Event Horizon Jazz Quartet is a Chicago-based collective featuring Jim Kaczmarek on saxophone and flute, Scott Mertens on piano, Donn DeSanto on bass, and Rick Vitek on drums — four seasoned sidemen whose combined résumés read like a who’s-who of jazz collaboration. What sets this record apart, though, isn’t pedigree so much as process: rather than one composer dictating the material, all four musicians shape these pieces together, and that democratic ethos gives Consternation a sense of real conversation rather than a leader fronting a backing band.
The title track makes the case for that approach beautifully. Kaczmarek originally wrote “Consternation” in seven, leaning on tense intervals to capture unease, but it was Vitek who suggested shifting it to five during rehearsal — and that change is what made it click. You can hear the payoff: a drum-driven opening that practically announces Vitek’s fingerprint on the tune, before the rest of the band builds in and each instrument takes on its own voice in a kind of unfolding dialogue.
That dialogue, fittingly, is set up by the opener, “Spring Was Here,” a breezy introduction where each musician functions as a thread woven into one cohesive, inviting fabric. “Tumbling After” shifts the mood, with Mertens’ piano steering the way through a laid-back, airy piece where the notes themselves seem to cascade downward. “Ballade de Sierra de Siena” turns cinematic — an atmosphere piece that plays like a close-up from a black-and-white film, a steamy summer evening with steam rising off the pavement after rain, carried almost entirely by Kaczmarek’s sax.
“Going Home” strips things to a trio, and rather than losing energy, the three musicians find ways to extend and amplify each other’s qualities, especially in their command of dynamics — a warm, connected way to suggest homecoming. “JC and the Club” turns urgent, a breathless tribute to Coltrane, while “I Have No Idea” swings the other direction entirely into a loose, New Orleans after-hours groove where the band really gets to cook.
The record’s playful streak comes through in the pairing of “Yes” and “Please” — the former witty and clever in its phrasing, the latter somehow capturing need, yearning, and hope all within a single word’s worth of music. “Prattle Away” folds improvisation right into its structure, spontaneous but never loose, while “Spit It Out” plays against its own title, holding back patiently before finally revealing it has more to say.
“The Dane Effect” reads at first like a series of scattered ideas and thoughts, music willing to wander to far-flung places to say what it needs to say — yet it resolves into something cohesive and, by its end, genuinely hypnotic, even extraordinary. The album closes with “Fourthwith,” a classic late-album track in the best sense: you can tell the musicians are playing for each other, which brings the record full circle back to the interplay and democratic chemistry that define it from the very first note.
Track list:
Spring Was Here
Consternation
Tumbling After
Ballade de Sierra de Siena
Going Home
JC and the Club
I Have No Idea
Yes
Please
Prattle Away
Spit It Out
The Dane Effect
Fourthwith
