Category Archives: On Music

New Jazz Frontiers / Jazz @ Lincoln Center

12 Friday Sep 2014

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programa_playbill

Jazz at Lincoln Center
The Appel Room
Frederick P. Rose Hall
New Jazz Frontiers

ORLANDO “MARACA” VALLE, Flute
EDMAR CASTANEDA, Harp
EDWARD SIMON, Piano
LUQUES CURTIS, Bass
DANIEL FREEDMAN, Drums, Percussion

Notes on the Program
Fernando González

“Jazz is dead” is one of the evergreens in jazz literature. Yet for all the challenges, real and perceived facing jazz in the cultural marketplace, the real story for the past few decades has been the triumph of jazz.

Once a novelty (and a U.S. diplomatic tool) around the globe, jazz has become a lingua franca. Ambassadors such as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Dave Brubeck took jazz in seemingly every direction, defying language barriers and Cold War borders, fostering generations of fans and musicians.

This not only opened new markets for jazz (and fostered goodwill towards the United States), but also, in time, produced a few exceptional contributors. However, as with basketball (another U.S. cultural product that has gone global), foreigners are no longer a curiosity, but are becoming key players – and like in basketball, they are changing the game.
It might seem paradoxical, but there is no greater sign of the success of jazz than that while musicians around the world are still studying and celebrating the jazz canon and its creators, many are also already looking past them. For some, emulation and imitation have given way to a search for their own vocabulary, bringing the tools and spirit of jazz to their own musical traditions.

“Music is always a product of the times, and this is one positive aspect of globalization. Jazz is a sort of Esperanto for musicians around the world,’’ said once Cuban reedman Paquito D’Rivera, a champion of this process in both jazz and Latin jazz. “It has always been that and it’s become more so as time passes.”

This is at the essence of this evening’s Jazz at Lincoln Center program New Jazz Frontiers.
The concert features an exceptional group comprising harpist Edmar Castañeda (Colombia), flutist Orlando “Maraca” Valle (Cuba), pianist Edward Simon (Venezuela), bassist Luques Curtis, and drummer/percussionist Daniel Freedman (both from the United States), and the point is made not only by the different traditions – both received and learned– present on stage, but also the fact that these musicians have not played together as a group before tonight.

Jazz is their common language.
“A lot of the young cats playing jazz these days are coming from different countries. They are
not just from New York or Chicago,” says Curtis, who was born in Hartford, CT and came of age as a jazz musician playing both straightahead jazz and Latin music. “And I think they just naturally bring their own music and it all melts into jazz.”
Perhaps because, after all, jazz was born as a Made-in-America global blend, there is an openness, a generosity, and a plasticity in jazz that not only accepts the world but embraces it.
“I think what interests most musicians about jazz is the level of sophistication in the improvisation,” says Simon, who immersed himself in the U.S. jazz scene before developing his own, rich fusion of jazz and Venezuelan and European classical music.
“You have improvisation in Latin America and around the world—but jazz has developed [it] to a really high level. To discover that we can combine that very sophisticated way of improvising with the music of our native countries is exhilarating.
“Then, conceptually, there’s a certain attitude that you have to have to play jazz. Breaking the rules and stretching boundaries has allowed this music to thrive and evolve—and it’s what makes jazz so exciting for both the listener and the player. And finally, what really makes jazz unique and so beautiful is the interaction between the musicians playing it. It’s something that happens at such a high level—and there is nothing like it in any other music.”

Recordings: Drummin’

06 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Latin Jazz, On Music

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The Offense of the Drum
Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro Latin jazz Orchestra
(Motema)

