Tumble, the Nevada City, CA-based chamber jazz trio centered around the unique sound of Robert Heirendt’s mbira (aka the African thumb piano), announces the release of its third CD, Dragonfly.  This latest offering on Cure All builds on the intricate, trance-like groove of their previous releases with injections of driving guitar work and a more open free jazz sensibility.

Dragonfly was recorded over two days in November 2023 at Nevada City’s Ancient Wave Studios by renowned engineer Oz Fritz. Inspired by Fritz’s innovative work with Bill Laswell, Henry Threadgill, and Tom Waits, Tumble was elated to have Fritz at the helm, capturing every twist and turn live in the studio.

Guitarist Sean Kerrigan’s micro-suite Surrounded by Dragonflies launches the album with a dose of classic rock riffage and prog rock mellifluousness. Kerrigan continues the Tumble tradition of innovative arrangements of Wayne Shorter classics with the bumping three-feel funk of Shorter’s Juju.  With his composition Flow and Eddy, horn man Randy McKean attempts to imitate the looping patterns of the traditional Zimbabwean mbira tunes that Heirendt often brings to the group.  The piece steers the trio through a free-improvisational stream of events with concise rhythmic gathering points along the way.

The centerpiece of the album is Heirendt’s soaring Bloodthirsty Wiles, inspired by Zara Houshmand’s translation of poems by the Sufi mystic Rumi, and featuring special guests, Robert’s daughter Mei Lin Heirendt (currently making waves with her band Broken Compass Bluegrass) on violin, in duet with Murray Campbell, McKean’s colleague in the band Beaucoup Chapeaux, on the oboe-like cor anglais.   An understated elegy for the Heirendt’s family cat Jadey prefaces the bass clarinet intro to 3:32, a kinetic foot-stomper that materialized during one of Heirendt’s bouts of insomnia and which was named after its time of conception.  Kerrigan’s The Gatekeeper ends the collection with a beginning of sorts, a free exploration of melodic links in a chain that heralds a new direction for the trio. 

Drawing inspiration from the groups Oregon, Codona, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and composer/performers Wayne Shorter and Thomas Mapfumo, Tumble has brought its delicate interplay of form and freedom to venues throughout Northern California and beyond.