Virginia Woolf was writing specifically about women when she observed that a room of one’s own is a crucial ingredient in the creative process, but it’s a truth universally acknowledged that artists of all stripes require their own space to thrive. The singular relationship between Thumbscrew and City of Asylum Pittsburgh vividly illustrates the creative synergy unleashed when collaborators share physical proximity for an extended period of time. Wingbeats is Thumbscrew’s eighth album and the latest to emerge from one of the trio’s three-week City of Asylum Pittsburgh residencies. It’s no exaggeration to say that the group’s productivity and sound is inextricably entwined with the grassroots program, with a purview that expanded from helping exiled writers resettle in the city to fostering a wide array of creative endeavors.

Featuring bassist Michael Formanek, drummer/vibraphonist Tomas Fujiwara, and guitarist Mary Halvorson, Thumbscrew brings together three of jazz’s busiest and most acclaimed improvisers. City of Asylum has provided an oasis of concentrated time “and it’s such a luxury to develop this music in that environment,” says Halvorson. “We really have a flow with that, a system with how we work. We all arrive with our music fully or partially composed. From day one there are daily rehearsals, working through the material with the goal of recording. That’s been the process for all of the albums after the first one.”

From its inception, Thumbscrew possessed a singularly mobile, slippery sound. The repeated City of Asylum sequestrations have allowed the trio to deepen that elastic sense of time while honing new works with an attention to detail that would otherwise be unattainable. Knowing they’ll have concentrated time together “means there are zero limitations on what I write for the group,” Fujiwara says. “It takes out any voice in my head asking ‘Are we really going to get this? Is this asking too much?’” With each composer represented by three tunes, the album is a gorgeous, consistently enthralling dispatch from jazz’s creative frontier.

Wingbeats opens with Fujiwara’s title track, which juxtaposes melodic simplicity with metrical complexity as his orchestrated drum part moves through a series of rhythmic structures. It’s the kind of gravity-defying high-wire performance that has come to define the trio.

He dedicated “Irreverent Grace” to his mother (“Two words you wouldn’t connect but that are both very apropos to her,” he says), and the tune works backwards from Formanek’s solo into the balladic theme featuring Fujiwara’s bright, incantatory vibes work. “The two sections might sound unrelated, but there’s a connection, with the A section emerging from the B according to my own logic,” he says.

Halvorson’s “Greenish Tents” is a quietly mysterious theme built on precisely calibrated passages. Designed to showcase Fujiwara’s vibraphone, an instrumental addition that has reconfigured the band’s sonic palette in recent years, the piece features interplay so interwoven it can be hard to discern her chiming guitar notes from the vibes. In contrast to dense harmonies of “Greenish,” Halvorson’s “Singlet” is an unadorned rubato melody that wends along buoyed by Formanek’s counter line. A line sketch of a tune, parts of it feel like a round, with the trio shifting to a unison melody by the end.

Working backwards from the conclusion, Formanek’s “How May I Inconvenience You” opens with a bass-driven passage that evolved out of the concluding section, with Fujiwara soloing over his partners’ interplay. They don’t make it sound easy. For his vibes-tune contribution, Formanek created “Somewhat Agree,” a stutter-stepping dance between Fujiwara and Halvorson with repeated harmonic and sonic collisions as they move into the same terrain.

“This is the second album where we’ve composed for the vibes,” Formanek says. “It’s been fun to see Tomas take that on, and he put in an incredible amount of work to make it a viable option. Even having an unusual take on a guitar trio, it’s still a guitar trio. With the vibes, I think about the Red Norvo Trio with Tal Farlow and Mingus. This is totally different, but we’re still working with those colors.”

Best known as a vehicle for original compositions, Thumbscrew can deliver revelatory interpretations of tunes by a far-flung array of composers, from Anthony Braxton (on 2020’s The Anthony Braxton Project) to Benny Golson, Wayne Shorter, Jacob do Bandolim and Misha Mengelberg (on 2018’s Theirs). The album concludes with another masterful reinterpretation, Mingus’s “Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk,” a tune they introduced to the repertoire for a centennial celebration of the legendary bassist/composer at Constellation in Chicago. A piece recorded by Mingus in a variety of settings, from its solo piano debut to the epic version by the Changes quintet, “Orange” is Thumbscrew’s take on this extremely complex but naturally flowing song form, a deftly shaded interpretation built on subtle shifts in tempo and rhythm and odd bar structures.

