John Patitucci, Spirit Fall Review

John Patitucci’s Spirit Fall: The Sound of Three Voices Listening

by Nolan DeBuke

John Patitucci’s Spirit Fall is an album that thrives on interaction, subtlety, and the vast harmonic implications of three jazz titans. Released on February 14, 2025, through Edition Records, it features the bassist alongside longtime collaborators Chris Potter on tenor, soprano saxophones, and bass clarinet and Brian Blade on drums. This format, deeply rooted in jazz history, offers a unique framework for these musicians who excel at listening and responding in real time. Spirit Fall is a project that shows how Patitucci’s bass serves as a foundation and as a fluid architect of harmony, rhythm, counterpoint, and chordal implications that keep the trio in motion. Each track on this record unfolds as a conversation, shaped by years of trust and shared intuition.

The album opens with full creativity as “Think Fast” immediately highlights the trio’s synergy and ability to create high-energy modern jazz. Potter’s tenor saxophone impresses with its juxtaposing smooth eight-note ideas with jagged, angular motifs that tumble forward with urgency and land in all the right places. The rhythmic setting of Patitucci and Blade establish the fluid feel foundation. Patitucci’s upright bass is a marvel with his resonating walking lines and aggressive yet fluid solo passages. Both outlining clear changes, veering into passing tones that move the melodic contour to resounding tonal centers, all while participating in the conversation. Blade’s drumming is the pulse and responsive shading of the trio. His use of cymbals and drums to interact with the conversation pushes the momentum forward.

“Pole Star” presents a wonderful contemporary jazz composition by Patitucci that explores a jazz groove and an interjecting motif. Patitucci’s role in this piece is particularly striking. He is anchoring the harmony while still providing multiple layers of movement. His solo features his warm pizzicato and resonant touch, which carry us into extended phrases that fill the harmonic picture. When Potter solos, the bassist subtly shifts his approach, moving into a conversational mode where the bass floats alongside Potter’s harmonic choices. The result is a track that feels grounded and in the moment as the trio shapes and reshapes the music organically.

The jazz blues, “Deluge on 7th Ave,” shines as the solos begin; the absence of a chordal instrument becomes an advantage rather than a limitation. Patitucci pivots between supportive bass lines and interjecting counterpoint.  His ability to dictate harmony in real-time is extraordinary, providing just enough structure for Potter to explore all the registers of his horn with a stunning display of historical references and modern melodic shapes.

“Thoughts and Dreams” is a showcase for the textural potential of the trio. Patitucci’s electric bass takes a lead role through a free-flowing theme carried by the trio. The opening features delicate chords played with a mix of harmonics and fluid arpeggios. Blade contributes a shimmering undercurrent of cymbal textures. Midway through, the groove coalesces into something more structured, with Patitucci subtly establishing a pulsing ostinato pattern. The trio locks into the time feel as harmony allows them to explore different tonal centers.

The album’s title track is its spiritual core, a slow-burning modal piece that seems to hover in a state of meditative suspension. Patitucci’s electric bass chords open the piece, resonating with a luminous warmth that gives the composition’s structure and harmonic landscape. Blade enters with barely perceptible cymbal strokes, while Potter’s soprano sax sings out a contemporary melody that builds in intensity through several variations.

Patitucci’s connection with Blade is very clear in “Sonrisa.” The two exchange solo phrases that blend a conversation through a deep sense of time and warm tone. Both create cascading sentences that always find their pitch centers, making a statement that feels heartfelt and natural. As the music swells toward its conclusion, the trio reaches a peak of conversational intensity, with Blade and Patitucci surging forward in waves of rhythm as Potter’s lines reach skyward.

Each of the tracks on Spirit Fall offers its own unique take on the chordless trio format, from the Afrobeat-influenced “Lipím,” where Patitucci locks into a deep rhythmic pocket, to the introspective “Silent Prayer,” which strips the trio down to its most essential elements. The group’s take on Wayne Shorter’s “House of Jade” is exploratory and demonstrates the trio’s ability to simultaneously honor their combined past and bring that into the conversation in the moment.

Spirit Fall  is an album about trio interplay, a record that exemplifies the limitless potential of the chordless saxophone trio format. Patitucci, Potter, and Blade achieve a rare level of musical conversation. Patitucci’s bass work is the anchor and the guide, shaping harmony in the absence of chords, driving rhythm with a dancer’s grace, and soloing with a singer’s phrasing. This is modern jazz at its highest level: fluid, fearless, and profoundly alive with conversation.