Sunday, February 27, 2011

1 Sem 2011 - Part Six

Nuno Campos Trio
My Debut For The Ones Close To Me



Track listing:
My Debut For The Ones Close Tome
1. Groovy Waltz
2. Godfather’s Gift
3. My First Song Will Always Be For You
4. 4 Of Us Plus 3 Wives Makes 7
5. Marc’s Tune
6. Letter To Evan
7. Free Intro
8. Mardis
Bonus Track
9. Godfather’s Gift (Slow Version)


Massimo Urbani Quartet
The Blessing



by Steven Loewry AMG
Massimo recorded a stream of great performances in his short lifetime, and this one is no exception. If some of the material sounds a tad dated, the vast majority is first-rate, and Urbani makes the most of all of it. The best pieces are the familiar ones: the two alternate takes of "What's New" and the startling different versions of "The Way You Look Tonight." Urbani's quartets always feature the leading Italian jazzers, and this one includes bassist Giovanni Tommaso, creative original pianist Danilo Rea, and the ubiquitous Roberto Gatto. On two of the less interesting numbers written by Tommaso, the group is joined by tenor saxophonist Maurizio Urbani. Hearing Massimo on "My Little Suede Shoes" leaves no doubt about his roots, as if the giant picture of Bird on the cover leaflet juxtaposed with the title, "The Blessing" could be misunderstood. A class act, and one that should not disappoint the most discriminating critics of hard bop.


Minsarah ( Florian Weber/ Jeff Denson/ Ziv Ravitz )
Blurring The Lines



Track List:
1 Three Sided Coin, Ravitz
2 Alone Together, Dietz, Schwartz
3 Intersection, Denson
4 Déjà Vu, Denson
5 Points of View, Weber
6 Lazy Afternoon, Batouche, Moross
7 When I Was a Child, Denson 
8 The Gallows, Weber
9 1994, Ravitz


Baptiste Trotignon
Suite ......



By BT
After "Share", recorded with a top-level international group – Tom Harrell, Mark Turner, Matt Penman, Otis Brown III, Eric Harland – in New York in June 2008, Baptiste Trotignon is back with "Suite …", an ambitious project recorded on tour last summer with almost the same team (Jeremy Pelt replaces Tom Harrell). The result is a very fine "Suite" for quintet, lasting about fifty minutes and in five parts, sometimes with and sometimes without interludes.
Working together in the studio, then in concert during their world tour, the group has grown even stronger and more cohesive; inventiveness and improvisation play an important part in this second album. With raw energy – yet an energy that is also subtle, refined and precise – the piece entitled Suite, recorded at Charlie Wright’s in London, represents the quintessence of the style the group has gradually worked out, giving Trotignon’s writing magnificent developments that make it into a small masterpiece of contemporary jazz, stylistically rooted in the foundations of that music (Part 1, Part 3) but at the same time nourished by other colours of which Trotignon is fond: Brazilian chorinho (Part 4), pop tunes (Part 5), or more European classical influences (Prologue, Interlude 1).
After Suite, which is almost orchestral in form, come two shorter pieces. Flow (recorded in the studio at the same time as the first album, "Share") opens with a splendid unaccompanied solo from Mark Turner, played as only he knows how, then just flows intensely for about ten minutes; the audience is completely won over, and beside itself with joy. After the density of the past hour of music, the CD ends on a lighter note with the ballad I fall in love too easily (recorded in Paris), a peaceful evocation of original swing and blues.
This album shows the great talents of this new virtuoso group and its excellent composer and leader, Baptiste Trotignon (this is his eighth recording as leader).
"Suite" is a truly fine follow-up!


SambaJazz Trio
Alegria de Viver



By eJazz
O Sambajazz Trio possui três grandes diferenciais: a fluência e o virtuosismo do pianista Kiko Continentino, a alegria e o ritmo contagiante do contrabaixista Luiz Alves (que tantas páginas vêm escrevendo na história da música brasileira) e o fenômeno Clauton “Neguinho” Sales, que além de baterista e excelente trompetista, inventou uma forma genial de tocar simultaneamente os dois instrumentos. É um trio que está fazendo história no Brasil e exterior, por seu trabalho excepcional e de muita categoria. Recentemente o grupo realizou concertos na Europa e Norte da África, com grande sucesso. Foi emocionante ver um trio com formação tradicional de piano, contrabaixo e bateria (além do trompete), tocando música brasileira de primeira, com bom gosto e sofisticação.
No lançamento do CD Alegria de Viver, em homenagem à Luisinho Eça, o grupo instrumental reúne com maestria o swing do samba, a elegância da bossa-nova e a liberdade da improvisação jazzística.
Kiko Continentino - piano
Luiz Alves - contrabaixo
Clauton "Neguinho" Sales - bateria e trompete

1 Sem 2011 - Part Five

Stefano Cantini
Errante



by Alceste Ayroldi per Jazzitalia
Colpisce subito la frase di Pablo Neruda nella seconda di copertina del booklet: "Io non credo all'originalità. E' un altro feticcio creato nella nostra epoca di vertiginoso dirupo. Credo nella personalità attraverso qualsiasi linguaggio, qualsiasi forma, qualsiasi senso della creazione artistica". Una riflessione che non fa una grinza e che, posta così in apertura del libricino che spiega il disco, appare rasserenante: una sorta di lettera di intenti.
Stefano "Cocco" Cantini sembra voler rassicurare l'ascoltatore che approccia al suo disco. Lavoro di nitido spessore, per le composizioni originali - cinque del leader, due di Ciammarughi ed una di Benita – e per la scelta delle due cover (per modo di dire): Blowin In The Wind (qui indicata senza apostrofo d'ellissi), celeberrima canzone pacifista nel carniere di Bob Dylan dal 1962, riletta con particolare grazia e tradotta in una densa ballad; brano che fa il paio con la personale rivisitazione di Angela di Luigi Tenco, anno 1966 per restare nella forbice storica, con una breve intro di Manhu Roche, giusta per sottolineare tutta la raffinatezza armonica di Ciammarughi, capace di una grande varietà di sfumature e generatore di ottimo swing.
Le composizioni di Cantini sono ben variegate, dalla main-title in medio –fast tempo, eccellente biglietto da visita per il titolato combo, animato da una sezione ritmica in stato di grazia. Manhu Roche, già al fianco del sassofonista toscano in Niccolina al mare, è agile ed al contempo vigoroso, oculatamente raffinato, dalla distribuzione complessa, a tratti asimmetrica, degli accenti. L'algerino Michel Benita ha un senso del tempo e della misura ben poco comune, sempre pronto ai cambi metrici ed eccellente dispensatore di colori. Ciammarughi, come detto, conferma il suo linguaggio che attraversa gli stilemi della musica contemporanea e del modern mainstream più disinvolto.
Fabrizio Bosso sorprende ad ogni svolta d'angolo, con la sua dizione sempre diversa, fresca e libera da assiomi, come accade in Il corpo delle donne, felliniano esempio di swing.
Stefano Cantini attinge alla sua consistente e varia esperienza che si legge a chiare lettere in tutte le sue composizioni fresche, intense ed espressive. Tra tutte Kenny, dalle ariose e concise improvvisazioni – un tema ricorrente nel lavoro dal democratico respiro – e dove il sassofonista toscano spreme il succo del soprano giocando sull'altalena con Bosso. L'interplay tra i cinque sodali è palpabile e ciò, manco a dirlo, rende Errante ancora più gradevole.
Stefano Cantini non è un compositore bulimico. E questo non può che essere un merito dati i tempi di sovrabbondanza discografica. Tale dote gli consente di rilasciare degli album sempre diversi, mai inscatolati o precotti.
Errante è vibrante, immune da leziosità, racchiuso in una robusta architettura ritmica che contiene affreschi sonori emozionanti.

