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GLOBE UNITY: ITALY Sin Fronteras Actis Dato Quartet (Leo) If Not (omaggio a Mario Schiano) Progetto Guzman (Terre Sommerse) Untitled #28 Fabrizio Sferra Quartet (Jando Music) by Tom Greenland Jazz, first introduced to Milanese audiences in the early 20th century, was later adopted and adapted by local musicians, with strong scenes emerging in Milan, Rome, Sicily, Perugia (home of the Umbria Jazz Festival) and elsewhere. Integral to Italian new jazz for 40 years, multireedist Carlo Actis Dato maintains his ebullient humor on Sin Fronteras, a quartet release with soprano/alto saxist Beppe Di Filippo, bassist Matteo Ravizza and drummer Daniele Bertone. The alloriginal date sustains a Carnevale-esque atmosphere through danceable beats, catchy unison melodies and raucous soloing, spurred by group chanting, whistling and scatting. Favoring baritone sax (with occasional tenor and bass clarinet), Dato’s style blends inside and outside playing, delivered in a slightly husky tone, complemented by Di Filippo’s higher-pitched melismatic lines. Bertone combines standard drumkit and hand percussion on Middle Eastern and South American rhythms, which meld with Dato’s Middle Eastern melodies and Phrygian harmonies in a distinctively Mediterranean style. If Not, an homage organized by author Paola Carradori to the late Mario Schiano, a father figure of Italian free jazz, combines the trios of trumpeter Angelo Olivieri (with bassist Silvia Bolognesi and drummer Marco Ariano) and tenor/soprano saxophonist Alípio C. Neto (with bassist Roberto Raciti and drummer Ermanno Baron), with guest appearances by soprano saxist Eugenio Colombo, trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini and others. The repertoire includes Schiano’s “If Not Ecstatic We Refund” (both studio and live versions), “Sud” and “Song” (which ends with a recording of Schiano singing in a slurry, Louis Armstrong style), plus standard covers and free improvisations. Olivieri and Neto prove dynamic leaders and the free improvisations show remarkable transparency, no easy task with multiple bassists and drummers. Drummer Fabrizio Sferra leads his quartet of reedman Dan Kinzelman, pianist Giovanni Guidi and bassist Joe Rehmer on Untitled #28, a collection of hummable tunes over floating rhythms, which are easily accessible yet open-minded. Like the late Paul Motian, Sferra leads by following, preferring the role of facilitator and colorist to that of timekeeper, giving this project a truly collaborative feel. Most of his songs are grounded in tonal harmony, with an almost hymn-like quality, though the key centers tend to shift in unpredictable ways. Sferra’s unobtrusive, virtually subliminal playing accomplishes more through innuendo than overt emphasis while Kinzelman’s tenor sax (with several clarinet cameos) and Guidi’s tinkling arpeggios add to the Sunday afternoon ambiance of the set. For more information, visit leorecords.com, terresommerse.it and jandomusic.com 16 May 2013 | THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD Bridges Andrea Centazzo/Akira Sakata/Kiyoto Fujiwara (Ictus) Halcyon Days, The Complete Recording Vol. 2 Andrea Centazzo/LaDonna Smith/Davey Williams (Ictus) In A Rainy Day Andrea Centazzo/Roberto Ottaviano (Ictus) The Battle Andrea Centazzo Invasion Orchestra (Ictus) by Robert Iannapollo Italian born/American resident, percussionist Andrea Centazzo has a massive discography at over 100 recordings, with his Ictus record label, founded in 1976, releasing many of them. He’s recorded albums with the finest of European and American improvisers; a short list would include Steve Lacy, John Carter, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill…the list is extensive. Although a master free improviser, he’s also a composer, having done orchestral and chamber compositions. And he’s not averse to playing mainstream and fusion when the muse moves him. These four albums are among the most recent editions released on Ictus and show Centazzo still forging ahead at a creative pitch after 40 years. Centazzo’s peripatetic nature has seen him establishing musical relationships all over the globe. Bridges finds Centazzo collaborating with two of Japan’s most august improvisers, saxophonist Akira Sakata and bassist Kiyoto Fujiwara, in a 2012 concert from Milan. Sakata was one of the earliest Japanese saxophonists to embrace free jazz, part of pianist Yosuke Yamashita’s trio for much of the ‘70s. And he has kept his music fresh by collaborating with contemporary players like Jim O’Rourke and D.J. Krush. On Bridges his alto voice is the most dominant, coming from the Charlie Parker-through-Jimmy