So long, Mario Pavone

If you know the backstory, it's poignant to read the liner notes to Isabella, the new Clean Feed release by bassist-composer Mario Pavone's Tampa Quartet. Both this release and Blue Vertical, recorded with Pavone's Dialect Trio + 1 and released simultaneously on Out of Your Head, are dedicated to his granddaughter, who passed last year. "She stole my heart since her birth," Pavone wrote. "She showered her love on me, and on her grandmother, all the days of her life...My Joy will be in re-uniting with her." Pavone passed on May 15 this year after a 17-year struggle with cancer. These two albums were recorded in the last months of his life -- Isabella on February 28-March 1, Blue Vertical on March 25-26 -- and Pavone thanks both label's owners for their "expediency" in releasing them as quickly as possible.

Isabella finds Pavone in the company of his son Michael Pavone on guitar, altoist Mike DiRubbo, and drummer Michael Sarin (a veteran of the saxophonist Thomas Chapin's long-lived trio with Pavone), while on Blue Vertical, Pavone's trio with pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Tyshawn Sorey is augmented by trumpeter-arranger Dave Ballou (who also played on Pavone's 2017 release Vertical and wrote the arrangements for Isabella). That Pavone deemed it so important that he make his last recordings with these particular musicians speaks to the regard in which he held them and the value he placed on his relationships with them. Six tunes appear on both albums, which allows the interested listener to compare and contrast the two ensembles' approaches.

Not surprisingly, the piano-based trio has a cohesive group dynamic one would expect from a unit that's had seven years to get to know each other, to which Ballou (previously heard in ex-Mother Don Preston's Akashic Ensemble and with experimental guitar wizard Nick Didkovsky in Zinc Nine Psychedelic) adds an edgy and exploratory voice. The alto-guitar fronted quartet has a more ruminative cast. The younger Pavone is an agile and inventive soloist and often plays unison themes with DiRubbo, who was part of the Pavone octet that cut Totem Blues for Knitting Factory in Y2K. Pavone's circuitously wending melodies shine throughout, giving the soloists ample fodder for extemporization, and his bass is the heart of the music. He wasn't done with it, just ran out of time.