The New York City Jazz Record
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
DiDomenico takes the open solo and uses the lower GLOBE UNITY: JAPAN part of the keyboard to provide a dark underpinning even as the music seems to be constantly opening out. Grimal’s entrance is subtle and goes almost unnoticed but it immediately complements the darkness of the piano and takes it to a number of places, some almost sprightly and bright, as it throbs to its opening theme. “Coldfinger” has a melody that suggests the impressionism of Debussy or Ravel but is also the most Suno Suno defined ‘jazz’ composition of anything in the set. The Rez Abbasi’s Invocation (Enja) series of five koans make us forget that this music is by Elliott Simon composed, so seamless are the improvisations and written notes. Even when at high volume the musicians’ Suno Suno (Listen Listen) is the second offering from delicacy of tone and approach make them feel like Nobusiko guitarist Rez Abbasi’s Invocation, a band with altoist whispers. Benjamin Duboc/Itaru Oki (Improvising Beings) Rudresh Mahanthappa, pianist Vijay Iyer, bassist The final piece, “Svanevejens Rundkorsel”, is and that’s the story of jazz... Johannes Weidenmueller and drummer Dan Weiss. written by Danish bassist Claus Kaarsgaard, a brief Akira Sakata & Jim O’Rourke with Chikamorachi Individually and collectively the members of this excursion well-suited to the capabilities of the two (Family Vineyard) quintet have been at the forefront of charting a new players. It’s a moody, beautiful ballad and it puts a Eponymous course for Indo-Pakistani jazz. But Suno Suno is an quiet period at the close of the remarkable story that KuRuWaSan (Quintoquarto) by Ken Waxman exploration of ethos as opposed to a modern co-opting DiDomenico and Grimal have told. of folkloric and ancestral forms. Qawwali, a musical With Japan’s year filled with disasters both structure that originated on the Indian subcontinent as For more information, visit sansbruit.fr. Grimal is at geographical - an earthquake and a tsunami - and a part of Sufism, motivates this session. Its defining Alliance Francaise Dec. 3rd and 5th, I-Beam Dec. 17th and societal - political instability and falling interest characteristics are the vocal fleetness of its central Douglass Street Music Collective Dec. 18th. See Calendar. rates - it’s heartening to hear CDs proving that singer and a hypnotic beat often presented via a musicians’ improvisational skills are still intact. The wonderfully textural dholak/tabla percussion section sessions are also noteworthy, because like relief combined with handclaps. Invocation, especially efforts, their success is due to collaborations with Mahanthappa’s speedy alto, beautifully reflects this foreigners. spirituality. They cleverly do so while paying as much Trumpeter Itaru Oki moved to France in 1974 homage to a jazz-inspired transcendence as to specific and he and bassist Benjamin Duboc work together culturally inspired sacred dynamic. frequently. On Nobusiko Duboc uses the bass’ Spirituality aside, what immediately impresses is percussive qualities to maintain a chromatic bottom the quality of musical interplay; Abbasi and as Oki splutters split tones. Pointed bass plucks Mahanthappa electrify with fluid joint phrasing on match rubato brass squeaks while steady walking quickly moving passages while Iyer, whether Syzygy accompanies tongue flutters. Oki thickens brass buttressing the rhythm section or firing off his own Tarfala Trio (NoBusiness) shrieks with multi-flute resonations as Duboc swift phrases, is an integral part of the overall sound. by Stuart Broomer thumps his instrument’s wood on “Ihoujin”. Plus Weidenmueller and Weiss combine to create rhythmical Duboc’s stops not only mute Oki’s note squalling at patterns that are both hypnotic and fertile ground for Saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and bassist Barry Guy the end, but also move the duet towards melody. improvisation. Expansive compositions with meaty are each celebrated for their membership in great trios Akira Sakata, who has released 35 discs since soundscapes and intricate rhythms stretch time as well tracing their inspiration to Albert Ayler’s 1964 band: 1969, dedicated …and that’s the story of jazz to a as geographical and musical borders on Suno Suno. Gustafsson for The Thing, Guy for his 30-year tenure friend missing since the tsunami. The