Lyons lineage, and Centazzo and Fujiwara keep a busy accompaniment to Sakata’s flights, spurring him on to some truly frenetic sequences. Although everything here is improvised, “Bridge #5“ toys with “Stella By Starlight” but taken to some pretty far-flung places. While the performance is quite good, the sound of the disc is a bit too ‘live’ and at 32 minutes, a little bit chintzy with playing time. Centazzo’s journeys have even taken him to such unexpected places as Tuscaloosa, AL, meeting up with the improvising duo of violinist/violist LaDonna Smith and guitarist Davey Williams. They first collaborated in 1979 and their meetings have resulted in several albums. Halcyon Days stems from recordings that date back to a concert in Venice in April 1979. Generally, the instrumentation skews this music toward the treble range; Centazzo’s mini-moog is his only electronic element and that reinforces it. This sounds like music of discovery and there’s an almost giddy quality that is attractive. Centazzo patters away while Smith scrabbles and scrapes and Williams wrenches all sorts of sound from his guitar and banjo. The music runs the sonic spectrum from delicate textures to all-out barrage. There’s an obvious connection among these three and the music flows with natural ease. In A Rainy Day finds Centazzo in a duo with countryman soprano saxophonist Roberto Ottaviano. The latter leans towards music with a more melodic character and Centazzo adjusts his playing accordingly, his percussion much more textural and reliant on an electronics and keyboard setup. At times the music tends towards the ambient (“In A Balinese Garden”, where the kat mallet sounds like a gamelan instrument) but Ottaviano can ratchet up the energy level and he proves a good match for Centazzo’s free jazz chops. “A Kind Of Duke’s Blue” opens up with a percussive reed squall, which, despite the freneticism, clearly draws on “Take the ‘A’ Train”, going through several changes before concluding with a repeated sample of the song’s famous piano intro. This is a studio recording from 2012 with a lot of overdubbing and while some of the electronic work is a little clunky, in general, this is a satisfying set of duets that shows both musicians’ range. The Battle is the most elaborate of these releases, consisting of a 2012 performance at The Stone by Centazzo’s 13-member strong Invasion Orchestra. Consisting of Italian and American musicians, it is a well-stacked ensemble including Dato, Ottaviano, trumpeters Dave Ballou and Guido Mazzon, pianist Umberto Petrin and co-drummer Gino Robair. The compositions are multi-faceted, make good use of the instrumentation and are long and involved (the shortest is eight minutes). They tend to go into unexpected areas; for example, the title track has a brass chorale inserted at the midway point that leads into simultaneous solos from the reed section. Most players are featured but trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini’s plunger extravaganza at the beginning of “The Victory” stands out. For more information, visit ictusrecords.com. Centazzo is at JACK May 3rd and The Firehouse Space May 5th. See Calendar. May 7th Rosemary George and Group May 14th Antoinette Montague and Group May 21st Mike Longo’s 17 piece NY State of the Art Jazz Ensemble with Ira Hawkins New York Baha’i Center 53 E. 11th Street (between University Place and Broadway) Shows: 8:00 & 9:30 PM Gen Adm: $15 Students $10 212-222-5159 bahainyc.org/nyc-bahai-center/jazz-night
Silent Comedy Bill Frisell (Tzadik) by Stuart Broomer 2012 was the centenary of the births of two central figures in American music, John Cage and Woody Guthrie, and a document that got wide circulation was a 1947 letter from Guthrie in which the folk singer and songwriter praised Cage’s early prepared piano music. One of the places the letter turned up was guitarist Bill Frisell’s website, a singularly appropriate spot, for there are few musicians whose aesthetic regularly includes heartland melodies and electronics. Frisell’s first solo CD, Ghost Town from 2000, mixed various instruments and loops, improvisations and traditional songs. His current solo outing, Silent Comedy, foregoes any familiar melodies and focuses on what sound like largely improvised pieces. Frisell builds each work out of loops and contrasts, picking up a brief motif, repeating it, mutating it electronically and layering it into an ongoing pattern. One is conscious here of the electronic musician, a man who’s using his guitar as a source for sounds to be reconfigured by a medley of pedals - loops, delays, sustains, ring-modulators - that will transform a sound or a phrase. But one is