Florian Ross
Mechanism


By Claudio Botelho
Well, there’s a new record from Florian Ross: A CD named “Mechanism”. It’s a kind of reflective piano solo work which should not be listened before other previous work of that German musician. It’s mandatory, beforehand, craving to know previous works of him, like “Eight Ball & White Horse, “ Blinds and Shades” and “Home & Other Place”. Or, better still, go even back and try to find some other recordings which were released by the defunct Naxos Jazz label. There, he produced some two or three more recordings.
About half of them are trio works and the others joined by trumpeters and saxophonists in quintet and septet groups.
Born in 1972 and having studied with Jim McNeely, John Taylor and Don Friedman, this musician has received some important prizes in Europe. He can play the piano, compose, make arrangements for small combos and big orchestras and, most important, has a voice of his own: sophisticated, filled with some intricacy and impressionism, classic and jazzy at the same time and, above all, absolutely original.
“Mechanism” was a mechanism (pun intended) I’ve chosen to call your attention to this marvelous artist. In this work, quite different from all his previous efforts, he decided to slow down; to render his compositions and two others by Coltrane (Moment’s Notice”) and Sergio Mihanovich (“Sometime Ago”) in a subdued way, establishing a great contrast with anything he has recorded before by choosing simpler ways to show the songs.
Don’t be misled into thinking Ross is only a talented piano player: as much as this work is a breeze to sip (and maybe misrepresents all his greatness, in the first moment), you own to yourself to go deeper and search what there is in his other recordings. Otherwise, you will be missing someone who, for me, composes, plays and make arrangements with equal aplomb in a very high standardized way.
He deserves to be prized worldwide and, as far as I know, this recognition is no more than skin deep…
Personnel: Florian Ross: piano, loops.


Adam Makowicz & Leszek Mozdzer
Live At The Carnegie Hall



by Ken Dryden
Adam Makowicz has long dazzled audiences, both with his classical concert repertoire and his abilities as a virtuoso jazz pianist in the mold of Art Tatum. The Polish expatriate, who has long called the United States home, joined forces with the younger Polish pianist Leszek Mozdzer for a 2004 concert in the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall. The senior pianist plays first, offering a rollicking reworking of Fryderyk Chopin's Prelude No. 24 in D minor that would have pleased Tatum, followed by an intricate reworking of Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu that makes it sound as if it were a ballad conceived during the swing era. Mozdzer joins Makowicz for a trio of Chopin preludes, likewise jazzing the classics, but avoiding the possible train wrecks that await many jazz pianists in such a setting. Mozdzer probably raised a few eyebrows with his solo interpretation of Makowicz's signature composition, "Tatum On My Mind," but his arrangement of the senior man's work is anything but a carbon copy, especially with the loose rhythmic structure of his introduction. The remainder of the concert features the two men together, including gems from the Great American Songbook such as a romp through "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top," a shimmering take of "Some Other Time," a Tatum-flavored "Begin the Beguine," and a rather exotic dash through "Caravan." Their surprise encore is the moody "Rosemary's Baby." Issued in Poland, this impressive CD is readily available through http://www.west.net/~jazz/.


Charlie Haden Quartet West
Sophisticated Ladies



By Chris May
Gorgeous, poised and inviting. And that's just the sister on the cover of bassist Charlie Haden's latest with-singers-and-strings album. It's a retro design which, like the disc it packages, was inspired by Capitol Records' distinctive jazz-inflected vocal albums of the early 1960s. Your parents got off on this stuff big time back in the day, while you were busy listening to singer Bob Dylan and saxophonist Ornette Coleman and preparing for a little therapeutic rioting. But time passes and age mellows and even radicals such as Haden, in 1960 a member of the Coleman quartet which recorded the iconoclastic The Shape Of Jazz To Come (Atlantic), may eventually embrace the appeal of well-crafted songs of romance, sumptuous orchestrations and glamorous singers.
Of the Haden-led Quartet West's various albums in this preservationist, as opposed to revisionist, style, The Art Of The Song (Verve, 1999), made with singers Bill Henderson and Shirley Horn, is widely considered the best. Sophisticated Ladies is every bit as good. This time out the singers are, in alphabetical order of first names (as the liner notes carefully put it), Cassandra Wilson, Diana Krall, Melody Gardot, Norah Jones, Renee Fleming and Ruth Cameron, who with her husband, Haden, is also co-producer. Tenor saxophonist Ernie Watts and pianist Alan Broadbent are present once more, but drummer Larance Marable has been succeeded, following illness, by Rodney Green.
The 12-track album is split equally between vocal and instrumental tracks, with all bar one of the vocal tracks, Jones' “Ill Wind,” featuring a string orchestra arranged and conducted by Broadbent. Vocals and instrumentals are sequenced alternately, and the disc kicks off with Gardot's “If I'm Lucky.” Some of the vocal material is familiar; most of it, though written by masters such as Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler, Edgar De Lange/Josef Myrow and Johnny Mercer, is less so.
On the six instrumentals, unfussily arranged by Haden, Quartet West maintain the ambiance, with concise solos from Watts, Broadbent and Green. Hank Jones' “Angel Face,” included as a tribute to the late pianist, is an atmospheric slice of noir, and Bennie Harris' “Wahoo” a frisky bopper. Duke Ellington's “Sophisticated Lady,” which alone of the instrumentals also includes Broadbent's velvety strings, is as bewitching as the cover shot.
With top drawer vocals, a virtuoso jazz backbone, immaculate audio quality and engaging liner notes by executive producer Jean-Philippe Allard, Sophisticated Ladies is a delight.
Track Listing: If I'm Lucky; Sophisticated Lady; Ill Wind; Today I Am A Man; My Love And I; Theme From Markham; Let's Call It A Day; Angel Face; A Love Like This; My Old Flame; Goodbye; Wahoo.
Personnel: Ernie Watts: tenor saxophone; Alan Broadbent: piano; Charlie Haden: double-bass; Rodney Green: drums; Melody Gardot: vocals (1); Norah Jones: vocals (3); Cassandra Wilson: vocals (5); Ruth Cameron: vocals (7); Renee Fleming: vocals (9); Diana Krall: vocals (11); string orchestra arranged and conducted by Alan Broadbent (1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 11).


Eric Alexander Quartet
Gentle Ballads II

 

by Ken Dryden
Like its predecessor, Gentle Ballads, Gentle Ballads, Vol. 2 is another fairly low-key session led by Eric Alexander. Not only is the personnel identical (pianist Mike LeDonne, bassist John Webber, and drummer Joe Farnsworth), but the cover art once again features a nude photo by the late Jeanloup Sieff, quite possibly the same model from the same photo shoot. The tenor saxophonist mixes things up a bit more during this 2006 session, playing ballads that were hits for popular singers ("Mona Lisa" and "I'm a Fool to Want You"), 1960s Broadway ("Who Can I Turn To"), and 1960s pop ("The Look of Love"), in addition to the expected standards. Best are the deliberate take of Duke Ellington's timeless melancholy ballad "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)" and a bluesy, loping treatment of Neal Hefti's "Li'l Darlin'," which became a signature piece for Count Basie. The John Coltrane influence is again apparent, though Alexander isn't a mere clone, even if this enjoyable date falls short of being groundbreaking.


