There's the just-getting-to-know-you vibe of the opener, the free-bop drive of "The Shokoe Slip" (fine work by trumpeter Robertson, pianist Stevens, and violinist Feldman here), the glacial dissonance of the title track, and the frenetic "Roundup" that closes the show.  That's a lot of ground to cover, and they don't waste much time, meaning fans should be well pleased.

IAJRC Journal,
Summer/Fall, 2003

Stuart Kremsky 

This disc is very well recorded and the production values are first rate.

All About Jazz

Farrell Lowe

Featuring Michael Jefry Stevens on piano, Herb Robertson on  trumpets, Mark Feldman on violin, Steve Rust on bass and Harvey Sorgen on drums. This all-star quintet has been together for quite a while in different permutations, including an early effort with Dave Douglas and Joe Fonda called the Mosaic Sextet (reissued on GM), plus some half dozen different releases with varying personnel on Leo.

Commencing with some a dark piano intro, the rest of the quintet soon float in with the ever-incredible clarion trumpet of Herb Robertson and ghost-like violin swirls of Mark Feldman blend with the quirky rhythm team fragments. On "The Shokoe Slip," Herb is off on one his astounding high flying trumpet solos pushed by the propulsive start and stop rhythm team work, then its Michael's turn to display his formidable pianistics with another marvelous solo, followed by another amazing solo from the hottest violinist in town - Mark Feldman. Bassist Steve Rust, whom I am not familiar with, and Harvey Sorgen are splendid throughout, consistently spinning, listening, digging in, balancing and pushing all the soloists.

Although, this music is completely improvised, there is an invisible thread, a connection of spirits that runs throughout - five outstanding musicians working together and creating a magical web around and between each other. Everyone plays acoustically and the production by Harvey and Steve is superb, warm, clear and perfect. Without any doubt, one of this month's (year's?) best.

Dowtown Music Gallery

Diverse elements mark their excursion to “The Shokoe Slip.” A fusillade of growls and a welter of scurries inject Robertson’s opening salvo. Stevens an ocean of calm soon ripples undercurrents of urgency, Feldman dances in on a folk air and a touch of klezmer. Where do they go from here? Right into an exploding cornucopia of sound, building tension and keeping it ticking until the last note slams in. For the most part they find common ground as they seek their muse on plateaus of their own invention. There are, however, a couple of occasions when they wander onto a woozy plain. For instance, “Renata” is left to dry across a bleak landscape, and Aercine comes across as indolent with neither a meeting of the mind nor of the spirit.

All About Jazz

Jerry D'Souza

As we head away from a very proud avant garde jazz and towards a neutered entity called improvisational music, it is refreshing to hear an album of freely improvised music so deeply rooted in the jazz tradition as this eponymous release from Aercine. These guys don’t exactly play the blues, but they do play with them. These musicians seem to understand that experimentation is a means to an end, not a substitute for a thorough understanding of the jazz dialectic; that, in other words, no matter how far out there you go, it still don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing. Crucially, they also know that once you’ve established that swing, it’s ok to merely imply it.

There’s a lot here beside the jazz, and I mean ‘beside’ as in next to as opposed to instead of. Not unlike the late Don Cherry or the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Aercine use jazz as their methodology for exploring harmonic ideas from 20th century classical music and other sources outside of mainstream jazz. Dig, if you will, Mark Feldman’s bluesy violin solo on the group’s theme song, with its clever quote of the famous basson line from “Le Sacre du printemps.”

As I say, this music is very advanced harmonically. You don’t doubt that pianist Michael Jefry Sevens knows his serialism—but his playing never gets tedious because he also knows his Monkisms. Likewise, trumpeter Herb Robertson’s playing contains echoes of Cherry, Don Ayler, and Lester Bowie and also of Freddie Hubbard and Miles Davis. Bassist Steve Rust and Drummer Harvey Sorgen are supple enough to accommodate whatever the rest of the group throws at them, knowing when to play right on the beat, when to take a little bit off of it, and when to deconstruct it altogether.

Not every volume of improvisational music wants or deserves to be called jazz. This album does, clearly embracing the tradition as it advances it in its own unique way. At times they find a groove, and even when they are at their most abstract there seems to be a vestige of one present. Combining elements from avant garde classical and free jazz with the blues and gypsy violin, Aercine creates a unique and deep jazz experience.