also aware of Frisell the film composer, alert to nuance, continuity and mood. Occasionally you’ll get a ghost phrase, a barely amplified folk motif or a wail that’s characteristic rock guitar (on the ironically titled “Lullaby”), a hint of some other chapter in Frisell’s musical odyssey, but that too is liable to become part of something else. There’s a piece here called “Proof” that has some of the openness and sudden unexpected phrases of Cage’s early sonatas while “Ice Cave” possesses all the austere architecture and unexpected grandeur of its subject. “John Goldfarb, Please Come Home”, at nine minutes something of an epic, is particularly witty and cinematic. What comes through here strongest is Frisell’s mindfulness. He’s an explorer, but also a musician who ultimately values coherence and a certain musical grace. More than one of the year’s most interesting guitar records, this is genuinely arresting music. For more information, visit tzadik.com. Frisell is at Village Vanguard May 7th-12th. See Calendar. Creative Music for 3 Bass Saxophones Scott Robinson (ScienSonic) New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light Colin Stetson (Constellation) As If There Was A Tomorrow Andreas Kaling (JazzHausMusik) by Jeff Stockton Musicians performing on the bass saxophone have to avoid becoming a novelty act. The instrument is sufficiently large and unwieldy that playing it becomes as much of an effort in physicality as it does in breath control. The saxists under consideration here each approach this challenge in slightly different ways. On Creative Music for 3 Bass Saxophones, its chief composer Scott Robinson enlists a couple of veterans of unusual horns and creative improvisation, Vinny Golia and JD Parran, along with percussionist Warren Smith. Recorded live in 2011 at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan, the band engages one another in brief conversational entwinings, notes surfacing and submerging like whales coming up for air, then going back underwater to sing their songs. For the majority of the program, the band concentrates on abstraction: susurrations, long tones, percussive accents. It’s not until nearly the very end where the three mighty sounds join together as one, giving some indication of what they are capable. To See More Light is Volume 3 in Colin Stetson’s series of solo sax performances called New History Warfare. A couple of years ago Volume 2, Judges, made quite an impression with indie audiences. With a remarkable system of all-over body mic’ing, circular breathing techniques, vocalizations and unorthodox fingerings, Stetson manages to create music that ranges from tranquil repose to harrowing intensity. The pops and clicks of the keys are amplified. Humming roars and screams like animal sounds. And while the previous volume concentrated on the bass sax and soothing tones of Laurie Anderson, this one expands the sonic palette to include alto and tenor and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon handles the vocal atmospherics. The inclusion of these higher pitches heightens the music’s intensity, making To See More Light a gripping listening experience, but not at all an easy one. No one makes music like Stetson. Except, it seems, German saxist Andreas Kaling, who claims, as Stetson does, that all songs are played “live, without loops or overdubs”. But where Stetson’s music can be nerve-wracking, Kaling’s is less challenging and easier to enjoy but still an achievement. Kaling wheezes and puffs and hums along with himself, but with a mastery and attention to dynamics that keep As If There Was A Tomorrow compelling. Thanks to the structure, compositional logic and momentum of the performances and with nothing clocking in much over five minutes, nothing overstays its welcome. From a purely technical perspective, the sounds Kaling is able to conjure are mind-blowing and inexplicable. He often sounds like a foghorn warning incoming ships and then like a ship blowing its answer back. That he can do so to serve the purpose of each song makes this recording not only impressive to think about, but also to hear. Not to be missed. For more information, visit sciensonic.net, cstrecords.com and jazzhausmusik.de. Robinson is at Greenwich House Music School May 31st. Stetson is at Le Poisson Rouge May 8th. See Calendar. J a ZZ a T LinC o L n CenT er M ay J une 25 yearS oF J a ZZ May 15 / 7 PM | May 16 / 7 PM & 9PM a TribuT e T o b obby ShorT Michael Feinstein leads an all-star cast featuring saxophonist Andy Farber and vocalists Paula West, T. Oliver Reid, and Barbara Carroll ChiC k Corea Festival May 16–18 / 8 PM ChiC k Corea Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and