Download - Downbeat

Ali Jackson
Wheelz Keep Rollin’
BIGWENZEE MUSIC
AAA
Ali Jackson’s first studio release as a
leader is a stylish hodgepodge—Latin
here, straightahead swing there—loosely
bound together by a refreshing,
buoyant spirit. The slow, bluesy strut of
the title track kicks off the album with flair. Jennifer Sannon’s punchy
vocals and Jonathan Batiste’s dissonant Monk chunks, along with
Jackson’s cogent second-line time, project a cool confidence. With a
melody urgent and playful, the number lingers in the memory long past
tuba man Vincent Gardner’s solo march into the distance.
Jackson generally plays it simple on Wheelz. His musical personality is
more restrained, humbler than on previous recordings. While his clear,
declarative statements and straightforward grooves serve the music well
much of the time, several moments cry out for more activity from the
drums. For example, the uplifting “Spiritual,” ostensibly the album’s emotional
climax, falls flat for want of more rhythmic energy.
The recording is most engaging at its least predictable. The angular,
Latin-tinged “I Gotchu” takes a striking turn after the final go-around of
the head, modulating a central motif into a swinging coda, with trombone
and muted trumpet floating on air. Accordingly, a musical high point for
the New Orleans shake “Shimmy Pop” comes on an abrupt two-beat
silence in the middle of the head, a moment at which Jackson’s abstinence
is welcomed.
—Eric Bishop
Wheelz Keep Rollin’: Wheelz Keep Rollin’; Luscious; I Gotchu; Shimmy Pop; Especiale; I Got
Got; Spiritual. (34:47)
Personnel: Mike Rodriguez, trumpet; Vincent Gardner, trombone, tube (1, 4); Reginald Veal, bass,
violin; Jonathan Batiste, piano; Ali Jackson, drums, tambourine, percussion; Jennifer Sannon,
vocals (1, 5).
Ordering info: alidrums.com
»
Al Di Meola
World Sinfonia
La Melodia: Live In Milano
VALIANA
AAA
Guitarist Al Di Meola’s heart lays with
World Sinfonia, the all-acoustic group
that serves as a connection to his ethnic
heritage and the various Spanish folk styles he loves. With Fausto
Beccalossi on accordion and vocals, Peo Alfonsi on acoustic guitar and
Gumbi Ortiz on cajon, this quartet plays with fire, passion and grace.
A wonderful recording from a purely sonic angle, La Melodia is resonant
and romantic. You can practically envision the group on stage and the
audience’s closed eyes in mediation. The repertoire is imaginative, with
material by Ennio Morricone and Di Meola coupled to New Tango missives
from Astor Piazzolla and Italian vocalist Andrea Parodi. At times
recalling a soundtrack to some foreign language film set in Sardinia, the
music unfurls in lush, breathy cadences, with no one musician hogging the
spotlight or outshining the others.
Di Meola’s “Misterio,” “Infinite Desire” and “Mediterranean
Sundance/Rio Ancho” feature his spicy, soaring fretboard work, and the
group keeps easy pace, nailing the arrangements with flair. Ultimately, Di
Meola is one cog in World Sinfonia. A team player, he disproves rumors
of ego overload that have dogged the guitarist for years. —Ken Micallef
La Melodia: Infinite Desire; Cafe; Cinema Paradiso; Misterio; Double Concerto; Turquoise;
Umbras; Mediterranean Sundance/Rio Ancho; No Potho Reposare. (71:18)
Personnel: Al Di Meola, Peo Alfonsi, guitar; Fausto Beccalossi, accordion, vocals; Gumbi Ortiz, cajon.
»
Ordering info: aldimeola.com
BOOKS
Academic Tries to
Contextualize Zorn’s
Downtown Noise
by Eric Fine
John Zorn has received the MacArthur Fellowship of $500,000,
while also being disparaged by critics and lampooned on national
television. For someone who works on the fringe, that’s an awful
lot of noise. John Brackett’s John Zorn: Tradition And
Transgression (Indiana University Press) digs deeply into the enigma
of the avant-garde composer,
concentrating on the elements
that inspire Zorn apart from
music.
The section titled “From The
Fantastic To The Dangerously
Real: Reading John Zorn’s
Artwork” looks at the sadomasochistic
images of Japanese
women that accompany Zorn’s
albums with his bands Naked
City and Painkiller. Brackett’s
study of Japanese culture moves
beyond Zorn and his music. It
returns to draw parallels, but only
after traversing much ground.
Brackett, a music professor at the University of Utah, allocates
considerable space to critics. These include feminists Andrea
Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, whose writings about the
impact of pornography on women received attention in the 1980s.
French philosopher and novelist Georges Bataille provides the
underpinning for Tradition And Transgression. Brackett’s dense
style, however, badly articulates the relationship between
Bataille’s concept of “base materialism” and Zorn’s interest in
sadomasochism. Brackett also attributes the origins of compositions
like “Osaka Bondage” from Naked City’s Torture Garden
(1989) to “the sense of alienation and rejection [Zorn] experienced
during his stays in Japan.” Had Brackett incorporated biographical
information—such as the reason behind Zorn’s visits to
Japan—or included an anecdote or quote, it would have made the
commentary stronger and clearer.
The chapter “Magick And Mysticism In Zorn’s Recent Work”
discusses Zorn’s Gnostic-inspired music in the context of the
Jewish Kabbalah tradition and British occultist Aleister Crowley.
“Tradition, Gifts, And Zorn’s Musical Homages” establishes
Zorn’s place in a broad “maverick tradition” of iconoclastic composers,
musicians, filmmakers, artists and writers. Brackett creates
an artistic niche for these folks (“the tradition of transgression”).
“In this sense,” he writes, “the tradition of transgression is
founded upon an apparent paradox: a tradition of practices and
thought that zeroes in on and exploits the spaces or ‘blind spots’
deemed impermissible, unacceptable, and unrecognizable (yet
ultimately created) by traditional institutions of art.”
Such passages show how much the book’s depth and density
sacrifice narrative flow, and how Brackett’s analysis too often follows
long digressions. Consequently, payoffs become anticlimactic.
Brackett should have balanced his examination of Zorn’s ideas
with more apt aspects of Zorn’s life. Art, after all, does not exist
entirely in a vacuum.
DB
Ordering info: iupress.indiana.edu
June 2009 DOWNBEAT 71