Mark Turner We Raise Them To Lift Their Heads

Mark Turner

(Loveland Music)

By Ed Enright  |   Published February 2025

Mark Turner’s We Raise Them To Lift Their Heads is a self-portrait of the artist as a perpetually maturing improviser/player of the highest order. Recorded in Copenhagen in late 2019 and produced by guitarist Jakob Bro, the album is a solo performance of melodies, rhythmic explorations (both slow and fast) and implied harmonies that gives an inside perspective on what it means to be Mark Turner. It conveys an up-close and personal depiction of the struggles and rewards of being a serious artist devoted to crafting a uniquely distinct voice, and the focus, dedication and honesty it demands.

We Raise Them To Lift Their Heads brings the listener inside Turner’s instrument. Pads thud, keys click and notes occasionally warble as Turner quests his way through two of his own compositions, three pieces by Bro and “Misterioso” by Thelonious Monk. We hear him in a naked, pure context, with nothing else but the natural ambience of the room he’s playing in. Hear his tongued attacks, his breath accents, his slurred bits of phrasing, the plosive pop of his altissimo and the unselfconscious swallow of his larynx. Intuit when he’s about to end each track just by paying attention to the way his breathing changes, the way his ideas and patterns wind down or wrap up. It doesn’t even take an experienced or discriminating ear to sense these captivating subtleties; you can just tell that resolution is imminent if you immerse yourself in this music and simply let it flow and turn in whatever direction Turner takes. Truth lies within.

One of the recording sessions with Turner and Bro that eventually led to We Raise Them To Lift Their Heads is depicted in the 2022 documentary Music for Black Pigeons, which premiered at the 79th Venice Biennale and was screened at cinemas and film festivals worldwide. A 14-year project by Danish directors Jørgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed, the film also portrays Bro’s creative interactions with various other prominent figures in the global jazz realm, including Paul Motian, Lee Konitz, Midori Takada, Bill Frisell, Craig Taborn, Joe Lovano, Larry Grenadier, Andrew Cyrille, Palle Mikkelborg, Joey Baron, Thomas Morgan, Arve Henriksen and Manfred Eicher.

There’s a prevailing notion in modern jazz circles that Turner has been one of the more interesting and important voices on the tenor saxophone for the last quarter-century or so. We Raise Them To Lift Their Heads provides further evidence of such hard-earned, and heartfelt, esteem.

from https://downbeat.com