“It’s one that I’ve always loved,” Formanek says. “We didn’t bring some big arrangement idea. One thing I always liked about ‘Orange’ is the way it evolved in the course of his recordings, with each one reflecting what he was thinking about at that time.”

While Thumbscrew has become one of the primary vehicles for collaboration between three artists in perpetual motion, it’s hardly their only project. Halvorson and Fujiwara first started playing together in cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum’s Sextet in the mid-aughts and have performed and recorded widely in each other’s ensembles. Based in Brooklyn, Fujiwara has also earned renown as a composer and bandleader who performs and records with some of the most exciting musicians of the current generation. He’s been described by Point of Departure as “a ubiquitous presence in the New York scene…an artist whose urbane writing is equal to his impressively nuanced drumming.” He leads and composes for a number of ensembles, including Tomas Fujiwara’s Triple Double (with Halvorson, Taylor Ho Bynum, Ralph Alessi, Brandon Seabrook, and Gerald Cleaver), and Tomas Fujiwara’s 7 Poets Trio (with Patricia Brennan and Tomeka Reid), which released its eponymous debut in 2019 on the Rogue Art label, and a 2023 sophomore album, Pith, on Out of Your Head Records. Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up (with Halvorson, Jonathan Finlayson, and Brian Settles) released three albums on the 482 label, including Actionspeak (2010, with bassist Danton Boller), The Air Is Different (2012, with bassist Trevor Dunn), and After All Is Said (2015, with Formanek).

Fujiwara engages in a diversity of creative work with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Matana Roberts, Joe Morris, Nicole Mitchell, Ben Goldberg, Tomeka Reid, Amir ElSaffar, Benoit Delbecq, and many others. In 2021, he won the Downbeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Drummer, and premiered two suites of new music as part of his Roulette Residency: “You Don’t Have to Try” (with Meshell Ndegeocello) and “Shizuko.” His most recent work is “Dream Up,” a suite for percussion quartet, commissioned by NYSCA and Roulette Intermedium, with an album release slated for early 2025.

Also based in Brooklyn, Halvorson has been described by JazzTimes as “a singular talent,” and by the Wall Street Journal as “one of the most exciting and original guitarists in jazz—or otherwise.” In recent DownBeat Critics Polls Halvorson has been celebrated as Guitarist, Rising Star Jazz artist, and Rising Star Composer of the year, and in 2019 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. One of New York City’s most in-demand guitarists, Halvorson has worked with a dauntingly diverse array of musicians such as Tim Berne, Taylor Ho Bynum, John Dieterich, Trevor Dunn, Bill Frisell, Ingrid Laubrock, Jason Moran, Joe Morris, Tom Rainey, Jessica Pavone, Tomeka Reid, Marc Ribot and John Zorn. She released a series of critically acclaimed albums on the Firehouse 12 label, including her acclaimed 2018 and 2020 albums with her band Code Girl, which features a rhythm section of Formanek and Fujiwara and a repertoire of songs with her original lyrics based around poetic forms. Recording for Nonesuch, she released two albums simultaneously in 2022, Amaryllis and Belladonna. The former features a new sextet with Fujiwara, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, bassist Nick Dunston, trombonist Jacob Garchik, and trumpeter Adam O’Farrill (augmented by the Mivos string quartet on the album’s second side). On Belladonna, Halvorson wrote solely for guitar and Mivos. Her latest album, 2024’s Cloudward, adds Laurie Anderson’s violin to the Amaryllis sextet.

Halvorson and Fujiwara connected with Formanek when he subbed in Bynum’s band in 2011, and the chemistry was so readily apparent they immediately started looking into performance opportunities as a trio. He’s been described as “a bold and unclassifiable bassist and composer,” while The New York Times has noted that his music is always “graceful in its subversions, often even sumptuous.” Whether it’s for a small band or a large ensemble, he creates modern jazz that is earthy yet atmospheric, always alive with dark-hued melody and bone-deep rhythms, rich in dynamic possibility and the sound of surprise. Even with decades of experience to his credit – he got his start as a Bay Area teenager playing with the likes of Joe Henderson and Tony Williams – Formanek has made some of his keenest creative leaps in recent years, documented on a sequence of justly lauded recordings.

