Monthly Archives: June 2009

Disc of the day: 30-06-09

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Vince Mendoza and the Metropole Orchestra: El Viento: The Garcia Lorca Project (ACT 9490-2)
The poet, playwright and Spanish activist Garcia Lorca, whose body remains in an unmarked grave alongside others who were put up against a wall and shot by Nationalist forces (a recent attempt to disinter his body was initially opposed by his family who have since conceded), is rich material for inspiring music. The composer Osvaldo Golijov recently wrote the very moving and effective Ainadamar to this end.

Now Vince Mendoza, very much the first-stop arranger for those in the jazz-fusion field, tackles this subject matter. Like Golijov he stresses the flamenco which Lorca loved and includes singers Rafael De Utrera and Eva De Dios, as well as instrumentalists skilled in this most exciting of folk traditions.

Around these central musicians he writes his lush, hugely romantic but always crunchily voiced and rhythmically adept music, played by an orchestra that feels more like a jazz one than a symphony one, so comfortable are they with the lithe spirit of the piece.

I am still not convinced that Mendoza makes records under his own name that quite live up to his best work with others – I’m thinking Joni Mitchell’s Travelogue and the Zawinul/WDR Brown Street discs here. Nevertheless, the string writing, especially, is just spine-tinglingly lovely, especially when it is behind Utrera’s heart-bearing singing. Sometimes the transition from anguish to smooth jazzy groove is a little quick and crass, but overall one forgives the clumsy cracks in the meeting of styles for the delights that some of those contrasts of styles bring.

Disc of the day: 29-06-09

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Hyperactive Kid: 3 (jazzwerkstatt 028)
So what are young Berliners doing with jazz? Well, on the grounds of this lively third album, not a lot different from what young Londoners are doing.

Hyperactive Kid is Philipp Gropper on saxophone, Ronny Graupe on seven-string guitar and Christian Lillinger on drums and they work in a tight area of complex written pieces with loads of tempo changes and knotty little themes, morphing almost imperceptibly into free group improv and morphing back to the written stuff again.

There is a lot of space in the music and although all three push hard, they never get overwhelming, preferring to stay on the thoughtful side of raucous.

Lillinger sometimes reminds me of Tom Rainey in his ability to slide around the time signatures and to add offbeats that you didn’t even realise existed. Graupe can be busy but never loses coherence, while Gropper might not have a particularly memorable tone (there is never much chance to dwell on tone in such a fractured, constantly shifting kind of music) but has considerable facility, and explores different timbres while exploiting the full range of the instrument.

Jazzwerkstatt discs are not freely available in this country yet but can be obtained online in the near future at  www.records-cd.com

Disc of the day: 28-06-09

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Tony Woods Project: Wind Shadows (33 Records 33JAZZ195)
The alto clarinet is a tremendous instrument – closer to the saxophone than the usual clarinet but still woodier – and Tony Woods uses it on the opener, Driftwood. A lot of the song titles come from nature and the Woods instrumentalists have all the right sounds to evoke them.

In addition to alto clarinet, Woods plays saxophones and wood flutes, including a complex Chinese one called a hulusi, and he is joined by Mike Outram on electric guitar, Rob Millett on vibraphone, marimba and gongs, Andy Hamill on double bass and harmonica, and Milo Fell on drums and percussion.

They can be atmospheric, as on Driftwood or they can work up a head of steam, as on the bitter parts of Bitter Sweet (it also has gentler sweet bits – or are the contrasting tastes depicted the other way around, with bitter the quiet flute and harmonica parts and sweet the delirious excitement of the band going for it in controlled but increasing intensity?) Air starts with a virtuoso solo display on soprano saxophone.

There is a strong, skirling folk music feel not only in traditional The North Wind Doth Blow but also in Dilemma, and in the title track (Wind Shadows is inspired by shapes that form on the sea during sailboat racing), and the writing in general feeds as much off expressive non-specific “pure” music as it does off jazz. Woods is clearly a master saxophonist but always directs his technique towards expression and emotion and evocation, which is just as we like it.

