Volume 28 Issue 1 | September 20 - November 8, 2022

as a memorable detour from more prominent
ideas while never being reduced to a mere
conduit from point A to point B.
Yoshi Maclear Wall
Live in Paris (Radio France Recordings
1983-1984)
Chet Baker Trio
Elemental Music 5990442
(elemental-music.com)
! In 1952, near
his career’s beginnings,
Chet Baker
became an instant
star playing cool
jazz with the Gerry
Mulligan quartet.
It was the opposite
of everything that
then characterized modern jazz: glacially
slow, meticulously arranged, almost improvisation-free.
Thirty years later, just a few
years before his death, Baker was still playing
a kind of cool jazz, but it was frequently fast,
with extended improvisation.
Available as three LPs or two CDs, Live in
Paris presents two concert recordings, each
featuring Baker’s preferred instrumentation,
a chamber jazz trio of trumpet, piano
and acoustic bass. The first concert, from
L’Esplanade De La Défense, focuses on the
Great American Songbook. It’s the ballads
that stand out, with stellar instrumental
performances of Easy Living and Stella by
Starlight, the rhapsodic accompaniment by
pianist Michel Graillier (his fluid harmonic
invention resembles Bill Evans’) and bassist
Dominique Lamerle feeding Baker’s lyrical
gift. Episodes of Baker’s scat singing, while
mimicking the fluid detail of his trumpet
playing, detract from two up-tempo
performances.
The much longer club session from Le Petit
Opportun is much more consistent, with
Baker foregoing singing and popular songs to
concentrate on East Coast hard bop anthems
– e.g., Hank Mobley’s Funk in Deep Freeze,
Horace Silver’s Strollin’, Richard Carpenter’s
Walkin’ – pieces that take on new character
with the chamber jazz dynamics and the
more forceful bass playing of Riccardo Del
Fra, further propelling Baker and Graillier.
A 19-minute (the improvisations really are
extended) treatment of Brazilian composer
Rique Pantoja’s Arbor Way is another
highlight.
Stuart Broomer
POT POURRI
Cat’s Cradle
Arnab Chakrabarty
Independent (arnabchakrabarty.
bandcamp.com/releases)
! Musicians from
around the globe
have chosen to
make Toronto home
ever since the days
it was colloquially
tagged for hogs
and muddy streets.
Virtuoso sarod
player Arnab Chakrabarty, a representative of
the venerable Hindustani raga classical music
tradition, is a relatively recent and welcome
addition to the ranks of Toronto-area music
professionals.
No novice, over the last two decades
Chakrabarty has played hundreds of concerts
on stages around the world. Indian newspaper
The Hindu reported that Chakrabarty
is “known both for his emotive virtuosity and
cerebral approach,” believing not in “simplifying
music to cater to popular tastes as
much as revelling in ‘manipulating the operative
rules of the ragas to create interesting
expressions.’”
Chakrabarty aims to make classical raga
performance accessible to today’s audiences
without compromising its fundamentals.
And his third full-length album Cat’s
Cradle, featuring sarod renderings of five classical
ragas, reflects this balanced approach.
Eschewing flamboyant ornamental passagework,
he rather focuses on the core values
of the raga at hand which come to life in the
alap, the introductory melodic improvisation.
The gat, a melody set in a specific raga
and tala (time cycle) the latter rendered on
the tabla, follows. On this album the gats
are Chakrabarty’s compositions. They in
turn inspire improvisation, the outcome of a
spirited dialogue between set rules and the
musician’s imagination freed up.
Cat’s Cradle gives full scope to
Chakrabarty’s in-depth understanding
and imaginative exploration of each raga
complex, plumbing their signature phrases
and emotional tenor while never losing sight
of the rich Hindustani traditions of raga
performance practice.
Andrew Timar
Vessel
Gamelan Pacifica
Independent 002 (gamelanpacifica.org)
! Led by
composer Jarrad
Powell, for over
40 years Seattle’s
Gamelan Pacifica
has been one of
the few ensembles
specializing
in the intersection
of Southcentral Javanese gamelan and international
experimental music. Its new release
Vessel extends that approach in new directions,
bookended by two works by group
musician and composer Stephen Fandrich.
Laras Chopin and Difference both evoke a
sound world of electronic clusters, or perhaps
of bowed glass bowls, supported by occasional
powerful bass tones. Yet Fandrich
creates that soundscape using mostly acoustic
sounds coaxed from bowed metal gamelan
instruments, deep gongs, and a piano played
with an electromagnetic bow. The effect
is magical.
Fandrich’s Iron Tears explores regions
between the Western harmonies rendered
by the Del Sol string quartet and indigenous
gamelan tunings. They’re allowed to interweave
for 12 minutes before cadencing in a
surprising A Major chord.
Powell’s Tsuki features the brilliant
Javanese-inflected singing by Jessika Kenney
of an English text by Zen Master Doĝen urging
us toward direct experience, the path to
spiritual awakening. In her challenging work
Scar, composer Kenney aims to “unlearn
Javanese vocal timbres and melodic patterns
without relearning centering whiteness.” She
explains the work is a “prayer which intends
to reject the violence of white imperial privilege,
and also to unlearn [the] Javanese vocal
tradition” in which she is so fluent.
Finally, Ketawang Panembah by Darsono
Hadirahardjo features an emotional rebab
(2-string bowed lute) solo masterfully played
by Jesse Snyder. Originally meant to evoke a
prayer for divine blessing, this moving music
– and much of the album – reminds us of the
healing power of music in dark times.
Andrew Timar
Shanties! Live
La Nef; Chor Leoni
Leaf Music NEF0003 (chorleoni.org/
product/shanties-live/)
! There could
be nothing more
eminently singable
and danceable
than sea shanties
– those apparently
unforgettable
work songs from
the 19th century.
Fortuitously – perhaps even providentially
66 | September 20 - November 8, 2022 thewholenote.com