His three ECM albums as a leader each scored rare five-star reviews in DownBeat. These included two discs – Small Places (2012) and The Rub and Spare Change (2010) – featuring a powerhouse quartet with saxophonist Tim Berne, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver; the third was a magnificent record – The Distance (2016) – that showcased his compositions for an all-star big band, playfully dubbed Ensemble Kolossus. He recently launched his own label, Circular File Records, with Were We Where We Were by the Michael Formanek Drome Trio with Chet Doxas and Vinnie Sperrazza, though he’s also recording for other labels like Intakt, which will soon document the Splash Trio with pianist Myra Melford and Ches Smith on drums and vibes.

Born in San Francisco in 1958 and now based in Portugal, Formanek has performed in myriad contexts over the decades, including with masters from Gerry Mulligan and Stan Getz to Freddie Hubbard and Fred Hersch. Among his peers, the bassist has collaborated closely with Tim Berne, making a duo album with the saxophonist (Ornery People) and performing extensively in Berne’s iconic Bloodcount band in the ’90s. Formanek also released a solo LP – Am I Bothering You? – via Berne’s Screwgun label in 1998. Formanek’s early recordings as a leader included a string of quartet and septet releases for Enja from 1990 to 1996. As a sideman, he has recorded with Uri Caine, Dave Burrell, Jane Ira Bloom, Gary Thomas, Jack Walrath, Harold Danko, Lee Konitz, Freddie Redd, Art Pepper, Chet Baker and even Elvis Costello, along with appearing on albums by frequent partners such as Halvorson and Fujiwara, Berne, Tony Malaby, multi-reedist Marty Ehrlich, trumpeter Dave Ballou, saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, drummer Devin Gray and pianist Angelica Sanchez. From 2001 to 2018, Formanek taught jazz bass and jazz history and directed large and small ensembles at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He continues to teach, mainly giving workshops and masterclasses in universities and music schools worldwide.

At the center of a spiraling musical universe, Thumbscrew is like a reverse black hole radiating brilliant constellations of overlapping ensembles. The all-star trio is at the core, and they’re marking their 10th year as a collective endeavor – 2022 – looking ahead to new sonic territory rather than taking stock of a prodigiously creative decade. Celebrating this anniversary, Multicolored Midnight, the group’s seventh album for Cuneiform Records,. It features bassist Michael Formanek, drummer/vibraphonist Tomas Fujiwara, and guitarist Mary Halvorson on a set of 11 original pieces that oscillate between detailed composition, unbridled improvisation, and every gradation in between. It’s another step on an extraordinary journey by three of jazz’s most dauntless and resourceful artists.

The focus that each player brings to Thumbscrew and the dense web of experience they share is part of what makes the ensemble so extraordinary. Thumbscrew’s ongoing evolution is powered by a super-charged matrix of relationships, as all of the players also lead critically acclaimed bands built on the trio’s thrumming creative synergy. Beyond their work as a trio they’re the foundation for Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus, the hair-raising and ridiculously talent-laden large ensemble that released its 2016 debut on ECM The Distance. Formanek joined Halvorson on Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up’s third release, the critically hailed 2015 album After All Is Said (482 Music). And Halvorson’s Thumbscrew bandmates are the foundation of her song-based band Code Girl. For Halvorson, Thumbscrew has become an invaluable creative foundation. “It’s one of my favorite rhythm sections to be a part of, the power and energy and everything we create together,” she said. “At this point, all of us have used this rhythm section as leaders.” 

Multicolored Midnight features music that Thumbscrew honed during a three-week residency at City of Asylum, a Pittsburgh program founded as a refuge for writers in exile. Since expanding its purview to include musicians, City of Asylum has become the fourth wheel powering Thumbscrew’s all-terrain evolution as the triumvirate fully utilizes the sequestration to generate and refine new pieces. Three of Thumbscrew’s prior albums had also been generated at City of Asylum. Multicolored Midnight grew out of the group’s fourth residency in August of 2021, which provided a welcome respite from the sudden and unnerving isolation imposed by the pandemic.

If there was an agenda for Multicolored Midnight, it centered on fully incorporating Fujiwara’s vibraphone work into the mix, a bright hue that surfaced briefly on Thumbscrew’s 2020 celebration of Anthony Braxton’s 75^th birthday, The Anthony Braxton Project. Marking a decade doesn’t have quite the same panache as a diamond jubilee, “but we do feel like it’s a big deal,” Formanek said. “That’s a lot of time for a cooperative band, and the residencies are a big part of what’s allowed us to dive in deeper and keep creating new music.”