Michel Graillier
Sweet Smile


1 Moment's Notice
2 Zingaro
3 Milestones
4 Funk In Deep Freeze
5 A Child Is Born
6 415 Central Park West
7 My Foolish Heart

Double Bass - Alby Cullaz
Drums - Simon Goubert
Piano - Michel Graillier

Recorded Live at The Duc Des Lombards in Paris, November 8, 1996
Harmonia Mundi Distribution

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

O Jazz Morreu ? Viva o Jazz By Augusto César Costa

O Jazz Morreu? Viva o Jazz

Tudo partiu da leitura da notícia que avisava o fechamento de uma loja no Rio de Janeiro: a Modern Sound, mais que uma loja de discos, um centro de convivência musical, um oásis de jazz com mais de 40 anos de bons serviços em meio ao balacobaco funkeado carioca. No clima de despedida da Modern Sound voltou à baila a história da morte do jazz. Conversa velha, sempre desmentida. Não existe gênero musical que tenha sido mais vitalizado e renovado que o jazz. Morte sempre esteve nas pautas. E solidão, tristeza, dor de corno, a fenomenologia humana brochante enfim. Quebrando as notas blues veio a rebeldia do bebop, inventado pelos caras que saíram do exército. Em paralelo, esfriando o clima, veio o romantismo West Coast, e quando parecia que o jazz ia morrer, aconteceu a transfusão salvadora de ritmos e melodias, sobretudo de Cuba e do Brasil.

Dos anos 1990 em diante começou a se definir uma tendência anunciada bem antes por monstros sagrados como Monk, Bill Evans, Coltrane, Miles. Virou linha mestra do jazz contemporâneo, privilegiando as lições de melodias e harmonias dos compositores eruditos impressionistas, bebendo mais uma vez nas fontes latinas, deixando em segundo plano o jazz dos norte-americanos. Os artistas que hoje conduzem o espetáculo são europeus, alguns franceses e ingleses, alguns nórdicos, mas a maioria é mesmo de italianos. Não é à tôa que o octogenário Lee Konitz revisa sua obra com o trio de Piero Frassi depois de ter partilhado o palco com Riccardo Arrighini e até o noviço da Philology, Alessandro Lanzoni. Antes, Pieranunzi, Petrucciani, Franco D'Andrea, Dado Moroni, já haviam aberto novas e surpreendentes veredas líricas. Agora as estrelas mais destacadas são Stefano Bollani, Paolo Paliaga, Arrighini, Luca Mannutza, Enrico Rava, Alessandro Bravo, Andrea Pozza, Danilo Rea, Fausto Ferraiuolo, o quase infante Francesco Cafiso emulando Charlie Parker, Giovanni Mirabassi, Marcello Tonolo, Paolo Di Sabatino, Max Ionata, a surpreendente sax alto francesa Gèraldine Laurent, Baptiste Trotignon, Paola Arnesano fazendo a releitura do songbook de Sting, os portugueses Nuno Campos e Bernardo Sassetti, Florian Ross, o inglês Gwilym Simcock, o veterano Marc Copland, o mestre da bateria Bill Stewart, o dinamarquês Jesper Bodilsen,o pianista romeno Marian Petrescu, o guitarrista sueco Andreas Öberg, o mestre inglês John Taylor, as novas estrelas do piano Tamir Hendelman, Aaron Goldberg e Yaron Herman. A lista, eis a boa notícia, não tem fim.
Em 2010, a síntese desse novo ressurgimento do jazz pode ser simbolizada no trio liderado pelo pianista italiano Vincenzo Danise. Feche a página do World of Jazz, vá até Travessias seguindo o link http://accosta.posterous.com/ e ouça "Immaginando un trio". Você vai concordar que os rumores sobre a morte do jazz são completamente infundados.
Augusto César Costa
http://accosta.posterous.com/

Thursday, February 17, 2011

TOP 10 JAZZ COMPOSERS

These are the Top 10 Jazz Composers:

1 - Bill Evans = 22 votes
2 - Thelonious Monk  = 21 votes
3 - Duke Ellington = 21 votes
4 - Wayne Shorter = 16 votes
5 - Dave Brubeck = 16 votes
6 - Miles Davis = 16 votes
7 - Herbie Hancock = 15 votes
8 - John Coltrane = 15 votes
9 -  Egiberto Gismonti = 14 votes
10- Steve Kuhn = 12 votes 

Monday, February 14, 2011

Jazz pianist Sir George Shearing dies at 91 (1919-2011)

Sir George Shearing - June 2007 

by By Jon Thurber, Los Angeles Times
George Shearing, blind from birth, played in an all-blind band before becoming Britain's leading boogie-woogie artist. In the U.S., he hit on a jazz formula that established him in the jazz world and made him one of its leading artists for half a century.
George Shearing, the elegant pianist who expanded the boundaries of jazz by adding an orchestral sensibility and a mellow aesthetic to the music, has died. He was 91.
Shearing died Monday of congestive heart failure at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said his manager, Dale Sheets. Shearing had been inactive since taking a fall at his New York City apartment in 2004, according to Sheets.
A prolific songwriter, he once introduced “Lullaby of Birdland,” written in 1952 in celebration of the fabled New York nightspot and its radio show, by saying: “I have been credited with writing 300 songs. Two-hundred-ninety-nine enjoyed a bumpy ride from relative obscurity to total oblivion. Here is the other one.”
Born in 1919 in the Battersea district of London to working-class Cockney parents, Shearing was one of nine children and was blind from birth. He started playing piano and accordion at age 5 but didn't receive formal musical education until he spent four of his teenage years at the Linden Lodge, a school for the blind.
It was there that he learned Bach, Liszt and music theory. It was also during that time that he became interested in jazz by listening to recordings by American pianists Meade Lux Lewis, Earl Hines, Art Tatum and Fats Waller.
At Linden Lodge, Shearing showed enough potential to earn a number of scholarship offers from universities. But after graduating, he went to work in a local pub where he earned about $5 a week and tips for his playing.
Within a year, he had joined Claude Bampton's big band, a 15-piece unit made up of blind musicians who played compositions by Jimmie Lunceford and Duke Ellington.
In 1937, Leonard Feather, the jazz critic, composer and producer, discovered Shearing playing as a swing accordionist in a London jam session. He quickly arranged for Shearing to record for English Decca and, although that recording date was not Shearing's first, it was the one that set his career in motion.
With Feather's help, Shearing got a regular radio program on the BBC. He had his own Dixieland band and was also his country's leading boogie-woogie pianist. Soon he was being called Britain's answer to the great American pianist Teddy Wilson, and for seven consecutive years he was chosen his country's most popular jazz pianist by Melody Maker magazine.
During World War II, Shearing toured military bases in Britain, playing for the troops, and worked frequently in groups led by French violinist Stephane Grappelli, who spent the war years in London.
Shearing met his first wife, Beatrice Bayes, known to friends as Trixie, while playing in an air-raid shelter. They married in 1941 and had one daughter, Wendy Ann, before divorcing in the early 1970s. He later married Eleanor Geffert, who survives him as well as his daughter.
Encouraged to go to America after the war, Shearing first visited New York City in 1946 and moved there permanently the next year. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1956.
Shearing's career in the United States, where he was unknown, started slowly. His first job was intermission pianist at a New York club during a Sarah Vaughan engagement. He filled the same role at another club during an Ella Fitzgerald engagement and sometimes filled in for her pianist, Hank Jones.
He continued as a struggling, scale-earning unknown until early 1949, when—again with Feather's help—he hit on a jazz formula that would establish his musical identity and make him one of the leading jazz artists over the next half a century.
Feather suggested that Shearing add a guitarist and a vibraphonist to the standard rhythm section to make up a quintet. The personnel in that first group was diverse both in race and gender and included John Levy on bass, Denzil Best on drums, Marjorie Hyams on vibraphone and Chuck Wayne on guitar.
The group went into the recording studio and came out with “September in the Rain,” which sold nearly a million records. Their first New York engagement came in April 1949 at the Café Society Downtown. They then went out on a national tour, and by the end of the year, Shearing's group was voted the No. 1 combo in Down Beat magazine's reader poll.
With this group, Shearing developed what came to be known as “the Shearing Sound,” which involved not only the makeup of the band—vibes and guitar generally were not both found in quintets—but also the style in which he played the piano. He used the “block-chords” technique to create a big, lush, orchestral sound. In his book “The Jazz Years: Earwitness to an Era,” Feather wrote that Shearing “developed a new and unprecedented blend for his instrumentation.”
In that technique, a New York Times writer noted some years ago, “both hands play melodies in parallel octaves with a shifting cloud of chords in between.”
Shearing worked primarily with his quintet for much of the next three decades. The personnel shifted but over the years included some of the finest names in jazz including Cal Tjader and Gary Burton on vibes and Joe Pass and Toots Thielemans on guitar (though Thielemans was better known as a harmonica player).
From the early 1950s on, Shearing had steady work in the recording studios, first with MGM, where he was under contract from 1950 to 1955, and then Capitol Records for 14 years. With Capitol, he recorded albums with some of the best singers of the day, including Peggy Lee, Nancy Wilson and Nat King Cole, and achieved substantial chart success in the late 1950s and early '60s.
Though his bread and butter was with the commercially successful quintet, Shearing in time began to feel limited by it and grew tired of life on the road. At one point, he told New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett, his quintet did 56 concerts in 63 days.
“George drives himself harder than you notice,” bassist Al McKibbon once told Feather. “One night in Oklahoma City, I saw him literally fall asleep in the middle of a chorus of 'Tenderly.' He woke up with a start and carried right on.”
Shearing disbanded the group in 1978. For most of the rest of his career, Shearing appeared mainly in solo, duo or trio settings.
His work in duos and recording contracts with Concord Records and then Telarc in the 1980s seemed to revitalize him. He recorded five albums with singer Mel Torme that were critically and commercially successful. He and Torme won Grammy Awards in 1982 and 1983.
His autobiography, “Lullaby of Birdland,” was released in 2004.
Over the years, he played for three U.S. presidents—Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan—and Queen Elizabeth II. An anecdote he related to Feather about his brush with royalty said much about his sharp wit.
“When we were preparing to be received [by the queen], I was told that the directive is: Do not extend your hand until the queen extends hers. I said, well, either somebody's going to have to cue me or she'll have to wear a bell. But somebody did cue me,” Shearing said.

