Impeccable live jazz-rock from former Miles Davis music director and Steven Wilson’s keyboard player
*****
On 12 March 2020, keyboard player Adam Holzman and his band Brave New World drove to the Nublu club to soundcheck for a gig that night. The global pandemic was about to close New York City. Broadway had just shut down, but as Adam said later, ‘we decided to play anyway. Something big was coming, and who knew when we’d be able to perform again?… Only about 18 hardcore fans showed up.’
Adam Holzman has been Steven Wilson’s regular keyboard player since he joined the Grace for Drowning tour in late 2011 in support of Steven’s second solo album.
But Adam’s musical pedigree goes back much further than that; most notably he was with Miles Davis’ band for nearly five years, eventually becoming Miles’ musical director. And going back further still, Adam’s father is Jac Holzman, founder of Elektra Records (who signed The Doors) and Nonesuch Records (who began by specialising in European Early Music, but also commissioned the pioneering electronic album Silver Apples of the Moon, by the American composer Morton Subotnick in 1967). Adam tells stories of when he was a boy and Jim Morrison came to the house, and Adam showed Jim his toy keyboard and tape recorder; quiet moments when Jim was far from his rebellious and controversial public persona. Young Adam was also hugely influenced by The Doors’ keyboard player Ray Manzarek.
The album opens with Intro – The Age of Fear with dystopian synth noises, and ominous voices intoning, ‘The age of fear; the creative spirit must fight to stay alive’, words that take on a poignant significance in this context. But since the 1980s, Adam has made music under the title ‘Optimistic music in the time of fear’, so perhaps there is hope, and the vigorous drum solo from Gene Lake, with bubbling analogue synth sounds suggest that there is still life in music.
On the tour to support Steven Wilson’s third solo album, The Raven That Refused to Sing, Adam began to do piano improvisations each night at the start of Deform to Form a Star, a song from Steven’s second solo album Grace for Drowning. He collected them together on The Deform Variations in 2015. The second track Pianodemic is another in that tradition, a moment of optimism despite the reference to the Pandemic in the title.
The next three tracks are taken from Adam’s 2018 album Truth Decay. As is often the case with jazz, the live versions have more power and energy than the studio versions, good though they are. The first of these, Ectoplasm, bursts into life with fierce drumming and cool Fender Rhodes keyboards. On the NewEars Prog Show podcast Adam described the Fender as ‘the electric guitar of jazz’, and it plays an important role on this album (although the instrument Adam plays is a Korg SV1 Stage Vintage piano). Throughout the album, Adam gives space to the other players in the band rather than just showing off his keyboard skills, virtuosic as they are, so the album feels like a true band album.
The next track, Phobia has a lovely, spacey, open feel with an atmospheric main theme with evocative harmonies. It gives all the band their chance to shine above the backbeat – first Adam with some distorted Fender Rhodes sounds, then Ofer Assaf, with evocative saxophone, then Jane Getter on heavily echoed guitar. An excellent track.
Growing up as the son of a record company executive, Adam could easily have had a very cynical view of the music industry, the kind of view expressed by a relative who might have said, Good Luck with your Music, in the way that we might say, ‘good luck with that.’ But Adam’s father has been supportive of his son, and it seems that Adam has retained his joy in music making. This is a seriously funky track with an earworm for a chorus, featuring excellent rumbling bass playing from Freddy Cash jr.
Adam originally recorded Maze, a Miles Davis song in 1985, live in the studio just before the sessions for Miles’ 1986 album Tutu. The track finally appeared on the Rubberband album released in 2019. Adam described the track as having, ‘a killer groove…with a flat-out burning solo.’
The final song, Abandoner is a cover of a track from Steven Wilson’s first solo album Insurgentes. The original track begins with a lovely, introspective quality, and Steven’s plaintive vocals are replaced here with soulful saxophone playing from Ofer Assaf. As the title suggests, the song is about loss and abandonment, and Adam’s version perfectly captures this. Steven’s song descends into terrifying noise, perhaps reflecting bitterness and anger at being abandoned. Adam’s version takes a slightly quieter, but equally effective approach.
This is a stunning live album, although it often sounds like a studio album both because of the quality of the playing and the recording, and the fact that the audience is small due to the Pandemic. Holzman says, ‘As of now, it’s still the last gig’. Let’s hope it’s not too long before he is able to tour again.
Nick Holmes Music 