Cosmic lawman

Look up "Abrams" in any music reference book and you'll discover that he was a founding member of AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), the pioneering self-help group in Chicago that attracted the likes of Anthony Braxton and the Art Ensemble of Chicago 30 years ago. AACM was a clearinghouse as well as a testing ground for African-American jazz players with an experimental, polystylistic bent. But let me suggest that an even more helpful insight into what Abrams's music proposes comes from looking at his paintings on the covers of many of his previous discs, including the most current. The one that graces One Line, Two Views can be "read," like his music, in multiple ways. It might be the cubist face of a fantastic creature with eyes where no human eyes would rest. Or it might depict searchlights on either side of an endless highway.

The music here is likewise an adventure into multiple perspectives. Abrams has assembled a versatile 10-piece band. Consider this album as the latest installment in a series of releases on Black Saint that include Rejoicing with the Light and Blu Blu Blu. Like those earlier releases, One Line, Two Views builds on the foundation of big-band experiments by Ellington, Mingus, Sun Ra. What distinguishes Abrams's music is a fondness for unusual layerings of instrumental colors not often found in jazz settings. His is a painter's music, brashly and abstractly shaped to accentuate multiple viewpoints, luminous with broad swatches of bright exotic hues.

"Textures 95" opens this album with a rambling musical conversation between Abrams on piano and Bryan Carrott on vibraphone. Then Mark Feldman's gypsy-flavored violin enters. Additional colors from a brass and woodwind trio come in, led by a feverishly exciting Marty Ehrlich. Percussion and supple bass join, then accordion, then harp, expertly played by Ann LeBaron. It's as if Abrams were painting long horizontal bands of color across a wide canvas panorama, each painted band a musical theme laced with improvised adornments, or an instrumental tone sampled from a stylistic category. He'll counterpoint a bluesy-sounding horn against a folk fiddle sound -- more multiple perspectives for his musical tales.

"The Prism 3" showcases drummer Reggie Nicholson, who opens the piece with a Latinish set of rhythms punctuated by yawning woodwinds, creating a neo-Latin flavor in the spirit of Don Byron's last album. Abrams tosses some jarring, dissonant piano chords into the mix. It's an ideal example of how he loves to compose in the interstices between styles. His piano lines gradually tease the Latin-tinged players into moving into a classically colored direction. Although most of the music on this album is scored, Abrams selects players who know how to improvise during the interludes in these long compositions where one style gradually mutates into another.

The high point is "Tribute to Julius Hemphill and Don Pullen," an elegy for those two recently departed jazz heroes that's more like a romp. Abrams opens with a repetitive piano riff that sounds lifted from composer Steve Reich. He's joined by horns and accordion (accordionist Tony Cendras meshes surprisingly well with the various horns throughout). Eventually a call and response is executed between trumpeter Eddie Allen (who shows off a broad palette of New Orleans-style vocal effects) and the woodwinds. A more joyous celebration of the energies of saxophonist Hemphill and keyboardist Pullen is hard to imagine.

The seven compositions share a similar pattern of evolution. All begin slowly, most featuring Abrams improvising with one other musician. The band members enter one by one, adding accelerating drama through unexpected juxtapositions of tonal colors and stylistic mergers. On "Ensemble Song," the closing tune, Abrams can be faintly heard reciting a line from one of his poems: ". . . choose to work with the universal law of rhythm." You don't have to be a mystic to think he's working in harmony with some cosmic law.