Jazz Review

Ted Kane

The nucleus of the group on Aercine is the Sorgen-Rust-Stevens piano trio, augmented by trumpeter extraordinairre Herb Robertson and violinist Mark Feldman.  Abstract, off-kilter swing, significant folk and classical elements and precision-guided improvisations exploit the very personal styles of Robertson, Feldman and Stevens, with Rust and Sorgen providing a solid foundation throughout.  While the entire program is a success, perhaps the most exciting points occur when Robertson and Feldman are engaged in a friendly all and response.  Both also have their "own" tracks that feature their solo statements as accompanied by the trio.  For Feldman, his classical/folk mixture is heard to good effect on the swinging, "As I Was Saying" and the countrified, "Kaaterskill Falls."   Robertson's range of sounds and his bag of tricks are demonstrated on the swinging, "Renata," as well as the challenging "Occam's Razor."  Stevens is in top form, particularly on the aforementioned "As I Was Saying," where his crystalline chord structures shimmer in conjunction with a ruminating pulse.

Signal to Noise

Jay Collins

Aercine is Harvey Sorgen on bass, Steve Rust on bass, Michael Jefry Stevens on piano, Mark Feldman on violin, and Herb Robertson on trumpet.  Together they have created some of the most interesting jazz compositions to come out in recent times.  Free jazz is the name of the game here; this is definitely aimed exclusively at experimental listeners and not the jazz mainstream.

The musicians involved in Aercine are clearly very talented; their solos are masterfully complex and their rhythms are wonderfully free.  The loose nature of the compositions will be a plus for free jazz audiences - live performances must be amazing.  The only downside to the pieces is that some of the arrangements end up being too sparse and don't hold the listener's interest.

The best tracks include "The Shokoe Slip" and "Kaaterskill Falls."  The former is an experimental piece filled with bubbly piano, gurgling trumpet solos, pattering drums, and some really effective violin improvisation.  The latter is a wonderful track held together by Mark Feldman's fantastic violin-playing - the piece gradually gains tension as it progresses.

Overall, this is a very spirited performance by a bunch of very talented free jazz performers.  What more could you want?

Indieville

Matt Shimmer

Os Aercine são Herb Robertson, Mark Feldman, Michael Jeffry Stevens, Steve Rust e Harvey Sorgen, músicos que não esperaríamos ver juntos, dados os seus diferentes percursos. Ou talvez, na medida em que isso a que se chama jazz sempre foi uma sopa de pedra, onde tudo tem lugar, a dita pedra, hortaliça, pedaços de toucinho, o que mais couber. Algo que ainda torna mais incompreensível que alguns velhos do Restelo clamem a favor de uma pretensa (e inexistente) pureza do jazz. Ora, o jazz deste disco de música de câmara totalmente improvisada é o que há de mais impuro e, ao mesmo tempo, consentâneo com a sua natureza. Basta ter em conta que Feldman, por exemplo, é um violinista com formação clássica que passou pelo country e tem uma confessada paixão pela música judia, ou que o pianista Jefry Stevens deve o seu pessoal estilo tanto a Bartok e Webern como a Andrew Hill e Jaki Byard. O que ouvimos neste álbum homónimo não é um jazz celebratório das suas formas e da sua história, ao contrário de grande parte daquele que é tocado nos EUA: é o jazz de hoje, ou, porque não há um “jazz de hoje”, devido às nostalgias e regressões imperantes no meio, será o que este quinteto considera que o jazz poderia/poderá ser, hoje. Termino com um aviso extra: este é um dos melhores registos recentes desse extraordinário trompetista que dá pelo nome de Herb Robertson.

Rui Eduardo Paes

Rui Paes

Part of the underappreciated generation of expressive improvisers, pianist Michael Jefry Stevens, 52, is one of those musicians who plied his craft in the fallow years between the 1960s heyday of experimental jazz and before the current free music uptake.

Now co-leader of the peripatetic Fonda-Stevens bands with bassist Joe Fonda, Stevens is a committed, no-holds-barred improviser. His technically imposing stylings draw as much -- if not more -- from the severe formalism of early modern classical composers as the jazz tradition.

Aercine, an impressive studio quintet effort, is a distinctive example of his art. Another reason is that on the CD, Stevens' trio, filled out by drummer Harvey Sorgen -- who also produced and mastered the discs -- and bassist Steve Rust, is joined by an usual front line. Violinist Mark Feldman has worked in every medium from Nashville studios to John Zorn's formal compositions, while trumpeter Herb Robertson has been a favorite brassman for leaders ranging from altoist Tim Berne to bassist Barry Guy.

