Jimmy Giuffre, the great modern jazz clarinetist (and saxophonist and flutist), died on Thursday (4/24) of pneumonia, two days before he would have celebrated his 87th birthday. If not for that, this article would have appeared on May 27 to commemorate the 15th anniversary of his last recording before Parkinson’s Disease ended his playing career. That recording, Conversations with a Goose, still stands as a superb valedictory album.

Giuffre was not a prolific artist. After a productive spurt from 1954 through 1962, his move into free-form jazz scared away record companies. He had recorded for Capitol, Atlantic, Verve, and Columbia to that point, but never again recorded for a major U.S. label and made no albums at all from 1963 through 1971. In fact, except for being co-billed on two LPs for Paul Bley’s Improvising Artists, Inc. label, Giuffre never led a session for an American label after '61. Fortunately, he was granted more respect in Europe, notably by the Italian Soul Note label, which put out four studio albums (including Conversations with a Goose).

Giuffre first came to prominence with Woody Herman’s big band, for which he wrote the iconic “Four Brothers” in 1947 to feature the band’s tenor saxophonists (Giuffre joined as an instrumentalist two years later). In the following decade, working mostly in trios, Giuffre stopped using drummers and emphasized counterpoint in his music. Some observers aligned him with the Cool movement, others with the Third Stream style, but he referred to his music as "blues-based folk jazz."

After meeting Ornette Coleman in 1959, Giuffre transformed his music again, the most famous result being a new trio with pianist Paul Bley and bassist Steve Swallow. They made three groundbreaking albums in 1961-62. Fusion and Thesis, later to gain new life when reissued decades later by ECM on 1961, were originally on Verve, seemingly to the label’s chagrin: Giuffre changed style mid-contract, and Swallow later described the sessions thusly: “Having failed to persuade Jimmy to moderate his assault on the values in jazz it had always espoused, the company assigned Creed Taylor to oversee the recording of two albums by the trio. These were done quickly – each in a single session as I recall – and without interference. Creed and the engineer just sat glumly in the control room and pushed the appropriate buttons." One can only imagine what the staff at Verve must have thought of the follow-up, Free Fall (Columbia), which opens with Giuffre swooping and wailing freely. In fact, very little of the album finds all three playing at once, and Giuffre is frequently unaccompanied – and masterful.

Of course, the jazz public was not ready for this. Coleman’s quartet blew people’s minds, but at that point (aside from Free Jazz) Coleman’s music usually still had melodies and a beat; on Free Fall Giuffre, Bley, and Swallow sometimes seem to be adapting the textures and angularity (though not, obviously, the techniques) of 12-tone music and the classical avant-garde, though more often they are still using jazz materials, albeit in new ways. So, while it is now seen as a classic album (helped by a 1998 Columbia Legacy reissue that can still be found on import), its quiet approach to free improvisation went largely unheard at the time.

Even after Giuffre ended his nearly decade-long recording hiatus, it was rare for him to work in the company of his peers. But at the end of 1989, Giuffre, Bley, and Swallow reunited to make a pair of albums for the French Owl label: The Life of a Trio: Saturday and The Life of a Trio: Sunday. By then, Swallow had long ago switched to electric bass, and Giuffre had added soprano sax to his arsenal, but the magic was still there.

As it was on May 27, 1993 when, in the wake of some concerts, they reconvened in a Milan studio for their last album, Conversations with a Goose. Most of the tracks – 9 out of 13 – are group improvisations. Giuffre told liner note writer Bob Blumenthal, “At the moment, we’re playing totally improvised music. … Some of the pieces on this album are close to the music from the Free Fall album, which I consider our first phase; but we’re getting more open.” Giuffre also notes, “I prefer Steve’s electric bass, because a stand-up can’t match the volume Paul and I get. … The balance is much better now.” And whether because of that or just because of natural evolution, Swallow had become an equal member (in ’61-62, he often seemed subordinate).

At times on opening track “Conversations with a Goose,” Giuffre does seem to be flapping his wings in flight. As Swallow walks the bass line and Bley ambles bluesily (in an abstract, other-dimensional sort of blues), Giuffre ruminates, alternating high, keening passages with dark, low stretches. The time is more regular here than usual for these guys, but speeds up and slows down irregularly.

