Woody & Jazz
By Amazon
Argentinean pianist Manuel Fraga hails from Buenos Aires. He studied jazz and improvisation with Carlos Balmaceda, and later harmony, composition, form, and analysis with Manolo Juarez. Fraga performs here with his trio, consisting of himself, Damian Falcon, and German Boco, all of whom have thriving careers individually and are that much more special when they perform together. The theme of this release is unusual but fun. All of the jazz pieces performed were featured in films that starred American legend Woody Allen.
Sarah Vaughan
Live At Rosy's
By Fred Kaplan at Stereophile
On the heels of its revelatory release of long-lost sessions by Larry Young in Paris during the mid-1960s, Resonance Records pulls another treasure from the archives—Sarah Vaughan's appearance at Rosy's, a now-defunct New Orleans jazz club, in May 1978.
Vaughan was 54 and in the midst of a merry comeback, recording a slew of albums for producer Norman Granz on the Pablo label and performing in a string of small clubs around the world (I saw her around this time at a very small venue, holding maybe 50 people, in Washington, DC), all with stunning virtuosity leavened with a playful verve.
She also had a great trio: Walter Booker on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums, and her young arranger, Carl Schroeder, on piano. That's the group heard on the two CDs of Live at Rosy's. The club date was recorded for NPR's Jazz Alive, a wonderful program from that era (I'm surprised its archive hasn't served as the source for dozens of albums). A few years ago, Tim Owens, who produced the series, told Zev Feldman, Resonance's proprietor-sleuth, about the existence of tapes that didn't make the cut for the show's hour-long broadcast—hence this album, and there's nothing second-string about it.
Sarah, the Divine One, is clearly having a grand time, swooping octaves, holding whole notes with a velvet vibrato, turning ballads into vamps, vamps into speed-fests, and sometimes playing songs straight and level too. She also shows great comic flair. Check out Disc 1, Track 9, when she calls for requests from the audience and hears back "A-Tisket A-Tasket" (from someone apparently confusing her with Ella Fitzgerald, who'd made a huge hit of the song 40 years earlier), prompting Vaughan to deadpan, "Well, I'll be damned . . . He thinks I'm Lena Horne," then to dive into the tune anyway, in a dead-on impression of Ella's little-girl voice of way back then.
Mainly she sings her long repertoire of standards: "I'll Remember April," "I Fall in Love Too Easily," "East of the Sun," "Time After Time," and, of course, "Send in the Clowns," which I've never heard any Broadway star sing more movingly.
This ranks right up there with the best Sarah Vaughan albums from this period (she died of lung cancer in 1990). And the sound quality, while a little thin on the drums, is very good too.
Jorge Anders Jazz Orchestra
Going Home
By Amazon
Celebrating his return to his homeland of Argentina after many years of living and working in NYC, Jorge Anders is a part of the continuum of great Argentinean jazz musicians, bandleaders and arrangers of the 50s and 60s such as Gato Barbieri , Lalo Schifrin, amon others. His career also included a playing and arranging with the Mercer Ellington-led Duk Ellington orchestra in the 1980s and his arrangements have also had a prominent place on the bandstands of Mel Lewis, Butch Miles, Machito and more. This aptly titled album brings together live recordings of different performances of Anders Jazz Orchestra in Buenos Aires between 2011 and 2014, including a track that features Anders wife and vocalist, Maryanne Murray front and center.
Gustavo Musso & Francisco Lo Vuolo
Back In Town
By Jakob Baekgaard
Playing in a duo exposes the communication between two musicians. Like a good conversation, there's a chance to get a special level of depth and intimacy. A good conversation with a stranger can make us feel like we have known the person for years, but if the conversation grows stale then the reaction might become estrangement.
Keeping a good conversation alive is all about flow and the ability to listen. To know when to pause and when to react. These are qualities that the Argentinian musicians, pianist Francisco Lo Vuolo and saxophonist Gustavo Musso, possess in abundance.
Their topic of conversation on Back in Town is the great repertoire of jazz, ranging from standards, swing and bop to the hard bop of saxophonist Joe Henderson. Hearing Henderson's famous composition "Inner Urge" without the insistent heavy groove provided by drums and bass is fascinating. Musso and Lo Vuolo cools it down and highlight the melodic intricacy of the composition as their lines dance lightly around each other in the spirit of legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker.
The fugue-like nature of Parker's music is also illuminated on a reading of his classic composition "Confirmation" where they once again slow the tempo down.
While both Lo Vuolo and Musso show superior technical skills, they don't try to impress or interrupt each other. Instead, they concentrate on their musical conversation, telling stories filled with emotion, warmth and an empathic sense of the history of jazz.
Track Listing:
The Gypsy; Confirmation; Inner Urge; Mood Indigo; On a Slow Boat to China; Invitation; Isotope; Reflections.
Personnel:
Personnel:
Gustavo Musso: alto saxophone, tenor saxophone; Francisco Lo Vuolo: piano.
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