Tom Teasley, Dave Ballou - Prayer for the Ancestors (Self Release)

The Slow Music Movement
May 31
2 min read

This is the cover for Tom Teasley and Dave Ballou's Prayer for the Ancestors album. Abstract circles with a blue background, text "Lunch Break," "Tom Teasley featuring Dave Ballou." Geometric patterns, modern design.

Tom Teasley is a celebrated, border indifferent percussionist, composer, author and serial collaborator with twenty five years of recorded output behind him. Dave Ballou is a trumpet player, composer and professor of music at Towson University. Together they've just released a very nice new album.

Forget what you know about free jazz, things are about to get spiritual rather than raucous. "Prayer for the Ancestors" is my favourite cut from the new, less is more LP from Tom Teasley & Dave Ballou. Having previously played together in Jeff Cosgrove's group the pair decided to explore further synergies during a series of improvisatory session at Teasley's home studio, and they were right to do so.

The recordings mine global jazz territory; improvised music was only honed in 20th century America, not its only home after all. The whole recording is worth your time but as on so many LPs, even some of the best jazz albums from the golden age, there is a track, yes one of those, that rises to the top. "Prayer for the Ancestors" is that cut.

As with the whole LP Teasley creates a compelling percussive skeleton for Ballou to weave his horn through, and immediately sets a spiritual tone for the trumpet to follow, Ballou willingly accepting the challenge to transcend this mortal coil with searching, contemplative horn lines that pierce unseen boundaries to neighbouring dimensions. Lest he become lost exploring new realms the percussion sends out regular hand played pan pulses and lays a skittering trail of exotic higher frequencies with occasionally cosmic hats, rolls and snares that are textural rather than propulsive. With both percussion and horn set to transcend, the only thing to do is go with the cosmic flow and contemplate that there just might be more out there, if only we look in the right places.