featured artist Chick Corea ChiC k Corea Festival May 17–18 / 7:30 PM & 9:30PM FriendS oF ChiC k C o r e a : MuS i C ianS oF T he FuT ure Pianists Gadi Lehavi and Beka Gochiashvili, bassist John Patitucci, drummer Marcus Gilmore, with trumpeter Wallace Roney June 12 / 7 PM | June 13 / 7 PM & 9PM Swinging wiT h T he b ig b andS Michael Feinstein hosts Wynton Marsalis and Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks with vocalists Nellie McKay, Connie Evingson, and Sachal Vasandani T h boX o FFi C e Broadway at 60 C enT erC harge 212-721-6500 jalc.org Preferred Card of Jazz at Lincoln Center Lead Corporate Sponsor chick corea Photo by Frank Stewart THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | May 2013 17
- Page 1: May 2013 | No. 133 WILL CALHOUN You
- Page 4 and 5: NEW YORK @ NIGHT The Hell’s Kitch
- Page 6 and 7: Photo by Bill Bernstein INTERVIEW D
- Page 9 and 10: ON THE COVER In accepting one of tw
- Page 11 and 12: MEGAPHONE Cornet and Lineage: Ron a
- Page 14 and 15: CD REVIEWS HUSH POINT SSC 1358 In S
- Page 18 and 19: $18 ADVANCE $20 AT DOOR 9/20: Roy E
- Page 20 and 21: Oye!!! (Live in Puerto Rico) Miguel
- Page 22 and 23: 22 May 2013 | THE NEW YORK CITY JAZ
- Page 24 and 25: The View From Here Kyle Eastwood (J
- Page 26 and 27: Haymaker Noah Preminger (Palmetto)
- Page 28 and 29: Chants Craig Taborn Trio (ECM) by J
- Page 30 and 31: LASZLO GARDONY / CLARITY SSC 4014 I
- Page 32 and 33: 32 May 2013 | THE NEW YORK CITY JAZ
- Page 34 and 35: Time Travel Dave Douglas Quintet (G
- Page 36: BOXED SET Ten Freedom Summers Wadad
- Page 39 and 40: Saturday, May 4 êCyro Baptista and
- Page 41 and 42: Monday, May 13 êGil Evans Birthday
- Page 43 and 44: Saturday, May 25 êMark Soskin Trio
- Page 45 and 46: CLUB DIRECTORY • 54 Below 254 Wes
- Page 47 and 48: KENNY BALL - The British trumpeter
Silent Comedy<br />
Bill Frisell (Tzadik)<br />
by Stuart Broomer<br />
2012 was the centenary of the births of two central<br />
figures in American music, John Cage and Woody<br />
Guthrie, and a document that got wide circulation was<br />
a 1947 letter from Guthrie in which the folk singer and<br />
songwriter praised Cage’s early prepared piano music.<br />
One of the places the letter turned up was guitarist Bill<br />
Frisell’s website, a singularly appropriate spot, for<br />
there are few musicians whose aesthetic regularly<br />
includes heartland melodies and electronics.<br />
Frisell’s first solo CD, Ghost Town from 2000,<br />
mixed various instruments and loops, improvisations<br />
and traditional songs. His current solo outing, Silent<br />
Comedy, foregoes any familiar melodies and focuses on<br />
what sound like largely improvised pieces. Frisell<br />
builds each work out of loops and contrasts, picking<br />
up a brief motif, repeating it, mutating it electronically<br />
and layering it into an ongoing pattern. One is<br />
conscious here of the electronic musician, a man who’s<br />
using his guitar as a source for sounds to be<br />
reconfigured by a medley of pedals - loops, delays,<br />
sustains, ring-modulators - that will transform a sound<br />
or a phrase. But one is also aware of Frisell the film<br />
composer, alert to nuance, continuity and mood.<br />
Occasionally you’ll get a ghost phrase, a barely<br />
amplified folk motif or a wail that’s characteristic rock<br />
guitar (on the ironically titled “Lullaby”), a hint of<br />
some other chapter in Frisell’s musical odyssey, but<br />
that too is liable to become part of something else.<br />
There’s a piece here called “Proof” that has some of the<br />
openness and sudden unexpected phrases of Cage’s<br />
early sonatas while “Ice Cave” possesses all the austere<br />
architecture and unexpected grandeur of its subject.<br />
“John Goldfarb, Please Come Home”, at nine minutes<br />
something of an epic, is particularly witty and<br />
cinematic.<br />
What comes through here strongest is Frisell’s<br />
mindfulness. He’s an explorer, but also a musician who<br />
ultimately values coherence and a certain musical<br />
grace. More than one of the year’s most interesting<br />
guitar records, this is genuinely arresting music.<br />
For more information, visit tzadik.com. Frisell is at Village<br />
Vanguard May 7th-12th. See Calendar.<br />
Creative Music for 3 Bass Saxophones<br />
Scott Robinson (ScienSonic)<br />
New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light<br />
Colin Stetson (Constellation)<br />
As If There Was A Tomorrow<br />
Andreas Kaling (JazzHausMusik)<br />
by Jeff Stockton<br />
Musicians performing on the bass saxophone have to<br />
avoid becoming a novelty act. The instrument is<br />