Sunday, February 06, 2011

1 Sem 2011 - Part Four

Eddie Gomez & Cesarius Alvim
Forever



by Ann Forster
Plus Loin Music Presents Forever, A Duet Session Reuniting American Bassist Eddie Gomez With Brazilian-French Pianist Cesarius Alvim, 20 Years Since Their First Recorded Encounter
Legendary bassist Eddie Gomez and pianist Cesarius Alvim commemorate the twentieth anniversary of their first recorded collaboration with Forever (Plus Loin). The two masters take on a varied repertoire: from standards such as “Spring is Here” and “Invitation,” original compositions from both Gomez and Alvim, and Brazilian pianist Luiz Eça's piece “The Dolphin.”
Alvim first met Gomez through Bill Evans, with whom Gomez played for eleven years. “Meeting Bill Evans was a musical and human encounter of which the memory is unforgettable,” says Alvim. “He had a beautiful message of love for life and music. Afterwards I met Eddie, a musician whom I had always admired. From the first notes we played together, everything was said. We had the same rhythmic and harmonic sense, and the same passion for melodic phrasing.” Gomez elaborates on their penchant for melody: “The repertoire is very melodic and also rhythmically treated. The melodies are very strong, and are approached in poetic way with a strong sense of the jazz feeling and aesthetic.”
The title track, composed by Gomez, is a tribute to jazz itself. “This music never disappears,” Alvim says. “Musicians all over the world continue to play it and make it evolve, despite all the difficulties present with it.” Gomez concurs: “Our paradigm for any work of art is that it crosses over the timeline and stands up to the test of time and continues to provoke the evocative. Sometimes it becomes better and more fully understood. That's my definition of what I consider to be artistic.” The phrase “Roda Vida,” seen here as the title for one of Alvim's tunes, is a toast to the unpredictabilities of life. The perilous rhythms of this tune characterize this feeling. The standards, as well as Wayne Shorter's “Witch Hunt,” serve as a meeting point and a way for Gomez and Alvim to bridge the gap between their last musical adventure and this session. Eça's “The Dolphin” is the centerpiece of the album, a tribute to the recording made by Gomez with Evans. “It's entered the repertoire of standards, but to my knowledge, remains infrequently played,” says Alvim.
Alvim has led parallel artistic lives. Upon moving to France from Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, he enrolled in the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris as a classical double bass major. His comprehension of his second instrument is evident on Forever. “Playing bass has helped me greatly, not just in this duo, but in all music. It is very important for a musician to understand how to construct a bass line and how it can evolve through harmony and rhythm.”
Gomez likes the duo context, having explored the setting deeply over the years. “It allows me to be more interactive, to put in a lot of colors that may not be so readily available to use when there are other instruments involved. I like to use the full spectrum of color and sound in a duo context.” Recorded at New York's Systems Two by Joe Marciano in January 2010, this broad palette has been beautifully and accurately represented.


Helen Sung
Going Express



By Raul d'Gama Rose
Whether an artist is performing in a play or playing music, doing so live onstage is one of the most challenging acts. Every nuance is captured by an eager audience and, in the case of Going Express, a sensitive sound engineer. There is no room for error; every slip can be fatal. Pianist Helen Sung makes short work of these concerns, however, navigating the music in spritely fashion and with the delicate touch of slender fingers like feathers on the weighted keyboard. Going Express is a dramatic turnout, and features a fine ensemble that includes bassist Lonnie Plaxico, drummer Eric Harland and saxophonist Seamus Blake.
So spectacular are the musicians' responses to the music that there are surprises at every turn: Plaxico with his masterful, groaning arco playing when least expected, Harland with his delicate brushes and rumbling mallets that suddenly turn the heat on from a cool break in the music, and the wail of Blake's soprano saxophone every so often, to inform short memories of his astounding manipulation of the reed in his mouthpiece.
However, it is ultimately Sung who takes the breath away with her prodigious talent as an instrumentalist, interpreter of music and composer in her own right. The Texas-born, globetrotting Sung has deep roots in fields of the dreamy idioms of classical and jazz. She can sound a blue note with such elemental sadness that her art seems to spring from her very soul. Hers is a decidedly feminine voice, given to softness as well as a breathless excitement when she discovers something that wows her. Her feelings spring forth for all to feel and hear, as she lets fly with a generous ebullience that also puts warmth and childlike wonder in her playing. Sung experiences music in her heart and informs musicians and audiences of this with pulsations and fibrillations that are so real that sighs, gasps and breaths must be held or else emotions will be overwhelmed with utter splendor. Her phrases are short and sometimes she repeats them with dampers on. She plays these as if she were taking a breath, sighing, or jabbering excitedly. Yet she can sustain longer lines too, with leonine grace, stretching and relaxing just as if she were informing the lines with an interminable exhalation.
Sung says that “Going Express” is typical of her character--a racy sense of wanting to swallow the moment whole. However she can also be pensive as her thoughts unfold on “Hope Springs Eternally.” Her interpretations of Thelonious Monk's “In Walked Bud” and “Eronel” are spectacular. Sung never tries to play Monk as Monk, but draws the emotions out of the music, making it her own, before she again pirouettes through it. On this album, however, her finest moments could well be in the manner in which she plays Meshell Ndegeocello's marvelous chart, “Bitter,” which is so filled with pathos that its drama makes Sung's music something to die for every time she plays.
Track Listing: Going Express; Bitter; Love for Sale; Hope Springs Eternally; In Walked Bud; Eronel; Bittersweet; Lotus Blossom.
Personnel: Helen Sung: piano; Seamus Blake: tenor and soprano saxophones; Lonnie Plaxico: bass; Eric Harland: drums.