Although all the music is completely improvised it also phases in references from impressionism and Eastern European airs on one hand and hard bop and the Cool school at other times. Sometimes, in fact, Stevens' touch appears to be a weird amalgam of Lennie Tristano's and Dave Burrell's. Then on something like "The Shokoe Slip" he will turn pure hard bopper, complete with double-timed key clipping. Brassy plunger work from Robertson and romantic triple and double stopping from Feldman in the virtuosic Jascha Heifetz tradition mute the harsh keyboarding until the entire tune explodes into high pitched cacophony.

Alternately, "As I Was Saying" features dark, fine-boned pianisms, as Stevens ranges all over the tune with underscored cadenzas of altered fantasias. Rust and Sorgen stick to straight jazz time, while the trumpeter produces brassy lip farts and the violinist shapely, wiggling mellow sweeps.

Elsewhere, romantic themes share space with Balkan echoes; banjo-like plucks from fiddle meet high-pitched almost celeste-like sound from the piano; and when Robertson sounds out what could be traditional muted Miles-like lines, bassman Rust Rust follows along as a dependable Paul Chambers.

There's "Roundup", which seems to have escaped from an upscale roadhouse, situated midway between the Red Neck and Urban parts of a Southern city. With a theme that sounds itchingly familiar, Stevens tries out some rollicking modern barrelhouse piano that mixes with some bleached Jungle stylings from Robertson. The brassman's muted grace notes then comment on Feldman's clear, legato, but very speedy, runs. Robertson appears to be working the inside of his valves with buzzing shakes and ascending runs, while the fiddler slides out notes so sizzingly quick and so sharp that he sometimes goes flat as he touches many strings at once. The drummer contributes press rolls, with the final ferment built up with triple-time, tremolo piano pounding. By that point everyone is in such a state that someone shouts out a loud "gee haw!". Now when's the last time you heard that on an improv CD?

Jazz Weekly

Ken Waxman

If you're looking for a CD that stretches the (musical) boundaries, but doesn't sound like meth freaks playing heavy-handed hammers, this is IT, kiddies! Almost 55 minutes of exploratory improvised sonic suite that will sate your appetite for strange. The interplay between Robertson's trumpet & Feldman's violin is simply beautiful, but in the overall, this quintet plays jazz that sounds almost like jazz... heavily improvised, yet formful, these guys play (together) like there's no tomorrow! Stevens keyboard chops are enchanting... Robertson's horn, on track 2, "The Shokoe Slip", is pure life! Our friends at Drimala Records always pick winners, & they've scored yet again with this fine album

I listened to this 5 or 6 times through, and it's the kind of music that puts you out in a (mental/musical) zone you didn't even know existed... 45 minutes later, you pull into your destination, not even having realized that you just took a ride! Clean recording throughout, super balance on each of the instruments. Those with a love for improvised music will agree (without doubt) in our rating of HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Improvijazzation Nation,
Issue #62

Dick Metcalf

Stunning technique, a never hiding sense of beauty and careful research. That's how I describe the extremely pleasant improvisation of "Aercine", a quintet composed of the Michael Jefry Stevens Trio plus Herb Robertson and Mark Feldman. This music can't be correctly defined, even if by my standards it could be adjacent to jazz - but I would not do the musicians any favour using this term. I try and recognize - most of all - chamber music influences; the interplay among these fellows is absolutely flawless and the first listen makes me think about scores and notated segments but no - this is only a perfect kind of self-regulating freedom and, probably, profound intuitive reasoning over each other's suggestion. That means striving towards perfection, something that Michael, Herb, Mark, Harvey Sorgen on drums and Steven Rust on bass have managed to achieve - almost completely. Hats off to all of them.

Touching Extremes

Massimo Ricci

Michael Jefry Stevens is in the enviable position of having almost thirty recording sessions behind him. Drimala Records feel that Aercine is the pianist's strongest recording since his three famed Mosaic Sextet sessions in the late 1980s. Harvey Sorgen and Mark Feldman were present on those groundbreaking recordings.

Michael Jefry Stevens is influenced on one side by Coltrane, Bill Evans, Cecil Taylor and Thelonious Monk but, on the other, by Mahler, Bartok, Debussy and Ravel. The free jazz environment allows Stevens the luxury of painting his music with a palette containing blues, rock, classical, jazz and funk. The resulting improvisations cannot be pigeonholed.

This reviewer, being a traditionalists, is totally unfamiliar with the world of free-jazz but found much to appreciate and enjoy in spite of my handicap. Roundup and Renata were especially exciting and appealed to my traditional approach to jazz.

JazzReview

Richard Bourcier

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