The album opens with the tightly constructed “I'm A Senator!,” one of five tunes that Formanek contributed to the project. It’s a wicked little groove that features some sharp Halvorson chordal work sandwiching her vertiginous bottom-falling-out single note runs. The bassist built “Shit Changes” on Fujiwara’s vibes ostinato, which feeds the mysterious, slowly blossoming melody. Mutations occur but the bloom is hardy. Formanek draws on many sources when it comes to titling his tunes, often settling on a word or phrase that has little direct connection to the piece. And then there’s “Fidgety,” which captures an anxious, unsettled mood from the opening bass solo, which Formanek bends and contours with some deft electronic processing. It’s his first use of electronics on double bass in Thumbscrew, adding another sonic resource to the growing palette. He’s at his most tuneful on “Capsicum Annuum,” a song-like tune that builds to a brief thrashing passage before the trio returns to the alluring melody. The intriguing line references the forward-and-backward phrase ideas that Formanek has explored elsewhere in a series of palindromic tunes.

Fujiwara brought three tunes to the program, including “Song For Mr. Humphries,” a tribute to Pittsburgh drum maestro Roger Humphries, the well-traveled veteran who played on Horace Silver’s 1965 classic Song For My Father. Propelled by a quirky, vaulting bassline, the tune grows more intricate and less rhythmically stable as it progresses. It isn’t based on anything that Humphries plays. Rather, it’s a thank you for his generosity and ongoing contributions to the music. He actually lives a few blocks from City of Asylum and on Thumbscrew’s first residency City of Asylum co-founders Diane Samuels and Henry Reese made a point of mentioning him. “He still plays around town all the time,” Fujiwara said. “We went and checked him out and his feel and sound is amazing, so classic and specific. Every time I go to Pittsburgh I hear him play and I go to his house for a lesson and a hang.”

The pandemic experience doesn’t surface directly on the album often, though Fujiwara’s “Future Reruns and Nostalgia” evokes the prickly, surreal suspension of time that marked the first months of sheltering in place. The chiming notes on the vibes that open the piece seem to toll for all of us as Formanek’s squally arco bass work ratchets up the pressure. The melody ascends and hangs in the air. Halvorson also contributed three pieces to Multicolored Midnight, including the title track, a stuttery tune with an almost folk-song like theme driven by her strummed chords. An improviser and composer of dry and poker-faced wit, she builds a repeating figure into the angular melody that was inspired by the sound of a skipping LP. On “Swirling Lives” she creates an almost chamber jazz setting for Fujiwara’s vibes. There’s a melodic line running through the tune that’s carried by all three players at different points and as the pace accelerates to a sprint the chamber piece takes on the feel of a frantic game of hide and seek. Playful, mischievous and insistently present tense, this is music that illuminates each moment’s vast possibilities.

An album laden with fully realized connections and reflections, Multicolored Midnight also provides tantalizing hints regarding Thumbscrew’s future explorations. Integrating new textures, sounds and concepts, Thumbscrew has turned into an essential all-terrain vehicle for three of improvised music’s most venturesome artists. After a decade of coaxing and inspiring each other, the trio’s musical universe just keeps expanding, and Multicolored Midnight sheds dazzling light on where they’ll be heading next.

This album is their sixth and the very best of what is already a highly accomplished discography. Thumbscrew is, deceptively, a groove band...There is added weight in the rhythm section, not heaviness but a sense of strength and agility, even though slow and medium tempos and rock rhythms dominate.
The coordination and sympathy are also more complex. This is atmospheric and tense in a fulfilling way, the listener fascinated and happy to wait and see where things go. What comes out of this is a melancholy but determined beauty, a kind of plangent magnificence usually associated with bands like Sonic Youth. Essentially an acoustic group, Thumbscrew belongs in a different sonic category, but the sense that this matters in an extra-musical way, that there is something fierce and inchoate just barely held down by the music, is palpable." – New York City Jazz Record

A funny thing happened while Thumbscrew was hunkered down at City of Asylum, the Pittsburgh arts organization that has served as a creative hotbed for the collective trio via a series of residencies. Late in the summer of 2019 the immediate plan was for drummer Tomas Fujiwara, guitarist Mary Halvorson and bassist Michael Formanek to rehearse and record a disparate program of Anthony Braxton compositions they’d gleaned from his Tri-Centric Foundation archives, pieces released last year on The Anthony Braxton Project, a Cuneiform album celebrating his 75th birthday. At the same time, the triumvirate brought in a batch of original compositions that they also spent time refining and recording, resulting in Never Is Enough, a brilliant program of originals slated for release on Cuneiform.