alto saxist has in the Parker-Guy-Lytton Trio. They share membership worked with noise experts like bassist Bill Laswell For more information, visit enjarecords.com. This group is in another trio: Tarfala with Swedish drummer and he extends that concept with drummer Chris at Jazz Standard Dec. 6th-7th. See Calendar. Raymond Strid. The group first performed together in Corsano, bassist Darin Gray (Chikamorachi) and 1992 and since then have gathered sporadically, guest Jim O’Rourke on guitar, harmonica and releasing two CDs on Guy’s Maya label - You Forgot to electronics. No conventional melodies appear, Answer, recorded in 1994-95 and Tarfala, 2006. Syzygy rather tension without release. “Kyoto” finds presents a 2009 concert from Belgium, released as a O’Rourke’s choked guitar strings spurring the vinyl-only, limited-edition two-LP set with an reedist to staccato screams as Gray hammers his additional EP. four strings over Corsano smacks. Sakata’s nephritic Named for Sweden’s Tarfala Glacier, the group growls also create a menacing interface when paired might immediately suggest the sheer auditory power with the guitarist’s slurred fingering. If Sakata for which Gustafsson is known, almost a force of introduces “Nagoya 3” with unforced clarinet trills, nature himself. But other natural analogies will suggest paramount stimulation is soon attained. Luckily the themselves for the trio’s music: it can be as delicately Ghibli result is more exhilarating than exaggerated. Giovanni DiDomenico/Alexandra Grimal (Sans Bruit) variegated as the leaves of a forest or light on water. KuRuWaSan’s memorable CD pairs tuba gusts by Donald Elfman Strid moves from dense rhythmic overlays to feather- from Osaka’s Daysuke Takaoka with Brussels-based light cymbal shadings and almost alarm-clock rolls; reedist Grégoire Tirtiaux, keyboardist Pak Yan Lau Soprano saxophonist Alexandra Grimal and pianist Guy, the fleetest of bassists, finds ways to combine and drummer João Lobo. The eponymous album Giovanni DiDomenico have come together to discover lightning-fast runs with shifting timbres and a host of references parade rhythms, microtonalism and paths of expression that, like the koans which give extended techniques that include ‘prepared’ bass, with electronica. On “Baking”, Lau’s kinetic piano titles to five of the nine numbers in this suite, make multiple shifting bridges. The three can create the patterns brush up against tuba bellows as drum their meaning available through intuition or some kind quietest atmospheric layerings, as in the introduction beats bounce. “Traffic Jam” finds Lau pulsating of non-rational thinking. Grimal has traversed the to “Cool in Flight” with Gustafsson creating key-pad electric piano plinks plus resonating organ washes areas of jazz and new music, always with an ear rhythms, but the dialogue can also launch Gustafsson as Tirtiaux’ breathy flute lines challenge Lobo’s towards improvisation while DiDomenico has proven on heroic expressionist episodes, from roiling high- slide-whistle squeals. The disc climaxes with himself as a composer of meaningful scope. speed runs and skittering flights into the upper register “Trilogy”. Surrounding a protracted pause are For Ghibli, the Arabic name for the Mediterranean to some glacially slow, wailing passages: at one point variants that include piano soundboard scrapes wind often called the sirocco, DiDomenico has in “Tephra”, he vocalizes through his horn with plus ascending drums rolls pushed aside by pedal- composed an eight-part suite whose openness and sufficient passion to suggest a man playing Picasso’s point tuba and saxophone tongue slaps. The result sense of space allow both musicians to create music “Guernica” on a tenor saxophone. Tarfala Trio may not is restrained and exhibitionist in equal measure. that often feels very free. be a well-known configuration, but when it gets Even the tunes that seem to have a more pulsing together, it’s one of the great bands in free jazz. For more information visit improvising-beings.com, rhythm are, somehow, quietly insistent. “Earworm”, family-vineyard.com and quintoquarto.net for example, opens with a dense theme with many For more information, visit nobusinessrecords.com. notes but still feels as if it’s quietly developing. Gustafsson is at Issue Project Room Dec. 3rd. See Calendar. 16 December 2011 | THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD.