This is an abbreviated posting about tonight’s program. The Jazz With an Accent crew is still suffering the effects of PESD (Post-Election Stress Disorder). We hope you and yours have survived the event well.

On to the music.

Tonight, you’ll hear another installment of Jazz With an Accent’s String Theory, with a focus on guitars, ouds, and mandolins in global jazz.

Spanish guitarist Gerardo Nuñez is a virtuoso player who sounds as comfortable playing in a traditional style as in his excursions in flamenco jazz fusion. We’ll hear the title track from his album Calima, an effort featuring Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez, John Patitucci on bass, and Armenian percusssionist Arto Tuncboyaciyan.

Then we’ll explore several variants of stringed Brazilian jazz. Alemao (Olmir Stocker) was once part of the mid-60s TV show Jovem Guarda, which featured rock-influenced pop artists such as Roberto Carlos and Erasmo Carlos, was later a member of Brazilian Octopus. This group included multi-instrumentalist, composer, and bandleader Hermeto Pascoal, and released his first album as a leader, Longe dos Olhos Perto do Coração (Far from the eyes, close to heart), in 1989.

The superb Brazilian duo comprising virtuoso mandolinist Hamilton de Holanda and pianist Andre Mehmari reimagines the possibilities in the music of Egberto Gismonti and Hermeto Pascoal in Gismontipascoal: A Musica de Egberto e Hermeto. This is demanding music, and what de Holanda and Mehmari set out to do is a high-wire act, but they have the chops to pull it off. Just hear “Frevo,” a Gismonti classic.

(Photo of Oscar Alemán. Unknown Author. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

And we’ll close the first half with a nod to a historical figure in global jazz: Afro-Argentine guitarist Oscar Alemán. He’s one of the great jazz musicians Latin America has produced, but has been largely overlooked for having committed the unfortunate mistake of being a contemporary of Django Reinhardt. (Alemán was just a year older than Reinhardt. They were friends and even played together on occasion) Reinhardt’s biographer, Michael Dregni, noted that Django was not alone in the beginnings of hot jazz and that Alemán had his own hot style. Born in Chaco, a province in the north of Argentina, Alemán moved to Europe in the late ’20s and settled in Paris, where in the 1930s he worked with Josephine Baker. Duke Ellington heard him in and offered him a job, but Alemán, just 24 at the time, was under contract, and Baker didn’t let him go. According to biographer Sergio Pujol in his Oscar Alemán La Guitarra Embrujada (Oscar Alemán The Bewitched Guitar), Baker argued that she couldn’t be expected to find overnight “a replacement who could sing in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian; who could also dance […] play guitar, cavaquinho (a Portuguese small four-string guitar), pandeiro (tambourine) drums and on top of it all, be a good guy.” Alemán eventually returned to Argentina and never visited the United States.

In the second half of tonight’s show, we´ll zigzag between styles and music traditions.

We´ll hear Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel and his quintet –, featuring trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, pianist Brad Mehldau, Larry Grenadier, bass, and Brian Blade, drums — and then Brazilian guitarist Ricardo Silveira surprises with a marvelous throwback organ trio, featuring Canadian organist Vanessa Rodrigues on Hammond B3 and Rafael Barata, drums. Silveira’s smooth, round tone and unhurried phrasing sounds perfect for this setting. The repertoire of Organ tRio (well, it was recorded in Rio de Janeiro) includes songs from classic Brazilian composers such as Tom Jobim, Dori Caymmi, and Chico Buarque, originals, and standards. Tonight we’ll hear “Memphis Underground,” a tip of the hat to Herbie Mann, one of Silveira’s early employers during his time in the United States.

From the warm, cozy sound of this Brazilian organ trio, we’ll skip to the world of East-West musical explorations of Lebanese master oud player Rabih Abou-Khalil and hear the title track of his album Blue Camel. This is a standout recording in Abou-Khalil’s extensive discography and it features Charlie Mariano on alto sax, Kenny Wheeler on flügelhorn and trumpet, Steve Swallow on bass, and Milton Cardona on congas. On first listening, the blends and crashes of musical conceptions seem almost incompatible. But in there’s a high level musicianship at work on this album, and as the performances probe the music, the results offer unexpected surprises. This track is a good example.

In Jazz With an Accent we say there’s a world of jazz to discover. But there is not enough time to talk and play the music I’d like to share with you, and I prefer you hear the music, not me. So, if you want more information about the music and the artists, please come back and check Jazz With an Accent.com

And if you have any questions, suggestions, corrections, or requests, and you’d like to reach me, feel free to write to me at fernando@jazzwithanaccent.com

Until then, thank you for listening.

Playlist

1. Gerardo Núñez                 “Calima”             Calima
2. Alemao (Olmir Stocker)             “Quase Inocente”  Longe dos Ohlos 
3. Hamilton De Holanda & André Mehmari   “Frevo”  Gismontipascoal: A Musica de Egberto e Hermeto
4. Oscar Alemán     “Saint Louis Blues”
5. Wolfgang Muthspiel    “Triad Song”                Rising Grace 
6. Ricardo Silveira        “Memphis Underground”      Ricardo Silveira Organ tRio
7. Rabih Abou-Khalil    “Blue Camel”                    Blue Camel     

Ed.Note: this story has been edited since originally posted to reflect the music that was actually played.