Mirko Guerrini & Stefano Bollani
Italian Lessons



by Vincenzo Martorella, Jazzit
Italian Lesson è la versione discografica della produzione per orchestra d'archi (I Solisti di Perugia), pianista (Stefano Bollani) e contrabbassista (Daniele Mencarelli), tutti diretti e arrangiati dal Guerrini medesimo, che ha calcato il palcoscenico dell'Arena Santa Giuliana nel corso dell'ultimo Umbria Jazz. E proprio il festival di patron Carlo Pagnotta che produce il disco, bissando quello di Cafiso impegnato nella rilettura del Parker with strings. Le lezioni di italiano di Guerrini sono convincenti, a tratti entusiasmanti. L'abilità del musicista toscano nell'arrangiare per ensemble d'archi, la misura delle sue composizioni (le più belle dell'album, con Walzin' Greta su tutte), l'equilibrio imposto alle cose rendono l'album di grande pregio e respiro. Incontenibile, al solito, Bollani; precisissimo, e di ormai forte personalità, Mencarelli; precisi e sensibili i Solisti di Perugia. Bravo bravissimo Mirko Guerrini, che non sarà femminile come Stacey Kent, ma neanche la Kent è maschile come Guerrini.


Jurgen Friedrich
Pollock



By Dan McClenaghan
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), the Abstract Expressionist American painter best known for his “drip paintings” produced from 1947 to 1950, loved and was inspired by jazz. The innovative music of that time in the genre was Bird (Charlie Parker), Dizzy Gillespie and the burgeoning bebop sounds that Pollack would listen to while he created. Jazz has loved and drawn inspiration from Pollack, too--in part, perhaps, due to the improvisational aspect of the painter's best known art. The original album cover of Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz (Atlantic Records, 1961) features the Pollock painting “White Light.” Soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom devoted an entire CD, Chasing Paint (Arabesque Recordings, 2003), to musical interpretations of Pollock paintings. And now German pianist Jurgen Friedrich tips a hat to the American painter with Pollack.
Friedrich teams with two Americans--bassist John Hebert and drummer Tony Moreno--on this reflective and interactive piano trio outing. The disc's opener, the Friedrich-penned “Drift,” drips to life of a series of delicate piano notes of seemingly random placement before it swells into an energetic rhythm of three-way interplay. Thelonious Monk's classic “Round Midnight” is up next. The trio engages in a spare reading of the familiar tune, not unlike the Bobo Stenson Trio's take of Stephen Sondheim's “Send in the Clowns” on Goodbye (ECM Records, 2005), with no notes wasted in its beautiful exploration of the melody.
Hebert wrote two of the set's 11 tunes, with another penned by the leader in collaboration with Moreno. Five are Friedrich's compositions, and two more are trio improvisations, including the title tune. Throughout there is a sense of subtle complexity, immediacy and discovery, with an often searching quality, to go with a sparseness and refined use of space. Friedrich's “Over” has a feeling of poignancy, while Hebert's “Billy No Mates” goes darkly inward in the beginning, before Freidrich applies some bright colors.
Leaning toward the pensive and cerebral, Pollack is a gorgeously spare and spontaneous work.
Track Listing: Drift; Round Midnight; Ripple; Wayward; I Am Missing Her; Samarkand; Enclosed; Billy No Mates; Pollock; Over; Flauschangriff.
Personnel: Jurgen Friedrich: piano; John Hebert: bass; Tony Moreno: drums.

1 Sem 2011 - Part Three

Jason Linder/ Giulia Valle/ Marc Ayza
1, 2, 3, Etc.



by Fred Grand, Jazz Review UK
“The piano-led tri“ The piano-led trio continues to be one of the most enduring formats in jazz - witness the rise of Brad Mehldau and Esbjorn Svensson, not to mention the continued popularity of Keith Jarrett's ‘Standards' trio. Bill Evans opened out the format's possibilities at the turn of the 1960s, making music, which was at once melodic and harmonically complex, with often-sublime levels of three-way dialogue. Jason Lindner wisely decides not to stick exclusively to this already congested terrain, and the most memorable moments on his new release occur when he doubles on electric piano. Lindner is probably known at the moment only to those who have been keeping tabs on bassist Avishai Cohen's solo projects, and Cohen's regular boss Chick Corea is a clear influence.
The programme consists of predominantly Latin flavoured themes with a few neo standards, all played in a fairly relaxed, sometimes funky groove. Lindner is given flexible and muscular support from label stalwarts Valle and Ayza, and the electrifying group sound on the Rhodes piano reworking of Monk's “Brilliant Corners" is a thoroughly convincing performance, the nearest thing on the disc to a tour de force. Closer to Bob James than to Monk, this is precisely the way in which Lindner can add to the legacy. The Rhodes is employed again to good effect on Claire Fischer's under-recorded “Pensativa", avoiding any comparisons to McCoy Tyner's classic reading. Other highlights include Tyner's beautiful “Aisha” and Stevie Wonder's “Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing".
They work up a sweat on the final track, “The End Of A Love Affair", which provides a rousing finale. That Lindner sounds more convincing on electric piano possibly suggests that he is yet to develop the feel and touch required on the acoustic instrument. Nevertheless, this is a promising statement that will reward repeated listens, and hats must come off for his efforts to promote the rehabilitation of the much-maligned electric piano!”


Kiyioshi Katagawa/ Kenny Barron/ Brian Blade
Ancestry



by EastWind
Japanese bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa's first leader album from Atelier Sawano, recorded in 2003 in New York, is a smashingly attractive, straight-ahead trio date. His frequent employer and one of the greatest pianists operating today, Kenny Barron lends more than just a helping hand. Combine this powerhouse with Brian Blade, one of the most talented, sharp drummers of our time, and you get an explosive trio for whom ANYTHING is possible.
But Kitagawa and his pals decided to go really straight-ahead. No gimmicks. No tricks. Just wonderful playing. And this is clearly NOT the Kenny Barron Trio in a different name. Kitagawa's leadership is apparent in his compositions (he supplied all four originals) and the fact he sometimes plays the first melody and lead the way.
At first listen this album may appear somewhat subtle, but that is because none of the musicians is inclined to selfishly show off his techniques for his own sake. Repeated listening reveals that they are interacting at a very high level, and even without fireworks, their playing is truly amazing. This is also a very well-recorded disc, so play it loud and enjoy the sonics!