There’s a precedent for twined projects by the trio serving as fascinating foils for each other. In June 2018, Cuneiform simultaneously released an album of Thumbscrew originals, Ours, and Theirs, a disparate but cohesive session exploring music by the likes of Brazilian choro master Jacob do Bandolim, pianist Herbie Nichols, and Argentine tango master Julio de Caro. Those albums were also honed and recorded during a City of Asylum residency. While not intended as the same kind of dialogue, The Anthony Braxton Project and Never Is Enough do seem to speak eloquently (if cryptically) to each other.

“Braxton’s presence was very strong in this period, spending time with his music, reading some of the composition notes” Formanek says. “I think and hope the influence was there. It was definitely in our minds. I don’t know if there’s a direct influence, but definitely inspiration.”

Each member contributed three pieces to the project, and the album opens with Fujiwara’s amiable “Camp Easy,” a gently loping piece that starts with a pastoral improvised passage that anticipates the spacious counterpoint between Formanek’s thoughtfully surefooted bass and Halvorson’s slippery lines. Fujiwara’s “Through an Open Window” features a very different kind of movement, with episodic motifs that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Inspired by a hotel view in Sarajevo, the piece suggests a layered panorama, “a cityscape skyline, rain falling, mountains, a lot of visual inspiration with people, clouds, and cars subtly moving and shifting,” Fujiwara says.

With a rock ‘n’ roll edge, Halvorson’s “Sequel to Sadness” maintains the coiled energy of a panther stalking prey, with strategic pauses and a centerpiece drum solo that builds delicious tension. She also contributes the album’s most unabashed ballad, a supplely lyrical tune inspired by standards she’s been working on. And Fractured Sanity expands from a telegraphic guitar riff into quicksilver conversation with all three players offering agitated commentary.

Formanek’s title track introduces a whole new array of shades to Thumbscrew’s already brimming palette. After decades of almost entirely avoiding the instrument on recordings, he created a squally, atmospheric piece that gives him plenty of space for his non-idiomatic electric bass work. “I conceived ‘Never Is Enough’ as a piece I was going to record on the electric bass, but could play on either one,” he says. The ambiguous title riffs on a classic New Yorker cartoon (“How about never — is never good for you?”) but speaks more to “the ever present feeling of being held captive by the insanity of the last four years of...whatever this has been.”

Opening with a brief lockstep theme, Formanek’s “Emojis Have Consequences” gives each player a distinct part, with their evolving two-against-one interactions weaving a quietly volatile matrix. The album’s closer, “Scam Likely,” is another palette- expanding by Formanek, with a long abstract duo passage featuring his ambient, electronically altered and synthesized electric bass calls set against Fujiwara’s beautifully textured trap work. Halvorson’s arrival adds pulsars and star-bursts to the celestial soundscape, which coalesces like a galaxy being born. Which makes sense considering the music took shape in the midst of Thumbscrew’s deep dive into Braxton’s vast and varied oeuvre.

“We weren’t separating them out when we were rehearsing and recording,” Halvorson says. “It was just going through this music, and one tune might be Braxton, and one might be an original. The thing I get from both is an intense sense of focus.”

The focus each player brings to Thumbscrew and the dense web of experience they share is part of what makes the ensemble so extraordinary.

"Probably no one better qualified to make a Braxton tribute than these guys." – S. Victor Aaron / Something Else Reviews

Over the course of six decades NEA Jazz Master Anthony Braxton has created a singularly vast and variegated body of music as a composer and recording artist, an oeuvre encompassing projects ranging in scope from his pioneering 1969 solo saxophone album For Alto to 2016’s epic opera Trillium J (The Non-Unconfessionables). Musicians around the world have been coming together over the past year to celebrate his 75^th birthday with an array of performances and recordings, but leave it to the all-star collective trio Thumbscrew to focus an utterly personal lens on previously unheard compositions with The Anthony Braxton Project. For fans familiar with Braxton’s music the project offers a whole new window into his genius for designing protean musical situations pregnant with possibilities. Those less acquainted with his work might find themselves enthralled and amazed by the sheer diversity of rhythmic and melodic material explored by Thumbscrew. The trio’s fifth album extends the group’s relationship with Cuneiform, which has released all of the band’s recordings.

