Words Tones
On Valentine’s Day weekend in Manhattan, a few weeks before the rampant spread of COVID-19 squashed the pleasure quotient of macabre entertainment, the Jazz Gallery presented a CD release party for The Ice Siren (Parade Light), a jazz oratorio composed by saxophonist John Ellis, with libretto by playwright Andy Bragen. Its narrative involves the journey of a male protagonist (Miles Griffith) into the phantasmagorically frozen world beneath the crypt inhabited by his beloved (Gretchen Parlato). The singers were reprising their performances at The Ice Siren’s 2009 Jazz Gallery debut, and the 2015 repeat performance there that spurred Ellis to document the work on his label. So were such New York stalwarts as guitarist Mike Moreno, tubist Marcus Rojas, vibraphonist Chris Dingman, and percussionists Daniel Freedman and Daniel Sadownick, who—along with a string quartet—interpreted Ellis’ quasi-atonal score.
“[Jazz Gallery artistic director] Rio [Sakairi]’s guidance was to try to get outside what would normally be comfortable,” Ellis stated two weeks after the show in the studio apartment he shares with his wife in a Mitchell-Lama co-op complex in the East Village. He looked across the table at Bragen, a tenant in another building in that same complex since 2000, as he recounted the beginning of their artistic partnership, stemming from a compositional commission by Sakairi. “I immediately thought: ‘Maybe I should try to collaborate with a writer. What writers do I know? Oh, it’s got to be Andy.’”
Their first effort together generated 2007’s , comprising Bragen’s readings of a dozen 12-line