Maestro Mario Bauzá — trumpeter, saxophonist and music director of Machito and His Afro-Cubans, direct link between Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo and a key figure in blending jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms — scoffed at the label Latin Jazz.
“What they call Latin jazz is not Latin jazz. That’s Afro-Cuban jazz,” he would say in his inimitable growl. It wasn’t just that “Latin jazz” blurred the Afro-Cuban contribution. It was also that, for him, Latin jazz suggested a different, more varied mix — incorporating Argentine tangos, Colombian cumbias, Venezuelan joropos or Puerto Rican bomba y plena. He would then name artists such as Paquito D’Rivera, Gato Barbieri or Jorge Dalto as worthy practitioners.
It was the 1980s and it was a short roll call.
Today, he would’ve had a much longer and broader list.
But Bauzá would have been specially proud of the work of pianist and bandleader Arturo O’Farrill, the son of his friend and collaborator, the great Cuban arranger and bandleader Chico O´Farrill.
For 12 years, sometimes seemingly hidden in plain view, Arturo O´Farrill has carried on an extraordinary effort, not only organizing and keeping alive an 18-piece big band but doing so while also expanding the vocabulary of Afro-Cuban jazz into a truly Pan-Latin Latin jazz.
By now, the book of the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra (ALJO) includes not only some of the great standards of Afro-Cuban jazz but also pieces blending in tangos, choros and Peruvian festejos.
In The Offense of The Drum, O´Farrill both takes it further out as he brings it all home.
With the drums as the foundational center of the music, the ALJO connects diverse traditions creatively but also rather organically.
So a tribute to the shared spirits and grooves in Havana and New Orleans, a musical dialogue in “On The Corner of Malecón and Bourbon,” flows into a sly Colombian porro groove and allusions to Colombian papayera band (a type of brass street band) on “Mercado en Domingo.”
But exploring the groove doesn´t preclude a reflective “Gnossienne 3 (Tientos),” which explodes Erik Satie’s music Arabic elements with a flamenco perspective.
And O’Farrill is neither afraid of collaborations — such as those with pianist Vijay Iyer (the odd mettered “The Mad Hatter”) and DJ Logic (“They Came” which also explores spoken poetry) — nor having a good time, as with the eminently danceable salsa track, “Alma Vacía,” or the classic “Iko Iko,” featuring alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, a Big Chief Mardi Gras Indian, reinvented here as a joyous, bouncing Cuban/New Orleans party groove.
Throughout, the arranging is imaginative, exploring the character of the music and the instrumental possibilities of the band, while the soloing (especially by O’Farrill and Iyer on piano, Rafi Malkiel, euphonium and Harrison on sax) is consistently smart and purposeful.
Creative, swinging and open to the world, The Offense of The Drum is Latin jazz at its best.

Why?
Ginger Baker
(Motema)

While lasting only two years, 1966 – 1968, the British trio Cream had an oversized impact in modern popular music. At different times, Cream has been claimed as ancestor and inspiration by rock musicians of nearly all stripes, from fusion to heavy metal.
But jazz has more than a fair claim to their legacy too. In fact, one doesn’t need to go back to their epic version of Skip James’ “I’m So Glad,” in the group’s final Goodbye, to connect the dots between the jazz tradition and their instrumental virtuosity, approach to improvisation and open-ended treatment of the blues. Set aside the pop-rock imagery for a second and think of, say, a saxophone playing the guitar lines and you are closer to an avant-jazz trio than a rock band.
That shouldn’t be a surprise. The two guys working the engine room of Cream, bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker, were educated in, and fans of, jazz. Guitarist Eric Clapton was a different story — and his post-Cream, MOR career is evidence enough. In his autobiography, Bruce seems to suggest that two-thirds of Cream thought of it as a jazz trio adding, jokingly one would hope, that they just wouldn’t tell Clapton about it.
With his new album Why?, his first in 16 years, Baker, 75, seems to be closing the circle, returning once again, in one gesture, to his old loves — jazz (including two appealing trio records in the 90s with Bill Frisell and Charlie Haden), African music and, essentially, the trio format (replacing the guitar with a horn and in fact playing without a chordal instrument this time).
Baker’s band these days, Jazz Confusion, features Pee Wee Ellis on sax, Alec Dankworth, bass and Abass Dodoo, percussion, and offers the drummer a smart, strong, no-frills vehicle.
The repertoire in Why? also suggests a bringing-it-all-home feel.
It’s comprised mainly of Baker’s originals, including “Ain Temouchant,” recorded with Frisell and Haden on Going Back Home (1994); “Cyril Davis,” (sic) a tribute to the British harmonica blues player Cyril Davies, and trumpeter Ron Miles’ “Ginger Spice,” both first recorded on Baker’s Coward of the County (1998); and the title track, a meditation on his life and work including a tip of the hat to the late bandleader Graham Bond.
The set also includes “Aiko Biaye,” an update of a Nigerian song Baker recorded in 1970 with Air Force, his short-lived sui generis big band; Ellis’ “Twelve and More Blues,” and a couple of jazz standards, Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints” and the irresistible “St. Thomas,” by Sonny Rollins.
Throughout, Ellis is an economic and tightly focused improviser, even as he takes flight on tracks such as “St Thomas” and his own “Twelve and More …,” remade here with a post-bop swing. Dankworth is solid and fluid throughout, anchoring the group and providing measured, eloquent soloing.
Baker drives the music forward with his distinct drive and African-tinged tom-tom and hi-hat sound. There it might not be in his playing the relentless, maniacal intensity of his heyday (how could there be?) but Baker’s craftiness and musicality more than makes up for what he might lack at this point in energy.
In Why? Baker embraces his past — but don’t expect a warm-and fuzzy nostalgia trip. To quote the title of the terrific Jay Bulger’s 2012 documentary about him, Beware of Mr. Baker. And that’s a good thing.