Chihiro Yamanaka Trio
Madrigal



by Zona de Jazz
Desde que se graduó con notas máximas en el Berklee College Music, la pianista japonesa Chihiro Yamanaka ha sido aclamada como la intérprete mas competente de su generación y la compositora con el potencial más esperanzador de entre los nuevos pianistas japoneses.
Chihiro Yamanaka empezó que estudiar piano con solo cuatro años. Después de estudiar en el Royal
Academy de Music en Inglaterra, se traslada los Estados Unidos y continua sus estudios en Berklee.
Chihiro ha colaborado con algunos músicos de jazz altamente distinguidos , desde Clark Terry, Gary Burton, George Russell, Curtis Fuller, Ed Thigpen, Nancy Wilson, George Benson o Herbie Hancock.
Su álbum de debut, “Living Without Friday”, la lanzó en Japón con gran éxito de ventas lo que propició que, su segundo trabajo, “When October Gooes” fuera publicado a nivel internacional en 2002 en formato de trío e incluyendo a dos reputados jazzeros como Larry Grenadier y Jeff Ballard. En 2003 continua componiendo y fruto de ese trabajo es el disco “Leaning Forward” en el que participan el bajista Ben Street y el baterista Ben Perowsky.
En 2004 compone “Madrigal” , disco que os proponemos. Alumbrará el excelente “When October Goes” tambien acompañada por Ballard y Grenadier. Disco que creemos la consolida definitivamente en Europa y Estados Unidos.
George Russell define a Chihiro como “una pianista dotada e imaginativa” y la Revista Life Jazz, la describe como “uno de los talentos mas prometedores para el jazz de los próximos años.”
En enero del 2005, Chihiro con el sello Universal Classics publicó dos cedés: “Outside by the Swing” con Bob Hurst y Jeff “Tain” Watts y “Lach Doch Mal” de nuevo con Larry Grenadier y Jeff Ballard . Su nuevo álbum “Abyss” se se publica en Agosto de 2007 para todo el mundo.
Temas / Tracks :
Antonio’s Joke
Living Time Event V (George Rusell)
Madrigal
Ojos De Rojo (Cedar Walton)
School Days
Salve Salgueiro (Antonio Adolfo)
Caravan (Ellington)
Lesson 51 ( Ketchlan)
Take Five (Desmond)

Músicos / Personnel :
Chihiro Yamanaka - piano
Jeff Ballard - batería
Larry Grenadier - bajo acústico
Rodney Green - batería.
Sello / Label :
Sawano Records , 2004 .


Kevin Hays Trio
Live At Smalls



by Mike Collins
This is an unadorned, live acoustic piano trio set with some playing of spine tingling intensity. The New York club has just started a record label putting out music recorded live in the small underground (in the literal sense) club, just down the road from the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village. They say, and the recording feels like it, that you hear it pretty much as it happened without lots of treatment of the sound. Given that, the quality is good. What about the music?
Well, it hit me strongly how distinctive a ‘jazz accent’ can be. The programme has a Charlie Parker tune (Cheryl), a standard (Sweet and Lovely) a few Hays originals and (the giveaway?) a couple of arrangements of pieces by early 20th century composers (Hindemith and Ivanovichi… ok I had to google that one). There is not a trace of parker be-bop immediately obvious in Hays’ playing: its all fluid lines, two handed counterpoint and flurries of notes bursting out as the momentum of the trio builds – as if they can hardly contain themselves – the live excitement of the moment is reflected in the whoops from the audience. There is something classical and romantic about the sound but its swinging and driving forward. Hays own Loving You is a balladic anthem like piece with hints of gospel, Sco More Blues more overtly jazzy but with those same fluid lines and sense of the trio as three pieces of a jigsaw fitting together. This could be a description of Brad Mehldau trio gig – the sound is an obvious reference point, but they just seem to be speaking with the same accent to me and its an eloquent and passionate voice that we hear. Check it out.


Pablo Held
Music



By Dan Bilawsky
Using the word “music” as an album title can be viewed as a bold and defining statement . . . or a simple word choice. Whether Held wanted to raise some eyebrows here or he was simply choosing an album title doesn't matter . . . but the music does! Held's original works defy easy description. He doesn't write short, snappy heads and songs that are built on predictable harmonic movement, featuring chorus after chorus of solos. His music is freely executed but somehow tethered to an accessible form, function and sound. This is music that remains focused but is, nonetheless, completely unpredictable.
”Encore,” an odd song name for an album opener, features some dark cymbal washes from drummer Jonas Burgwinkel. While bassist Robert Landfermann occasionally states the time, the trio usually dances around the beat here. “Desire” is a piano showcase; the drums and bass only arrive at the tail end of the song, giving Landfermann a chance to lock in with Held as they ride to the end. “Log Lady” features some ascending arpeggiated piano patterns. When Landfermann joins in, he shifts the feel of the piece by putting the emphasis on the final note of the arpeggio and Burgwinkel scurries around underneath it all. The title track is built on firmer rhythmic footing than the other material, and the trio really cooks here. Patience is rewarded on “Klartraum,” as the three musicians take you on a journey that ends with some aggressive and exciting rock-infused music.
While eight of these pieces are Held originals, he does tap into two of his influences--jazz giant Herbie Hancock and twentieth-century composer Olivier Messiaen. Held skips over the heavily covered Hancock material and chooses “I Have A Dream.” Hancock's version, from The Prisoner (Blue Note, 1969), is a gorgeously arranged harmonic bath of textures and colors, but Held delivers something entirely different here. Burgwinkel provides some clicking sounds as the song gets going. Held moves around a bit but chooses to wait more than two minutes to actually introduce the theme and then develop his ideas from that point.
Messiaen seems to be a topic of interest to more and more jazz musicians, judging from “O Sacrum Convivium” here and John Patitucci's intensely grooving “Messiaen's Gumbo” from Remembrance (Concord Jazz, 2009). Gentle tides move in and out on from “O Sacrum Convivium” as Landfermann slowly moves his bow across the bass. Burgwinkel uses his brushes sparingly and only provides the slightest hints of color behind his bandmates.
Held manages to put his own stamp on both of these pieces and they fit in well next to his own compositions. Music proves to be a collection of daring, yet direct, pieces that grow from their initial seeds into fully realized works
Track Listing: 
Encore; I Have A Dream; Desire; Moon 44; O Sacrum Convivium; Nearness; Log Lady; Music; Klartraum; Arista.
Personnel: Pablo Held: piano; Robert Landfermann: bass; Jonas Burgwinkel: drums.