Invited to explore the Tri-Centric Foundation’s voluminous Braxton archives in New Haven, Conn. as part of the Braxton75 celebration, drummer/percussionist Tomas Fujiwara, guitarist Mary Halvorson and bassist Michael Formanek spent a long afternoon looking for rarely played pieces that could fit their instrumental palette. “The idea was for us to choose compositions of Anthony’s, mostly early compositions, which hadn’t been previously recorded (or, in a couple cases, recorded only once or twice),” says Halvorson. “We chose pieces that captured our imagination and that we thought would work well for the instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums or vibraphone. Our choices included graphic scores, complex notated pieces, and everything in between.”

Like with several previous Thumbscrew albums, the triumvirate used an extended, four-week residency at City of Asylum in Pittsburgh to prepare for the recording. Working on the music daily (while also honing a new book of original Thumbscrew compositions), they developed arrangements of varying detail based on the scores and the corresponding catalogue notes for each composition. While aiming to understand and execute Braxton’s intention with each piece, the nature of his music required them to shape the material anew. “We have a shared language in terms of how we improvise, but the composition very much guides and informs our improvisations, so having music from a new composer puts us in a different frame of mind and adds another layer to what we do as a trio,” Fujiwara says. “Looking through the Tri-Centric Archives, we were like kids in a candy store–a feeling that there were unlimited options that all would work for us and be a joy to explore–and we had a great guide in Tri-Centric’s Carl Testa. Mention a certain flavor and he’d show us all we could ever dream of."

The album opens with “no. 52” a piece full of surprising twists, starting with the shuffle-like bass line, shifting rhythmic patterns and wild interval leaps. With all the twists, the track unfolds like a jazz tune, with a long opening theme followed by improvised passages that return briefly to the theme. On a different tack, “no. 157” is a brief, almost through composed tune built on two overlaying lines that run their course as disjointed counterpoint. All three players get a solo crack at the reoccurring “no. 14,” a graphic score featuring a series of geometric shapes. Halvorson’s meditative investigation feels like it’s tinged with the blues, while Fujiwara leaves plenty of space as he builds tension rolling from his tom to his bass drum, and Formanek strolls insouciantly, like a man enjoying a late afternoon crossing a well-tended park. All three tracks were first takes, and carry Braxton’s unmistakable DNA. “With all of Anthony’s compositions the identity is so strong,” Halvorson says. “You really feel you can go anywhere­–it feels expansive, not limiting. He’s setting a really strong energy and intention, but knowing him, you know he wants you to take risks, try things out. He wants us to be creative and explore within the parameters.”

If “no. 14” is something of a bagatelle, “no. 68” is an intricate and detailed piece that introduces Fujiwara’s vibes into the Thumbscrew mix for the first time. Atmospheric and redolent of shimmering horizons, the piece features the closest thing to a traditional three-part score of any composition they selected “with three lines of music, a top line that was probably for saxophone, a bass part marked with dynamics and arco and pizzicato, and a percussion line,” Formanek says. “It’s a very composed piece with intricate rhythms and dramatic interval leaps. In the last part we all play a rhythm together and that’s the end.”

Each piece shines a light on a different facet of Braxton’s musical universe. “no. 274” is the only entry from Braxton’s Ghost Trance work. Completely notated but requiring constant interpretation, it’s built on musical cells with constantly shifting tempos. The point isn’t to master the system. “It’s about how you deal with music that’s almost impossible to play and what happens when you do them with someone else, opening up possibilities you couldn’t plan,” Formanek says. The shadow of a march falls on “no. 61” a playfully stuttering and surging piece originally written for a saxophone/bass duo. The album closes with a blast of joy with Braxton’s homage to the Southwest territory bands of the 1930s. With an irresistible walking bass line and ringing unison notes on guitar and vibes, it’s a bright, sunny number “with very specific stylistic references,” Formanek says. “The composition notes mentioned playing the way Basie might have played some of this music, with that bounce and feel. The written music really fits in that style, but in a really Braxton way.”