Beware of Mr. Baker
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5seWMYG9kk

August 2014, The International Review of Music / Jazz With An Accent

Recordings: Bandoneón and tango, with an accent

08 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Jazz, Latin Jazz, On Music

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El Valle de la Infancia
The Dino Saluzzi Group
(ECM)

The bandoneón, a button squeezebox, might have been born in Germany as a poor man’s harmonium for religious services, but found its calling, and reached global recognition, in tango, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, half a world away. But bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi was born in a dusty small town in Salta, in Argentina’s Northwest, not the big city; and he first heard the bandoneón in folk music not tango. Naturally, and especially early in his career, in the late 60s’early 70s, Saluzzi brought the instrument to his folk music projects. And even as he later earned his tango credentials playing in classic tango orchestras in Buenos Aires, his approach to the bandoneón has always had a distinct, personal accent.

In his own music, Saluzzi has long since developed a style in which he has blurred the lines between European classical music and jazz — with a tango and folk tinge.

On El Valle de la Infancia (The Valley of My Childhood), Saluzzi, 79, comes full circle, taking stock on his musical history through the filter of the styles that have since marked him.

As it probably couldn’t have been otherwise, El Valle de la Infancia is a family affair. His sextet includes his brother Félix on sax, his son José María on guitar and his nephew Matías on bass. (Nicolás “Colacho” Brizuela, guitar; and Quintino Cinalli, drums and percussion complete the group.)

Both as a composer and improviser, Saluzzi has a particular way of setting and telling his stories. He establishes the mood with a few bold strokes, and then, more often than not, lets the themes emerge, digressing unhurriedly, adding a point here, a change-of-pace detail there as the tale unfolds.

“La Polvareda” wanders off from a near religious mood into a festive folk tune and out again. “A Mi Padre y a Mi Hijo” turns unexpectedly into a modern tango that suggests a salute to Astor Piazzolla before dissolving and reappearing as an old-style milonga. The music is not necessarily thru-composed but, for the most part eschews the standard forms. In fact, except for four of the 16 tracks, Saluzzi sets the program as a collection of suites. The connecting thread might not always sound obvious at first listening. In “Pueblo” the three pieces are each from a different composer — and he is none of them. And Saluzzi not only invokes certain traditional folk rhythms (such as in “Charqui” which draws from the folk music of Argentina’s Northwest) but also includes songs by master folk composers such as Atahualpa Yupanqui and Ariel Ramirez.

El Valle de la Infancia suggests the work of a master in winter, still looking ahead as he glances back.

In The Key of Tango
Carlos Franzetti
(Sunnyside)

Argentine-born pianist, composer and arranger Carlos Franzetti’s career defies easy labels. He has recorded jazz, tango and pop, has written chamber and symphonic music, operas and film scores, collaborated with jazz musicians, pop artists and rockers. Two recent projects, In The Key of Tango and Panamanian singer and songwriter Rubén Blades´ Tangos, brings him back to his musical roots and the results are impressive.

On In The Key of Tango, a solo piano outing, Franzetti revisits a repertory of classics, including Carlos Gardel’s “Soledad,” Virgilio Expósito’s “Naranjo en Flor” and Astor Piazzolla’s “Adiós Nonino,” as well as his own “Tango Fatal,” the title piece form his 2000 ballet.

It might sound like a simple, even natural task. But being bilingual means, inevitably, to lose some of the turns, nuances and accents of the original language. That, remarkably, is not the case here.

Old school jazz players talk about the need to know the lyrics to properly play and improvise over a song. On In The Key of Tango one can almost hear Franzetti singing along, coming to the precise pause, adding a baroque touch of flair, playing on the drama of certain phrase, speeding up and slowing down like a good club dancer. And he brings to his interpretations not only his substantial technique as a player but an arranger´s ear — now staying simple and direct, now being melodramatic, now suggesting orchestral accents (orquesta típica accents) as needed.

In The Key of Tango is not only a terrific addition to Franzetti´s discography but it makes for a smart entry point to the classic tango repertoire.

Tangos
Rubén Blades
(Sunnyside)

Recorded in Buenos Aires and New Jersey and featuring the great bandoneón master Leopoldo Federico and his orchestra, a United States-based sextet and The City of Prague Symphony Orchestra, Rubén Blades´ Tangos is a very different tango project.

Here the repertoire is comprised by Blades´s salsa classics such as “Paula C,” “Pablo Pueblo,” and “Pedro Najava,” and the challenge, for both, singer and arranger, was to re-create them as tangos.

Set with a jeweler’s touch by Franzetti’s arranging, Blades’ singing, for the most part, works. No, he doesn’t have a tango voice nor the phrasing. But, bringing to bear his experience as an actor, Blades sings with flair, trusts the words (and why not? He is one of the prime storytellers in Afro-Caribbean music) and doles out the drama judiciously.

For the most part, Franzetti sets the songs in a neo traditional tango orchestra style and it works — and his re-imagining “Pedro Navaja” and “Adán García” as sui-generi milongas works particularly well.
Probably not for tango purists, but a contribution to the genre nonetheless

July 2014, International Review of Music / Jazz With An Accent