical output is already diverse across his catalogue, but on the sound of listening he manages to dip into each facet of it, making for one of his most personal offerings to date.