This was originally written for AVANT magazine in the UK back in 2000. Alex Cline is a favorite of mine. He epitomizes the idea of drummer-as-musician. Soft spoken, he wields a sure hand behind his massive drum kit. His music is cinematic in scope, and is some of the most amazing music I’ve ever heard. While doesn’t have a website or myspace page, you can check him out at his label, Cryptogramophone.

The Inner Worlds of Alex Cline

Alex Cline laughingly calls jazz “the road to ruin.” This is in reference to the teen years when he and his twin brother, guitarist Nels, discovered John Coltrane. Looking younger than his  43 years, this Los Angeles native seems more like the quintessential surfer than one of the city’s most respected jazz drummers. “Both my brother and I started playing around the same time. We were into Hendrix, Zappa, and Beefheart, so you can see where this opens the door into the jazz realm, along with King Crimson’s first record. 21st Century Schizoid Man embodied everything I liked most—this bone crunching riff thing and a ridiculous jazz like complexity combined with manic intensity. It was the perfect piece of music for me at the time. Michael Giles was one of my favorite drummers..”

Like many young drummers in the late 60s and early 70s,  Tony Williams’ Lifetime

group made a major impact. “I heard To Whom It May Concern, from Turn It Over, on the radio. I had no idea what was happening on the drums, except that it was the most amazing thing I’d ever heard on a drum set. I had to figure out what that was. I was damaged forever from that point on. It changed the way I was hearing everything. But musically it was close to where I was coming from.”

From there it was Herbie Hancock, Weather Report, and then John Coltrane. “After hearing Coltrane, my brother turned to me and said, ‘This is jazz? How come no one ever played this for us before?’ We didn’t know it could sound like that. I heard Elvin Jones and wondered what was going on. My ears were really opening up.”

“The road to ruin” has been very good to Cline. A veteran of over 60 recordings, he has forged a career that has found him playing with some of the most innovative jazz artists. At 21, he was recording and touring with saxophonist Julius Hempill. “Nobody knew me from a hole in the wall. I was this long hair white kid from California. And he just wanted to play with me for some reason. It was an amazing experience. So then I was known for playing jazz avant-garde.”

Around the same time he met and started working with saxophonist Vinny Golia. “Vinny’s music has evolved quite a bit from where it started, as have both of us as musicians.  I’m still frequently challenged, and at times even mystified by how he hears things, because it’s very different from how I hear things. But it’s a relationship that has brought out different qualities that have enhanced both of our musical lives. Honestly, when I first played with him back in 1977, I thought the relationship would last probably 5 years, as we would both move on to other things. But here it is, 22 years later, and we’re still playing together.”

Cline’s work with Golia is well documented on Vinny’s own 9 Winds label. The most recent Golia Quartet release, Lineage, also features trumpeter Bobby Bradford and bassist Ken Filiano. “Vinny wanted to put out a record with Bobby playing Vinny’s music, as he and I both play in Bobby’s regular group, the Bobby Bradford Mo’tet. Ken actually happened to be in town and we went into the studio with no rehearsal. We briefly ran the heads, then did takes of all the stuff. Vinny selected what he wanted and that became the CD. Vinny wanted it to be sort of old friends playing together.”

Lineage starts off with Hello To Mrs. Minifield. Against the loping horn melody, the influence of Tony Williams shows, as Alex plays broken cymbal time, puctuated with rolls across the toms. But there is a lightness of articulation here that Williams’ heavy hand rarely displayed. Clearly Cline does not lack for nuance and sensitivity.

Cline also works with Vinny’s Large Ensemble. Featuring up to 28 members, it’s a challenge to drive from the drum chair. “It’s difficult to make that many people sound like a band. The conductor helps, but not for time. Especially if you’ve got some classical players in there, they tend to watch the conductor, while all the jazz guys are listening to the rhythm section. And there’s this constant, slight disagreement that goes on.”

The Ensemble’s 9 Winds release, Portland 1996, certainly demonstrates a larger than life sound.

Alex is coming off of one of his busiest summers. Recordings with Cline-Gauthier-Stinson (their first release, Right of Violet, owing to how its violin/guitar/percussion improvs fell into the same terretory inhabited by King Crimson,  was a favorite among prog rockers), a project with guitarists Henry Kaiser and Raoul Bjorkenheim (of Karakatau and Edward Vesela fame), and another with Kaiser, Stinson, and koto player Miya Masaoka (“ Miya was wonderful.”). But the one closest to him is the third release by his own Alex Cline Ensemble, Sparks Fly Upward (Cryptogramophone).

Following the lead of The Lamp and The Star (ECM) and Montsalvat (9 Winds), this recording showcases Cline the composer. Sitting behind a massive drum kit that resembles a huge kinetic sculpture of gongs, bells, cymbals, and drums, he leads the ensemble (guitarist GE Stinson, violinist Jeff Gauthier, keyboardist Wayne Peet, bassist Michel Elizondo, and the wonderful Aina Kemanis on voice) through a series of extended pieces that are cinematic is scope. In fact, one of the main influences on him was the late Russian movie director, Andrei Tarkovsky, who the title track is dedicated to. Much like Tarkovsky’s films, Cline’s music tends to be slowly paced, taking the listener on a journey that builds to not so much a climax, as a release.

Pieces of A Mirror is dedicated to another prominent figure in his life, the late pianist Richard Grossman. For years he had worked with Grossman’s trio with bassist Ken Filiano (check out Trio In Real Time on 9 Winds, or Even Your Ears on hatology). Here he paints a sonic picture that is often more a sound collage than rhythm. The percussion prods and punctuates the ensemble’s drawn out chordal background.

Sonnet 9  was written for longtime friend and bassist Eric von Essen, whe died in 1997. Alex had worked with him, Jeff Gauthier, and his brother Nels for ten years in the acoustic jazz group Quartet Music. Their Delos CD,  Summer Nights, finds the musicians playing a sort of chamber jazz that

“I have the spate of Golia Large Ensemble gigs securely in my past, which is a load off my mind—taxing stuff—but the roll of Bobby Bradford gigs seems unstoppable.  The last big gasp was the ersatz Quartet Music session last Sunday, the last session for the Music of Eric von Essen CD project for Cryptogramaphone (3 volumes).  I think, grueling as it was, it turned out fine.  Ahead:  more Bradford, some large improv project of Miya's this Sunday (for which she doesn't play but conducts by doing Tai

Chi--hmmm), and the Golia Quintet at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Now I need some time to finish a chunk of my own music!  The year 2000 should see the recording of The Constant Flame from my own ensemble.”