Formanek’s relationship with Braxton’s music dates back to buying a compilation of his Arista Freedom recordings in the mid-1970s. Immediately struck by the music, he tried to decipher the symbols and diagrams that Braxton used as titles. He followed his output over the decades “amazed at the range of music and how much he pushed himself to be creative and indulge all of his curiosities, the way he used the musicians to help realize the vision,” Formanek says. But it wasn’t until the late 1990s that he had a chance perform with Braxton, joining a multimedia production at the Knitting Factory as the second bassist.

Wesleyan is where Halvorson came into Braxton’s orbit during her undergrad years from 1998-2002, a creative relationship that launched her as one of the most celebrated improvisers to emerge in the 21^st century. “I consider him one of the main catalysts for me deciding to become a musician,” she says. “Studying with Anthony, learning his musical systems and playing music with him remains one of the most important and inspiring musical experiences of my life.”

Fujiwara met Braxton through Taylor Ho Bynum when the trumpeter was attending Wesleyan, which led to several opportunities to perform with Braxton in different settings, including a trio with drummer Tom Rainey documented on the 2014 album Trio (New Haven) 2013 (New Braxton House).  “Having time to talk and hang out with Anthony, his energy and his whole presence has been very inspiring,” Fujiwara says. “Both as a person and a musician he gives this real jolt of energy and creativity and positivity to try things and explore things and push myself.”

Thumbscrew demonstrates their unique collective musical vision in contrasting but complementary ways on two exciting new CDs. Ours and Theirs are the first to be released on a newly revamped Cuneiform Records, just returning from a hiatus. Comprised of longtime collaborators Michael Formanek, Tomas Fujiwara, and Mary Halvorson, Thumbscrew is a true collaborative effort with all three members contributing at an equal rate both in terms of composition and improvisation.

Born out of a residency at Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum where Thumbscrew created their striking second album Convallaria, Ours and Theirs showcase Thumbscrew in two different contexts performing all originals on Ours and all covers on Theirs. Both albums present a meticulous and intuitive original sound that could only be crafted during focused and intensive time as a collective in a place like City of Asylum. “When we arrived at City of Asylum for our second residency in June 2017, we immediately said, ’we’re home!’” says Fujiwara, “The feelings we get when being at City of Asylum, around the people that make it such a unique place doing great work...All of this contributes to a creative process that’s open and inclusive and experimental.”

Tomas, Michael, and Mary are no strangers to each other’s work, having performed in a multitude of projects together, including Michael Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus, Tomas Fujiwara and the Hook Up’s After All is Said, and most recently, in Mary Halvorson’s critically-acclaimed Code Girl.

Ours, as its namesake suggests, is an album of original compositions with Fujiwara, Formanek and Halvorson contributing three works apiece. Opening with Halvorson’s striking “Snarling Joys,” Ours begins with delicate (and ever so slightly warped) ensemble figures that very naturally develop into an urgent and tense thrill-ride of a track, with a brilliant bass solo from Formanek. Fujiwara’s “Saturn Way” shows the ensemble bouncing off of each other’s rhythmic framework with Fujiwara anchoring the group through a pummeling rolling tom figure that slowly descends into a spacious and attentive group improvisation. Later, on Formanek’s punk-thru-the-wormhole style “Cruel Heartless Bastards” the ensemble shifts metric pulse in total lockstep on the turn of a dime while a teasing 4/4 figure creates a sense of gravity for the entire composition. Halvorson takes the track to the stratosphere with a dizzying guitar pedal laden solo after the group snakes their way through Formanek’s labyrinth.

On the contrast between the two records, Halvorson says, “The approach to presenting a unique and personal take on a composition is the same whether it’s one of Ours or one of Theirs.”

Thumbscrew demonstrates their unique collective musical vision in contrasting but complementary ways on two exciting new CDs. Ours and Theirs are the first to be released on a newly revamped Cuneiform Records, just returning from a hiatus. Comprised of longtime collaborators Michael Formanek, Tomas Fujiwara, and Mary Halvorson, Thumbscrew is a true collaborative effort with all three members contributing at an equal rate both in terms of composition and improvisation.