If you have trouble finding this disc, try going to www.tonywoods.org

Woods’s

Disc of the day: 27-06-09

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Sara Tavares: Xinti (World Connection)
If you were to count the number of incredibly talented musicians to come out of the desolate Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic I am sure their percentage of total population would outweigh that of Nashville.

In fact Sara Tavares grew up in Portugal where her Cape Verdean parents had moved to find work. As a teenager she was more interested in Gospel music and started her own choir in Lisbon, but as she grew older she got back in touch with her island roots and has developed a strong and personal music which brings together an eclectic mix of influences.

Although she sings with that laid-back air of morna, her R ‘n’B and pop listening shows through too, especially in her writing which is much more universal (in fact her first album, Mi Ma Bo, was full of R ‘n’ B  and had some songs in English).

This one has a lovely, lush cushioning sound of acoustic guitars, piano, bass and percussion – she raps on the opening track,  she weaves long, long vocal lines, harmonizes with herself in massed choirs of softly inflected Portuguese, plays a lot of the instruments herself, too, and generally just makes a lovely, summery sound.

I’m not convinced there is quite enough variety in the melody lines – they begin to blend one into another after a while, but in some ways a consistent mood and feel is not a bad thing. Sumanai is a particularly lovely track with a Southern African feel and the winning inclusion of Jew’s harp

If you want to catch up with Sara Tavares’ back catalogue there is an excellent package of her two previous discs, the aforementioned Mi Ma Bo and her international breakthrough disc Balance, plus a DVD of a live performance in Lisbon.

Jazz is still the word – oh yes!

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The voting on this site is over, and the 11% who feel jazz is no longer the right word to describe the wide diversity of the music you sometimes find in that section in the record shop (OK, online!) have been soundly trounced by the 66% who feel there is nothing wrong with the word jazz. And I reckon the Paul Simon fans (“I can call you Betty and you can call me Al”) who came in second at 23% would probably lean in the jazz direction had there been second place voting rules.

Kevin Le Gendre summed it up perfectly in the liner notes to his new compilation Now’s The Time II – and you can read them in my review here.

I quite understand the point Stuart Nicholson was making in a recent Observer review of new discs by Acoustic Ladyland and Troyka. He alluded to Ladyland main man Pete Wareham’s wariness of the label because it ends up keeping his music away from a rock crowd, which is the one Wareham feels is its natural audience (I am making assumptions here and am happy to be put right if this is not the case).

And I understand that survival and one’s own career need to come first. But, taking the bigger view, both Nicholson and Wareham would be better served, I reckon, showing some allegiance to the history and faith in the concept of jazz, surely? That is what has inspired them to get to where they have got to today. And if they feel that is not where their natural audience now resides, surely it’s time to bring their audience into the house of jazz, not leave it.

It was the same story with Soweto Kinch and his frustration at not having his CDs in the hip-hop racks. But, a vague awareness of the coverage Kinch has received over the years (no accurate research or survey here) would suggest that most of the coverage he gets is in the jazz media. It’s difficult enough being a musician. There’s no need to add to the anguish by rejecting the followers you do have in order to go after ones you might not get, or certainly not in great enough numbers. Babies and bathwater seem to apply.

I don’t think Ornette Coleman is particularly embarrassed about being referred to as a jazz musician, is he? I’m not sure that John Zorn is, and I don’t think Derek Bailey was either. And that jazz can encompass Peter Brotzmann and Frank Sinatra is, to my mind, cause for celebration, not alarm. Surely to make whatever music is in your heart and mind and then add jazz to it as a label of convenience is to say all the right things about it? About its freedom, about its honesty, about its sincerity, about its dedication to tackling the most important and difficult challenges in music – that of spontaneous composition.

Jazz has always been a broad church – let’s just keep throwing its doors wide open and inviting everyone in.