Will Mason Quartet: Hemlocks, Peacocks

Will Mason set his sights on microtonality in a jazz setting, and the ever-curious drummer, composer and bandleader comes away with another compelling treatise on an unorthodox musical idea.

Taking a cue from a LaMonte Young’s The Well Tuned Piano, a sprawling, five-hour opus exhaustively exploring pretty much every avenue of possibility afforded by a solo piano tuned with just intonation, Hemlocks, Peacocks (New Focus Recordings) likewise unlocks many doors using special keyboards that plays notes in smaller intervals than the common, wider 12 tone equal temperament. Only this time, within a small jazz ensemble.

In carrying out his latest set of concepts, Mason constructed a quartet comprising of himself on drums, deVon Russell Gray on keyboards and a tenor sax/alto sax horn section of Anna Webber and Daniel Fisher-Lochhead, respectively. Intended or not, doing without a bass further isolates the keyboards, deepening its idiosyncratic sonic impact.

Typical of Mason, he doesn’t absorb inspiration only to spit it back out again, he uses the innovations of others as building blocks for his own novel approach. As the keyboardist, Gray doesn’t actually use a “well-tuned piano,” he turned to micro-tuned electric pianos — two, actually — using two different pitches. Further, Mason has long employed notions of chamber music in his compositions while leaving space for the pure improvisation of jazz, and continues to do so here.

The micro tones coming from these keyboards takes a small adjustment period for Western-trained ears but are very germane to Mason’s melodies. By choosing a two-sax front line, Mason matched two instruments micro-toned by nature to one that normally isn’t, easing the transition to embracement of his ideas.

“Hemlocks” is arranged so that Webber and Fisher-Lochhead harmonize to Gray, making it the right track to start the album off with because the listener can begin to make a connection to this dissident sound. A similar approach is undertaken for “Twilight,” except that Gray goes down to almost the missing bass level of tones while the reeds slowly draw out contrasting, drone-like notes.

The interaction between Webber and Fisher-Lochhead frames “Peacocks,” first starting percussively and progressing to emotional expressions while Mason’s tumbling toms take over the rhythmic pulse.

Any jazz element of “Hymn” comes primarily from Mason himself, applying a carefully modulated flow of tom and brushstrokes to establish variation behind Gray’s alien but logical chord progressions. Mason puts a light swing underneath “The Fallen Leaves, Repeating Themselves,” perhaps the jazziest tune in this set, and Fisher-Lochhead solos along the micro-toned scale with the command of Rudresh Mahanthappa.

Webber gets the limelight for “Turned in the Fire,” kicking off the tune interacting Mason “Countdown” style, and as Gray enters the room, she applies ample chops to the elusive melody he’s playing. Both of the saxes go off the hook during “Planets,” a freedom fest with Mason that slows down to the hanging resonance of Gray’s offbeat chords.

Microtonal jazz has been explored for a while, but Will Mason finds innovative ways to scale its limitless potential. Hemlocks, Peacocks is now available and you can get it from Bandcamp.

— S. Victor Aaron, 1.11.2025

It is easy to view Hemlocks, Peacocks as a meeting of the minds between two singular talents – drummer / composer Will Mason and saxophonist / composer Anna Webber. Both have a penchant for delving into the unconventional sounds of microtonalism and non-standard tunings. But the album is firmly rooted in Mason’s compositional vision, with Webber as a willing (and presumptively eager) collaborator on tenor. Joining them are Daniel Fisher-Lochhead on alto sax and deVon Russell Gray on keyboards.

The quartet draws from an odd sound palette to be sure. At first blush, their efforts seem somewhat sparse and oddly phrased. Gray’s tones gives the album a retro feel along with the shimmering introduced by the group’s selection of “pitches between the notes.” Indeed the contrapuntal lines from Webber and Fisher-Lochhead feel both disorienting and alien.

While it might be fitting to refer these works as chamber jazz, the album is more than that. For instance, Twilight is a slow-moving piece that focuses on droning structures and textures rather than melodic progression. In contrast, other tracks feature labyrinthine passages that are up-tempo and even hint at being upbeat. Case in point, Turned in the Fire employs a two-note vamp over which Webber solos. After that, she moves on to an interlocking sax duel that sets its tempo separately from that of the rhythm parts. And then there is the all-out discordant blowing on Planets that sounds as if Anthony Braxton is playing along with a warped version of himself from another dimension.

It takes a while for Hemlocks, Peacocks as get going and it also takes several listens to begin to appreciate the album’s depth. Mason is a thoughtful and deliberate composer and performer whose efforts serve to stake out new ground in the creative music continuum. The result is a rigorous intellectual and artistic statement.

— Mike, 1.11.2025

Will Mason loves implementing microtonal tunings in a variety of musical genres. An Associate Professor of Music and chair of the music department at Wheaton College, his six-piece rock sextet Happy Place (which includes two guitars, two soprano vocalists, and two guitars) used quarter-tone tunings across both guitarists. But these types of tunings are particularly challenging for keyboards. “A 24-tone scale mapped onto the keyboard would mean that a pianist would have to reach the uncomfortable span of a minor 9th just to produce something that sounds like a perfect fifth.”