sufficiently large and unwieldy that playing it becomes<br />
as much of an effort in physicality as it does in breath<br />
control. The saxists under consideration here each<br />
approach this challenge in slightly different ways.<br />
On Creative Music for 3 Bass Saxophones, its chief<br />
composer Scott Robinson enlists a couple of veterans<br />
of unusual horns and creative improvisation, Vinny<br />
Golia and JD Parran, along with percussionist Warren<br />
Smith. Recorded live in 2011 at the Rubin Museum of<br />
Art in Manhattan, the band engages one another in<br />
brief conversational entwinings, notes surfacing and<br />
submerging like whales coming up for air, then going<br />
back underwater to sing their songs. For the majority<br />
of the program, the band concentrates on abstraction:<br />
susurrations, long tones, percussive accents. It’s not<br />
until nearly the very end where the three mighty<br />
sounds join together as one, giving some indication of<br />
what they are capable.<br />
To See More Light is Volume 3 in Colin Stetson’s<br />
series of solo sax performances called New History<br />
Warfare. A couple of years ago Volume 2, Judges, made<br />
quite an impression with indie audiences. With a<br />
remarkable system of all-over body mic’ing, circular<br />
breathing techniques, vocalizations and unorthodox<br />
fingerings, Stetson manages to create music that ranges<br />
from tranquil repose to harrowing intensity. The pops<br />
and clicks of the keys are amplified. Humming roars<br />
and screams like animal sounds. And while the<br />
previous volume concentrated on the bass sax and<br />
soothing tones of Laurie Anderson, this one expands<br />
the sonic palette to include alto and tenor and Bon<br />
Iver’s Justin Vernon handles the vocal atmospherics.<br />
The inclusion of these higher pitches heightens the<br />
music’s intensity, making To See More Light a gripping<br />
listening experience, but not at all an easy one. No one<br />
makes music like Stetson.<br />
Except, it seems, German saxist Andreas Kaling,<br />
who claims, as Stetson does, that all songs are played<br />
“live, without loops or overdubs”. But where Stetson’s<br />
music can be nerve-wracking, Kaling’s is less<br />
challenging and easier to enjoy but still an achievement.<br />
Kaling wheezes and puffs and hums along with<br />
himself, but with a mastery and attention to dynamics<br />
that keep As If There Was A Tomorrow compelling.<br />
Thanks to the structure, compositional logic and<br />
momentum of the performances and with nothing<br />
clocking in much over five minutes, nothing overstays<br />
its welcome. From a purely technical perspective, the<br />
sounds Kaling is able to conjure are mind-blowing and<br />
inexplicable. He often sounds like a foghorn warning<br />
incoming ships and then like a ship blowing its answer<br />
back. That he can do so to serve the purpose of each<br />
song makes this recording not only impressive to think<br />
about, but also to hear. Not to be missed.<br />
For more information, visit sciensonic.net, cstrecords.com and<br />
jazzhausmusik.de. Robinson is at Greenwich House Music School<br />
May 31st. Stetson is at Le Poisson Rouge May 8th. See Calendar.<br />
J a ZZ a T LinC o L n CenT er<br />
M ay<br />
J une<br />
25 yearS oF J a ZZ<br />
May 15 / 7 PM | May 16 / 7 PM & 9PM<br />
a TribuT e T o b obby ShorT<br />
Michael Feinstein leads an all-star cast featuring<br />
saxophonist Andy Farber and vocalists<br />
Paula West, T. Oliver Reid, and Barbara Carroll<br />
ChiC k Corea Festival<br />
May 16–18 / 8 PM<br />
ChiC k Corea<br />
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton<br />
Marsalis and featured artist Chick Corea<br />
ChiC k Corea Festival<br />
May 17–18 / 7:30 PM & 9:30PM<br />
FriendS oF ChiC k C o r e a :<br />
MuS i C ianS oF T he FuT ure<br />
Pianists Gadi Lehavi and Beka Gochiashvili,<br />
bassist John Patitucci, drummer Marcus Gilmore,<br />
with trumpeter Wallace Roney<br />
June 12 / 7 PM | June 13 / 7 PM & 9PM<br />
Swinging wiT h<br />
T he b ig b andS<br />
Michael Feinstein hosts Wynton Marsalis<br />
and Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks with<br />
vocalists Nellie McKay, Connie Evingson,<br />
and Sachal Vasandani<br />
T h<br />
boX o FFi C e Broadway at 60<br />
C enT erC harge 212-721-6500<br />
jalc.org<br />
Preferred Card of<br />
Jazz at Lincoln Center<br />
Lead Corporate Sponsor<br />
chick corea<br />
Photo by Frank Stewart<br />
THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | May 2013 17
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