RICH HALLEY – TERRA INCOGNITA – Pine Eagle Records

by Audiophile Audition | Sep 3, 2019 | Jazz CD Reviews | 0 comments

RICH HALLEY – TERRA INCOGNITA (Pine Eagle Records, 2019) *****

Featuring: Rich Halley (tenor sax), Matthew Shipp (piano), Michael Bisio (bass) and Newman Taylor Baker (drums)

West meets East

Rich Halley

According to Downbeat: “Oregon-Based saxophonist Rich Halley has been turning out smart brawny music for a couple of decades.” With this recording, Terra Incognita, his 22^nd as a band leader, Halley joins forces with the Matthew Shipp Trio for a head’s up New York City brawl of improvisational jazz.

Terra Incognita is that mysterious land that links the East and West Coast. Halley is a particularly qualified guide as he obtained his Master’s Degree in field biology from the University of New Mexico specializing in research on rattlesnakes.

Poetic review by Casey Bush:

Our world is often mistaken to be a singular echo chamber or a shared dreamscape but is instead a journey which lies along the delicate string binding this pearl necklace. Every morning we rise to wander among desiccated hillsides covered by sage and bunch grass, traversing unbroken mountain chains, driven by the promise of a verdant coastal paradise. There is no clear path forward as we whittle this lifetime down to a single eternity. At night between circled wagons we dance in shoes with paper thin soles, a twisted brittle tongue and unraveled laces desperate for a competent knot. Memory is not worth the psychic energy required to spend on that abstruse object of desire which lies just beyond the horizon. Beneath the full moon, a pack of wolves crosses the ridge and descends into the valley below.