Three minutes into First Flight, I had already moved through curiosity, irritation, laughter and surrender. Judi Silvano enters with an elongated “oooh,” bending her voice around the flute and bassoon. Haruna Fukazawa’s flute answers with quick, bright figures, while Claire de Brunner’s bassoon moves underneath them with a dry, woody weight. The pitches scrape past one another and meet at odd angles. During the first listen, several phrases appeared to miss their destination. A second play revealed a different system: reaction carries the structure. One sound changes direction, another interrupts, and the trio builds form from those immediate decisions.
Put a bassoon beside several flutes, a voice and small percussion, and the register suddenly stretches wide enough to suggest an ensemble twice the size. Silvano moves between words, syllables, breath, calls and extended vowels, changing her role throughout each piece. At one moment her voice establishes the main phrase; seconds later the flute takes the melodic centre and the vocal becomes part of the surrounding texture. Bell-like percussion briefly marks the pulse before the ensemble changes course. Conventional song architecture gives way to collective motion, which also lends purpose to the titles. Gathering, Flock of Three, Passing Through and Coming Together describe the players’ behaviour: they circle a phrase, separate into individual lines, answer one another and regroup. Breath becomes both musical material and a shared measurement of time.
Then Passing Through arrives, stays for one minute and leaves. Its placement caught me off guard in the best way. Following several pieces filled with vocal curves and rapid instrumental exchanges, this miniature creates a clean break before the longer second half. The trio condenses its language into a compact transition, allowing the surrounding compositions to regain space.
By the time Gathering, Flock of Three and Flower Talk form the centre of the sequence, the trio’s distinctive vocabulary has also created a structural challenge. Fluttering flute, low bassoon accents and theatrical vocal phrasing appear in different configurations, yet the individual outlines occasionally merge. Once the ear learns the group’s preferred gestures, each new glissando or clipped accent carries greater familiarity. Flower Talk provides the clearest identity within that sequence. Silvano’s improvised syllables remove literal meaning from speech and retain its rhythm, emphasis and emotional temperature. I wanted one sustained note to remain in place for an uncomfortable duration, followed by a wider pocket of silence. A pause of that scale could heighten the next ensemble entrance and give the improvisation another form of pressure.
This Morning opens the acoustic space through high flute calls, wider gaps between phrases and a softer vocal line. The change in density arrives at the right point in the running order. Stravinsky compresses several abrupt turns into two and a half minutes, treating rapid contrast as a compositional engine, while Beaverbrook benefits from its 5:30 duration. Here the trio has enough time to develop an idea beyond its first appearance and explore several possible responses. The bassoon becomes especially prominent, grounding the brighter registers with grain, resonance and a measured pace.
On later plays, recurring intervals, shifts in density and changes of instrumental role provided a clearer route through First Flight. Expressive freedom occasionally moves faster than a listener can process its internal cues, producing the album’s most compelling tension and its clearest limitation. Close attention reveals breath entering the flute, the textured edge of a sustained bassoon note, Silvano’s vowel gradually changing shape and a bell strike organising the surrounding lines for a few seconds. Each detail contributes character before the larger structure becomes apparent. The trio’s strongest passages preserve a separate function for voice, flute and bassoon, allowing spontaneous decisions to remain legible inside the full ensemble sound.
By On the Deck and Coming Together, the group’s musical vocabulary has become easier to follow. Extended vowels operate as recurring signals, the bassoon provides a recognisable centre of gravity, and the flute’s sharp turns register as cues within the exchange. Coming Together lasts barely two minutes, so the reunion arrives through a concise final statement. Its modest scale suits a record built from temporary formations and quick changes of direction.
First Flight is restless, theatrical, demanding and occasionally exhilarating. Its boldest choice lies in the treatment of pitch as movable material, open to bends, collisions and brief moments of agreement. The trio returns to that method often enough for several tracks to share a similar profile, though the 33-minute runtime keeps the programme focused. My response continued changing with each replay: initial resistance became concentration, and concentration gradually developed into admiration for the precision behind these improvisations. Judi Silvano’s Garden Winds has created an uncompromising art-house jazz record with its own grammar and three clearly defined musical personalities. I finished alert, challenged and still processing the details that had passed by during the first listen.
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