1 Sem 2011 - Part Two

CHARLES LLOYD QUARTET
Mirror



By John Kelman
Sometimes the trust in knowing can yield more than the excitement of uncharted territory. Charles Lloyd ratchets down the energy from Rabo De Nube (ECM, 2008), one of the most exciting, free-wheeling albums and new groups of the saxophonist's half century career. Relying on the quartet's increasingly profound chemistry--and mostly recycled material rather than Rabo's largely new set of originals--Lloyd continues his upward trajectory; his intrinsically spiritual nature a moving force behind an album somewhat reminiscent of The Water is Wide (ECM, 2000). The Water is Wide's multigenerational quintet of established greats and stars-in-the-making, however, culled low-keyed material from a longer recording session that also yielded the energetic follow-up, Hyperion with Higgins (ECM, 2001). Instead, Mirror teams Lloyd with three active, thirty-something musicians on the vanguard of 21st Century American jazz.
Garnering plenty of attention for his own records, Jason Moran has proven an even more astute sideman, in particular for his recent work with Lloyd and ECM label-mate Paul Motian, whose Lost in a Dream (2010), shed new light on the pianist's mélange of Monk-ian angularity, free-wheeling improvisational extremes, and lyrical impressionism. He brings the same sensibility to Mirror, but its general emphasis on ballads, and ambling swing creates a different set of extemporaneous demands, though he does fly into more outré space on a far more powerful and open-ended version of the traditional “Lift Every Voice and Sing” than on Lift Every Voice (ECM, 2002), and “Being and Becoming,” from Which Way is East (ECM, 2004), Lloyd's intimate duo album with Billy Higgins, recorded shortly before the iconic drummer's passing in 2001.
Positioned near Mirror's conclusion, these tracks contrast powerfully with Lloyd's title track--originally on his 1989 ECM debut, Fish Out of Water, but delivered here with a touch more energy and plenty more commitment--and an equally direct look at “Desolation Sound,” from Canto (ECM, 1994). Throughout Lloyd's previously visited originals, traditional spirituals (The Water is Wide's title track, here, going straight to church) and standards, Harland and bassist Reuben Rogers propel the music with more egalitarian interest. Two Monk tunes--the balladic “Ruby, My Dear” and rubato “Monk's Mood”--demonstrate Moran's inescapable roots, while Lloyd turns “Caroline, No,” from The Beach Boys' classic Pet Sounds (Capitol, 1966), into a thing of simmering beauty.
Saving the best for last, Lloyd's gentle narration on Which Way is East's “Tagi”--layered over a backdrop of Rogers' arco and Moran's impressionistic pianism--is nothing short of transcendental. Ebbing and flowing with spiritual profundity, Lloyd turns to saxophone for a modal solo driven by Harland's intensifying pulse, before the quartet dissolves for a tranquil coda, bringing Mirror full circle.
While not turning entirely away from the Rabo De Nube's unfettered freedom, Mirror's greatest success is its quartet's palpably growing sense of trust, allowing the freedom to explore without the compulsion to resort to the obvious or the melodramatic. Instead, the smallest gestures become amplified, as Mirror continues to bolster Lloyd's latest ensemble as one of the best--and certainly the freest--of his long career.
Track Listing: I Fall in Love Too Easily (For Lily); Go Down Moses; Desolation Sound; La Llorona; Caroline, No; Monk's Mood; Mirror; Ruby, My Dear; The Water is Wide; Life Every Voice and Sing; Being and Becoming, Road to Dakshineswar With Sangeeta; Tagi.
Personnel: Charles Lloyd: tenor and alto saxophones, voice; Jason Moran: piano; Reuben Rogers: bass; Eric Harland: drums.


YARON HERMAN TRIO
Follow The White Rabbit





By Bruce Lindsay
Follow The White Rabbit is Israeli pianist Yaron Herman's fifth album--his first on the ACT label and his first with the rhythm section of bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Tommy Crane. Continuing the format of his past trio albums A Time For Everything (Laborie Records, 2007) and Muse (Laborie Records, 2009), Herman mixes original tunes and covers, including one or two unusual and not altogether successful choices.
Radiohead's “No Surprises” keeps close to the sound of the original: Herman's piano replicates Thom Yorke's vocal line but, without Yorke's emotional intensity, the whole becomes rather saccharine. No surprises, indeed. Kurt Cobain's “Heart Shaped Box” is given a similar treatment, but Crane's drumming is in stark and welcome contrast to Dave Grohl's on the Nirvana original and Herman's piano gives the tune a smoother and more lyrical feel, to replace Cobain's anger with sadness. Frank Churchill's “Baby Mine,” from Dumbo (1941), gets a respectfully delicate treatment, but even without its lyrics the song is still cloyingly sentimental.
Herman's own compositions have an impressive maturity and range. “Cadenza” is a solo piano piece, beginning firmly in a classical style but opening out and becoming freer in its latter stages. “Airlines” starts as a mid-tempo tune with a rolling, fluid melody before it builds in intensity as first Tordini and then Herman deliver impressive solos. “Aladins (sic) Psychedelic Lamp” opens with dramatic piano chords but soon shifts gear to a softer and more reflective vibe. Crane and Tordini give “Clusterphobic” a gentle funkiness over which Herman creates an expansive and rich melody.
”Follow the White Rabbit,” a trio composition, is a beautiful track featuring superb ensemble playing. In fact, the album's real strength is the quality of the trio's ensemble playing--Tordini and Crane are as crucial to the success of the music as Herman, even if Crane occasionally pushes a bit too hard, on “Trylon” or “The Mountain in G Minor” for example.
Herman has routinely been compared to Keith Jarrett and Brad Mehldau. This new trio line-up brings him closer to European contemporaries such as the Kit Downes or Tord Gustavsen trios--inventive yet melodic groups whose distinctive sound comes as much from the bass and drums as it does from the piano. His biography claims that he's “an exceptional phenomenon, unique in the history of piano playing”--that's pushing things a bit too far, but he is certainly an impressive player and writer and Follow The White Rabbit is the product of a fine new Trio.
Track Listing: Follow the White Rabbit; Saturn Returns; Trylon; Heart Shaped Box; Ein Gedi; The Mountain in G Minor; Cadenza; Airlines; Aladin's Psychedelic Lamp; Baby Mine; White Rabbit Robot; Clusterphobic; Wonderland; No Surprises.
Personnel: Yaron Herman: piano; Chris Tordini: double bass; Tommy Crane: drums.


GÉRALDINE LAURENT
Time Out Trio



by Claudio Botelho
Her name is Géraldine Laurent and she plays the alto sax. Along with her cohorts, bassist Yoni Zelnik and drummer Laurent Bataille, she has recorded a work reminiscent of some two other that come to my mind: “Trio Jeepy” by Brandford Marsalis and “The State of the Tenor” by the great late Joe Henderson. Well, here we don’t have a tenor sax, as much as a player of similar stature, but, at least, her group seems as cohesive. She plays an alto sax. Definitively, not a me too sax player, as her “Time Out Trio”shows from its first notes.
For me, Jazz is essentially a masculine art. I have met very few females who really appreciate this subject. The reason is a great mystery. If anybody has any hunch… Anyway, from time to time, there appears some surprise.
The recording comprises some well known American standards as opposed to some lesser known jazz tunes. There’s, also, one original of hers. The jazz composers range from Wayne Shorter to Ornette Coleman. The first, one of the all time bests, the second another mystery for me, as I could never understand the popularity of many of his no-second-part-sterile-tunes.
How can anyone compares “Rejoicing” to “I Fall in Love too Easily”and put them side-to-side in a single offer? It’s beyond me. Anyway, the musicians should know better and certainly found, in his compositions, secrets I can’t see…
Nevertheless, jazz is an instant art and, even without the help of an inspired song (in my view, of course), an improviser of Laurent’s caliber can make gold out of junk…
The recording is comprised of ten songs and lasts circa fifty minutes which flow faster than this number suggests: the songs are densely worked and the listener have no time to be impatient: there’s no dispensable improvisations as the players are highly integrated and, so, there are no meaningless waste-of-time solos. The renderings are always compact and full of meaning. And there’s a surprise Mr. Wayne Shorter never told: Lester wasn’t all that much decided to leave the town! Check!...