Born out of a residency at Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum where Thumbscrew created their striking second album Convallaria, Ours and Theirs showcase Thumbscrew in two different contexts performing all originals on Ours and all covers on Theirs. Both albums present a meticulous and intuitive original sound that could only be crafted during focused and intensive time as a collective in a place like City of Asylum. “When we arrived at City of Asylum for our second residency in June 2017, we immediately said, ’we’re home!’” says Fujiwara, “The feelings we get when being at City of Asylum, around the people that make it such a unique place doing great work...All of this contributes to a creative process that’s open and inclusive and experimental.”

Tomas, Michael, and Mary are no strangers to each other’s work, having performed in a multitude of projects together, including Michael Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus, Tomas Fujiwara and the Hook Up’s After All is Said, and most recently, in Mary Halvorson’s critically-acclaimed Code Girl.

Theirs features covers penned by venerable composers, from North American jazz legends Benny Golson and Wayne Shorter, to South American composers Julio De Caro (Argentina) and Jacob Do Bandolim (Brazil), to songwriter Evelyn Danzig and Dutch avant-gardist Misha Mengelberg. Thumbscrew covers considerable ground in bringing their unique arrangements and ensemble sensibility to this transfixing set of other composers’ music. On the selection of covers, Fujiwara says, “Each of us brought in a number of covers--more than double what we ended up releasing--that we were curious for Thumbscrew to try. We played through each composition many times, trying different arrangements, and slowly started to focus in on which ones felt right for the group.” Formanek states that “for me it was mostly a matter of which tunes I thought would have strong enough bones to sustain a Thumbscrew interpretation. It was also a matter of imagining how certain pieces would work with Mary, Tomas, and my approaches that wouldn’t sound like just another version.”

On the contrast between the two records, Halvorson says, “The difference is that with the covers we’re aware of trying to honor the composer’s vision, and in many cases, classic versions of the song which serve as inspirations.”

Creative artists aren’t subject to state persecution in the United States, but indifference can exact its own cost, just as generous support can pay steep dividends. Thumbscrew spent two weeks honing the tunes on Convallaria at City of Asylum, a residency program in Pittsburgh, and for Thumbscrew the opportunity for intensive, undistracted work and woodshedding yielded a particularly striking body of music.

Already closely bonded by extensive collaborations in a variety of overlapping ensembles, the powerhouse triumvirate got to spend the kind of concentrated time together that’s “almost unheard of these days,” says Formanek. “I’ve done some composition residencies working on my own. But we were all there together, working on music every day, trying things out. I miss that from my younger days.”

“It was amazing,” agrees Halvorson. “Everyone’s so busy. Even with my own band it can be like pulling teeth to get one rehearsal together. For two weeks we played every day and worked on all the new music. It really helped us to take the band to the next level.”

Convallaria is the work of a true collective with all three players contributing compositions and taking equal responsibility for shaping the music’s flow. While exploring an array of improvisational spaces, the band has honed a sinewy sound marked by transparent textures and astringent rhythms. It’s music that pushes outward and snaps back into unexpectedly altered forms.

While Michael Formanek (double bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums) and Mary Halvorson (guitar) are all known for their prodigious capabilities as improvisers, Thumbscrew is more of a composer’s vehicle. While many cooperative bands draw on material recycled from other projects, "One of the things we said at the beginning is let’s just write music for Thumbscrew and it will only be Thumbscrew music," says Formanek. "It really is a three-composer trio, and all of our tunes have our basic aesthetics attached. But we want everybody to have input. Nobody’s afraid to make a decision. It’s one of the first co-ops I’ve been in where everyone’s really willing to take control at any given moment."

With each musician contributing three tunes, the album encompasses an array of textures and strategies, while maintaining a consistently open and transparent sound. Generating tremendous intensity without necessarily increasingly volume or density, Thumbscrew buzzes and crackles, burns and croons. The group is both open and composerly. Part of what makes the band’s music so engaging is that they draw widely and deeply from any number of sonic sources.

Part of the trio’s strength flows from the deep interconnecting bonds they’ve forged. Halvorson and Fujiwara first started playing together in cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum’s Sextet. They also work together in the collective quartet Reverse Blue with Chris Speed and Eivind Opsvik, and Mike Reed’s fascinating Sun Ra-inspired ensemble Living By Lanterns.

They first worked with Formanek when he subbed in Bynum’s band in 2011, and the chemistry between the three was so readily apparent they immediately started looking into performance opportunities as a trio. This fine, distinctive effort is the result of 2 years of planning, rehearsing and gigging.