That’s the introductory explanation on the Bandcamp page for Hemlocks, Peacocks, the multi-movement composition by Mason, for a quartet of alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, re-tuned keyboards, and drums. Implementing these tunings results in an unsettling and revelatory work, a sort of “alternate universe” chamber jazz album.

Hemlocks, Peacocks was recorded in a large resonant chapel in Norton, Massachusetts, last May and was inspired by La Monte Young’s epic composition “The Well-Tuned Piano”, as well as by modernist works by painter Joan Mitchell (particularly her 1956 painting “Hemlock”) and poet Wallace Stevens’ 1916 poem “Domination of Black”. With Will Mason on drums, he’s joined by Anna Webber on tenor saxophone, Daniel Fisher-Lochhead on alto saxophone, and deVon Russell Gray on keyboards. Young’s famous composition is an ongoing improvisatory solo piano work begun in 1964, which Young has never considered “finished”. It has been performed differently several times since its debut in 1974, requiring a piano tuned in just intonation.

This type of process-based composition and improvisation often makes the music seem, on paper, to be more complicated and perhaps off-putting than it really is. Music theory eggheads love to come out of the woodwork to pontificate on the granular details, which is entirely justified. However, those of us who simply enjoy hearing a group of talented, easily interconnected musicians play music that is a few steps outside the norm will be rewarded by what Mason and his ensemble have accomplished here. With the opening track, “Hemlocks”, the music and its players unfold gracefully, beginning with jittery, tense keyboards, followed by the percussion and saxophones.

“The Fallen Leaves, Repeating Themselves” features the saxophones of Webber and Fisher-Lochhead carefully playing off each other before the whole band joins in, highlighted by an alto saxophone solo and Gray’s shimmering Fender Rhodes. Gray also shines on “Twilight”, with his deep, dark chords giving the composition a sort of doom-laden backdrop.

Mason’s drumming on “Turned in the Fire” sees him confidently guiding the ensemble through unusual time signatures, drawing a great deal of inspiration from Young’s colossal composition. Meanwhile, the eloquent, sparse “Hymn” eschews the horns for a delightful, contemplative duet between Gray and Mason. But Webber and Fisher-Lochhead return with a vengeance on the noisy, atonal “Planets” and are also heavily featured on the (initially) gentler album closer, “Peacocks”, a masterpiece of dynamics – starting slowly and gradually building into joyous cacophony before concluding with a coda of rolling drum fills from Mason, reprising the percussion that introduced the piece.

Will Mason and his ensemble have undoubtedly consulted challenging works of all media for inspiration on Hemlocks, Peacocks. The results are often stunning, deeply satisfying, and worth revisiting over and over despite the somewhat complex source material.

— Chris Ingalls, 1.14.2025

Hemlocks, Peacocks the new album by the Will Mason Quartet is described as ‘microtonal chamber jazz’ recorded in a ‘large resonant chapel’ in New England, whose music is inspired by La Monte Young’s solo improvisatory epic The Well-Tuned Piano and modernist works by the painter Joan Mitchell and poet Wallace Stevens. A degree of intimacy with those sources might serve to dispel the notion, but as an introductory brief that could make Hemlocks, Peacocks sound rather academic.

Instead on the album opener ‘Hemlocks’ we are greeted with something slinkily and at times queasily seductive as Mason’s shakers and silt percussion becomes a riverbed, over which Anna Webber, Danny Fisher-Lochhead and deVon Russell Gray play a series of drones and short phrases from the grandfather clock melodies of Gray’s keys – with Hemlocks, Peacocks featuring two keyboards retuned to echo Young’s system of just intonation, while the instruments themselves are modelled to take after the distinctive sound of the Fender Rhodes – to winnowing reeds or held drones and overtones, which might stem from the keys or equally from Webber’s tenor and Fisher-Lochhead’s alto saxophones.

The details differ on ‘The Fallen Leaves, Repeating Themselves’ but the mood lingers and the sense of swing remains the same, as Mason’s smooth skittering drums underlie a series of repetitions and embellishments before ‘Twilight’ proves more ponderous, slowing everything down in keeping with the time of day. The shifting rhythms of ‘Turned in the Fire’ provide a showcase for Webber, with the saxophones steadily building off one another, while on ‘Hymn’ a duet between Mason and Gray and again on the more celestial ‘Planets’ those justly intoned keys, which have previously added a kind of offbeat rotundity to the compositions, now glimmer with a mottled and matte twinkle which is sometimes redolent of dinged gongs. Finally on ‘Peacocks’ the quartet evoke something of Albert Ayler or latter-day Pharoah Sanders as the rhythms become more martial and their jazz takes on more spiritual airs.

— Christopher Laws, 1.17.2025