By Chris May
Formidable, as her compatriots would say. Time Out Trio, the debut album from young French saxophonist Geraldine Laurent, introduces a bare knuckle force of nature, well-versed in the jazz tradition but not afraid to put her own abandoned spin on it. Rough-edged, risk-taking, high octane, totally in the moment, the music bursts out of the speakers like a hurricane.
Laurent's alto playing is rooted in Charlie Parker, his wild, sometimes squawking, clattering attack played with a slightly softer read and with a narrower embouchure, but still well tough. Other voices echo round the edges: alto saxophonists Ornette Coleman, Cannonball Adderley and Joe Harriott. And occasionally, on the infrequent ballad, the divine Paul Desmond. But most of the time, Laurent, who's on-mic for practically the entire 47 minutes of the album, just wails.
Recorded in a Paris studio in December 2006, Time Out Trio has an in-your-face, warts-and-all, lo-fi live sound, brilliantly suited to Laurent's gutsy style. There are nine standards and one original, and it's surely no coincidence that two of the tunes are by bassist and bandleader Charles Mingus, whose turbulent spirit resonates here. The longest track, a seven-plus minute head-charge through Mingus' ferocious “Fables Of Faubus,” is outstanding. Laurent romps through the tune and an extended solo paying full homage to reed player Eric Dolphy's signature, incandescent reading on Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (Candid, 1960), avoiding the tortured outer extremes of Dolphy's vocalizations, yet communicating plenty of her own rebel passion. Mingus, you sense, would have loved it.
Other standouts--though there isn't one dud on the set--include dynamic readings of Wayne Shorter's “Lester Left Town” and Hoagy Carmichael's “Skylark,” and Laurent's own “A Quiet,” which is a soft, wistful ballad before the gas gets turned up.
Laurent is perfectly matched by her colleagues, bassist Yoni Zelnik and drummer Laurent Bataille. Both stand toe-to-toe alongside her throughout, and Mingus analogies continue to suggest themselves. Zelnik plays with the same muscle and abandon, Bataille with the confrontational zeal of the great man's favorite drummer, Danny Richmond. Most of the time, they work the engine room--Zelnik with a mixture of ostinatos and free flourishes, Bataille in call-and -response--and each thrills on his couple of brief solos.
This is an extraordinary debut album, and Geraldine Laurent is a gale force blast of good news.
Track Listing: Autumn Nocturne; Lester Left Town; I Fall In Love Too Easily; Rejoicing; Skylark; Fables Of Faubus; A Quiet; Repeat; Tijuana Gift Shop; Love Letters.
Personnel: Geraldine Laurent: alto saxophone; Yoni Zelnik: bass; Laurent Bataille: drums.


GÉRALDINE LAURENT
Around GiGi



by Dreyfus Records
Que vous soyez simple mélomane (littéralement : amoureux de mélodies) ou jazzfan averti, voici un disque qui a tout pour vous séduire – une telle occasion de faire l’unanimité sans céder à la facilité est trop rare pour ne pas être soulignée.
La seule lecture des titres sélectionnés en témoigne : la saxophoniste Géraldine Laurent a choisi quatre thèmes de sa plume et, surtout, six compositions signées (créées dans les premières années cinquante) par le saxophoniste Gigi Gryce, le trompettiste Art Farmer et le pianiste Thelonious Monk. Trois sculpteurs de musique, trois défricheurs singuliers pour qui, s’il n’avait pas existé, le mot originalité aurait dû être inventé !
Autant dire qu’il s’agit là d’explorer ou de redécouvrir des chefs d’œuvre inespérés :
Gallop’s Gallop, par exemple, est un irrésistible clin d’œil (1’43 de dialogue entre la saxophoniste et le batteur Franck Agulhon) à ce bibelot monkien que Thelonious lui-même enregistra d’abord au sein du quartette de Gryce ; écrit en 1953 par Art Farmer, l’un des plus doux tisseurs de mélodies que le bebop ait révélé, Mau Mau (allusion à la guerilla d’indépendance qui avait embrasé le Kenya un an plus tôt) évoque une Afrique fantasmée et peut-être idéale.
Quant à Kerry Dance, Minority, Nicas’s Tempo et Smoke Signal, ils forment une manière de bouquet, hommage du quartette réuni par la saxophoniste à cet illustre méconnu entré dans la légende du jazz.
Né George General Grice le 28 novembre 1925 à Pensacola (Floride) et devenu, plus brièvement, “Gigi” Gryce, il allait disparaître en 1983 avec pour seule consolation d’avoir impressionné ses confrères, de Monk à Coltrane en passant par Stan Getz et Dizzy Gillespie, autant par la délicatesse de son jeu de saxophone que par son talent d’écriture.
Soit une constellation de joyaux mélodiques littéralement inouïs, travaillés et peaufinés par la saxophoniste comme on taille des diamants !
Et, au fil des plages, un large éventail d’émotions et de surprises, car Géraldine Laurent, encore une fois, fait preuve de cette virtuosité amoureuse indissociable d’une mémoire vive qui, par la grâce d’une relecture superbement et rythmiquement personnelle, lui permet de trouver des chemins toujours nouveaux.
D’emblée, le ton (le groove !) est donné : entourée de trois maîtres ès tempo, dont l’indéfectible et élastique Yoni Zelnik et le non moins talentueux Pierre de Bethman, l’altiste (que l’on avait pu entendre dans les contextes et lieux les plus divers, jusqu’à son mémorable Time Out Trio et au “Just Jazz” d’Aldo Romano) slalome au gré des « portes » harmoniques avec ce mélange d’agressivité (en jazz on parle d’attaque), de rapidité et d’agilité qui marque les grands improvisateurs. Ou quand l’histoire et l’actualité s’entrelacent afin que jaillisse une musique constamment neuve.


CHICO PINHEIRO
There´s A Storm Inside / Flor De Fogo





by Dr. Leo Rocha
Bastante aguardado e elogiado pela mídia,sinceramente, não chegou a me entusiasmar como esperava que acontecesse. É claro que adoro o Chico Pinheiro pois conheço todos os seus discos anteriores a esse,incluindo o maravilhoso "Nova" que ele divide com o guitarrista fenomenal Anthony Wilson. Foi tão grande o estardalhaço da mídia que me apressei e comprei logo o disco importado sem saber que em seguida já seria lançado em edição brasileira com o nome de "Flor de Fogo" e com outra capa.
Chico resolveu agora, intensificar mais ainda o seu lado de cantor,que ,é bom frisar, muito agradável,embora eu prefira a sua porção violonística (ou guitarrística,se preferem). Está muito bem acompanhado de músicos talentosos como:Paulo Calasans(acoustic piano), Paulo Pauleli(bass), Edu Ribeiro(drums), Fabio Torres(piano), Marcelo Mariano(bass), Marcos Bosco(percussion),Lula Alencar(accordion), Zé Pitoco(zabumba),Marcos Spirito(ganzá), além das participações especialíssimas de Dianne Reeves(vocals), Bob Mintzer(tenor sax and bass clarinet), Luciana Alves(vocals) e Proveta (clarinet). Portanto, um time de primeira,mas parece que o "negócio não explode" e fica "sem decolar". Apesar da primeira faixa ser uma música muito bonita, não houve nada criativo ,nada de novo na releitura de "Our love is here to stay". "Boca de siri" é legal e faz-nos lembrar a música de João Bosco e Aldir Blanc com um belo solo de violão do Chico. "There's a storm inside" apresenta um inspirado solo de piano por Fábio Torres e a participação vocal de Dianne Reeves que não acrescenta nada demais. "Recriando a criação",uma das melhores, é de autoria de Chico em parceria com Paulo Cesar Pinheiro; trata-se de um lindo tema que foi brindado com o toque de violão de mestre do dono do disco (aí, sim !). Outro tema muito bonito é "A sul do teu olhar" interpretado por Luciana Alves como também "Um filme", de acento bossanovístico. Chico Pinheiro ainda dá um tremendo show em sua guitarra em "Sertão Wi Fi". Uma sessão de cordas ainda se faz presente em algumas faixas. Enfim,uma produção cara que poderia render muito mais. Chico fica devendo um outro.
Léo, esse garoto ainda vai longe!!!