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$18 ADVANCE $20 AT DOOR<br />
9/20: Roy Eaton<br />
18 May 2013 | THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD<br />
visitors center:<br />
OPEN M-F 10 AM - 4 PM<br />
104 E. 126th Street, #2D, New York, NY 10035<br />
(Take the 2/3/4/5/6 train)<br />
WWW.JMIH.ORG<br />
THE NATIONAL JAZZ MUSEUM IN HARLEM PRESENTS<br />
Harlem Speaks<br />
A SERIES DEDICATED TO CAPTURING THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF JAZZ<br />
5/15 Portraits of Harlem Poetry Slam Competition - Theme: Harlem<br />
5/29 Portraits Pianist of Harlem Poetry Slam Competition Bandleader<br />
- Theme: Jazz<br />
9/27: George Gee<br />
Time: 6:30 - 8:30 pm Price: Free SuggeSted donation of $20 LocaTion: miSt Harlem 46 W 116tH St for more information: 212-348-8300<br />
Jazz for Curious Listeners<br />
Tuesdays 7:00 - 8:30 p.m.<br />
Free classes celebrating Harlem and its legacy. Attend any individual class.<br />
Catching up with Christian<br />
Host: Christian McBride<br />
5/14: Location: Maysles Cinema (343 Lenox Avenue between 127th 128th) Donation Suggested<br />
5/21: Location: Metropolitan Community United Methodist Church,<br />
NE Corner of 126th Street and Madison Avenue, enter on 126th FREE<br />
For more information: 212-348-8300<br />
May 3 - Roy Assaf Trio<br />
TICKETS: www.rmanyc.org/harleminthehimalayas<br />
Parallax Conversation Series: The Spectrum of Storytelling<br />
May 7 Kewulay Kamara and Melvin Reeves 7:00 - 8:30pm<br />
May 28 Andrew Nemr and Yacouba Sissoko 7:00 - 8:30pm<br />
Location: Metropolitan Community United Methodist Church, NE Corner of 126th Street and Madison Avenue, enter on 126th<br />
FREE For more information: 212-348-8300<br />
Funded in part by Council Member Inez E. Dickens, 9th C.D., Speaker Christine Quinn and the New York City Council<br />
Cinema, Circus &<br />
Spaghetti<br />
Sexmob<br />
(The Royal Potato Family)<br />
by Kurt Gottschalk<br />
No Morphine, No Lilies<br />
Allison Miller’s<br />
Boom Tic Boom<br />
(The Royal Potato Family)<br />
In 1981, producer Hal Wilner pulled together a tribute<br />
album to composer Nino Rota, the man who scored<br />
most of Federico Fellini’s films. It kicked off a series of<br />
multi-artist tribute albums Rota would inspire, which<br />
in turn arguably gave birth to a burgeoning tribute<br />
compilation cottage industry.<br />
Steven Bernstein thanks Wilner in the notes to his<br />
own Rota tribute Cinema, Circus & Spaghetti, crediting<br />
his longtime friend for “opening [his] mind” to Rota’s<br />
music. And with some of the Downtown contingent (if<br />
not Bernstein himself) present on Wilner’s album,<br />
comparisons are inevitable, despite the decades<br />
between them. But Bernstein has made a very different<br />
record, one perhaps less about reinventing the<br />
compositions than about reigniting the vibrancy of the<br />
movies for which they were made.<br />
Bernstein is a strong trumpeter - and here debuts<br />
his ‘hybrid’ valve/slide horn - but one of the rewards<br />
of Sexmob (saxophonist Briggan Krauss, bassist Tony<br />
Scherr, drummer Kenny Wollesen) has always been<br />
Bernstein’s arrangements of other material, finding<br />
new spirit in Prince, Sly Stone, Martin Denny and John<br />
Barry, abetted by an ensemble equally at home with<br />
jazz, funk and cinematic music. In Sexmob’s able<br />
hands, the disc remains a band album (as opposed to<br />
Wilner’s wonderful assemblage). Like Louis Armstrong<br />
making Fats Waller his own, the band works through<br />
12 themes from Juliet of the Spirits, Amarcord, La Dolce<br />
Vita, La Strada and Spirits of the Dead, making set pieces<br />
like audio Technicolor. After 17 years, Sexmob moves<br />
with a group consciousness; such singularity lets both<br />
the composer and the arranger shine.<br />
Bernstein guests on two tracks on his labelmate<br />
drummer Allison Miller’s striking No Morphine, No<br />
Lilies, her strong band Boom Tic Boom (pianist Myra<br />
Melford, violinist Jenny Scheinman, bassist Todd<br />
Sickafoose) also complemented by trumpeter Ara<br />
Anderson, cellist Erik Friedlander and singer Rachel<br />
Friedman. Miller is a smart composer and works her<br />
band in a nicely understated manner. Her drums are<br />
rarely out front, but the music proceeds with a<br />
drummer’s sensibility nevertheless, crafting different<br />
rhythms with different parts of the group and laying<br />
them on top of each other, still letting everything fall<br />
together in an easy manner (one might use the word<br />
‘smooth’ were it not so inflammatory). That strategy is<br />
underscored by the bold and sprightly unison trumpet/<br />
violin lines of “The Itch” or, alternately, on the album’s<br />
lone vocal piece, “Once” a slow ballad that could fit<br />
into an Alicia Keys or Esperanza Spalding set. With<br />
simple piano and drum accompaniment and multitracked<br />
vocal harmonies, it’s the most conventional<br />
piece. It does, however, show another aspect to Miller’s<br />
writing. But it’s not all exercise. She says in the notes<br />
that the 11 compositions were written during a period<br />
of personal travails and there’s a pervasive sense of<br />
struggle (and overcoming) to the music.<br />
On both albums, Bernstein and Miller come off as<br />
deeply committed to their projects and both have<br />
bands committed to following them there.<br />
For more information, visit royalpotatofamily.com. Both<br />
these groups are at 92YTribeca May 8th. See Calendar.
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