“The Flock Is In” is Bley’s solo piece, but sounds like a duet between his left hand and his right hand, which move independently in both time and direction, though far from randomly.

The brief “Echo through the Canyon” is Giuffre solo, melodic but shadowy, full of microtonal inflections, going directly into the flittering “Three Ducks,” also solo and barely longer, and then into the trio “Watchin’ the River,” with Swallow playing high single notes (or, later, dyads) like a guitarist. At first it’s a pointillist piece, glittering shards of contrasting colors sprinkled about; as the improvisation picks up momentum, the instrumental lines become longer, twining around each other, Bley and Swallow more discursive while Giuffre only occasionally jumps in. Swallow takes a solo, Giuffre makes it a duet, Bley decorates it, and then Swallow ends by himself.

Swallow’s alone throughout “Campfire,” again in his upper range, supple and with a hint of flamenco flavor to the tune. He also starts “Cobra,” the epic of the album, which rumbles in the players’ low ranges at first before blossoming. They toy with intervals operating motivically in phrases of irregular length. Giuffre and Swallow drop out as Bley solos, then Swallow unobtrusively reenters echoing him, with Giuffre eventually interjecting chiaroscuro flecks until the trio breaks into fragmentary blips that coalesce in a lyrical Bley melody counterpointed by Giuffre and Swallow. A bit of bebop breaks out, breaks down into individual flurries, then coalesces into about as swinging a vamp as these guys ever get into, with Giuffre soaring before Swallow takes it out on his own.

“Among the High Rocks” finds Giuffre alone again, this time warbling and jabbing on soprano sax. He stays on soprano for the trio’s “White Peaks,” a somber study in sideways motion with a deep emotional undercurrent. Although, yes, it’s all improvised, the sense of balance and beauty are such that it could be transcribed and played as a full composition. Over the gentle undulations of Swallow and Bley, Giuffre proves as lyrical here on soprano as he is elsewhere on clarinet, but with the soprano’s tarter tone adding an edge to the prettiness.

“Calls in the Night” is a Giuffre composition. With Giuffre again on soprano but using a clarinet-like amber tone, Bley’s tintinnabulous piano, and Swallow intermittently plucking the same note, it’s a keenly focused tone poem, a brilliantly conveyed mood.

Giuffre switches back to clarinet for “Lonely Days.” The three players open by shadowing each others’ melodies in near-unison, then slowly spiraling out. In its deliberate movements, this too could be written out and find concert-hall life as a composition.

“Jungle Critters,” with Giuffre back on soprano and again giving it a smokier tone than most players can manage, finds the trio stretching out at length once more. I wonder whether the sequencing of the disc follows the session order, because with each track the interplay of the trio becomes more telepathic and focused – or perhaps the spell the players have woven has taken such strong hold by this point that it is the listener who is more focused. There’s one departure: Bley plucks the strings inside the piano during a duet with Giuffre in the middle of the track. Their use of space and silence here is magnificent, and when Swallow and Giuffre start exchanging trills, and when Bley and Swallow start blending their sound, it’s magical. The absolute equality of function that follows, with no foreground/background dichotomy, is a rarity.

Bley starts “Restless” with Swallow, and Giuffre plays sparingly. According to the liner notes, he’s on soprano, but it sure sounds like clarinet to me. It’s a rousing finish, its energy in stark contrast to the preceding few tracks until Swallow enigmatically winds it down by himself to close both the track and the album.

It’s a great loss to lovers of avant-garde jazz that after this disc, Giuffre’s unique musical voice was silenced. One imagines that this must have been frustrating for him, but what he had already given us is of such high quality – with Conversations with a Goose among his very best work – that his legacy was already secured.

For as sad as jazz fans are about Giuffre’s passing, save some extra sympathy for Juanita, his wife of 46 years, whose loss is immeasurable. – Steve Holtje

Mr. Holtje is a Brooklyn-based poet and composer. When Conversations with a Goose came out in 1996, he was employed by the label’s American distribution company and couldn’t review it, but after 15 years that conflict of interest has passed.