Ralph Peterson 35th Annual Student Music Awards - Downbeat

Joel harrison 7
Search
SUNNYSIDE 1300
★★★★
Joel harrison/
Lorenzo feliciati
Holy Abyss
CUNEIFORM RECORDS 334
★★★
Search begins with minimalism. Cello
and violin saw eighth notes like lumberjacks
cut logs, creating a rough
aural plane for a chordal piano intro
on “Grass Valley And Beyond.” When
Donny McCaslin comes in for the
saxophone melody, the background drops to a whisper, but the strings,
beefed up by offbeat chords on the guitar, remain a constant pulsing
presence. And just like that, any pretext toward minimalism is gone, and
guitarist Joel Harrison moves to layering dense sections of interlocking,
moving sound on top of one another.
It is, of course, no surprise that guitar plays a major role in Harrison’s
latest classical/jazz compositional exploration—he wrote most of the
tunes himself—but the guitar’s timbre is usually wrapped into the entire
sonic picture, beneath interlocking textures of violin and cello.
“Grass Valley And Beyond” and the 15-minute “A Magnificent
Death” start the record on a somber note, with lugubrious strings and
pondering melodies. “Magnificent Death” is a tribute to a friend who
passed away from cancer, and Harrison even uses the friend’s voice in
the middle of the piece, amid thorny music that demands an active ear.
Josh ginsburg
Zembla Variations
BROOKLYN JAZZ
UNDERGROUND 030
★★★1/2
The title of bassist Josh Ginsburg’s
debut CD pays tribute
to his Brooklyn neighborhood
by way of a Valdimir Nabokov
novel set in a strange, notquite-real
country. The eight
original compositions don’t deviate from the known in quite such a radical
manner, but Ginsburg discovers ways to rethink the familiar in much
the same way that the constantly self-reinventing borough does.
“PushBar (For Emergency Exit)” begins the disc with Ginsburg’s
distantly pulsing bass and an introspective statement of the melody
by saxophonist Eli Degibri; this dream-like introduction dissipates as
quickly as it appeared, replaced by a much more forceful and surging
restatement of the same basic material.
Ginsburg writes in a way that asserts himself as leader while maintaining
a group identity for the quartet. He doubles Degibri’s tenor with
bowed bass on the slinky lines of “Koan” and supplies an elastic bounce
to “Gently,” complementing George Colligan’s shimmering Rhodes and
Rudy Royston’s subtle rhythmic buoyancy. The bassist leaps into a muscular
walk on the penultimate track, “Red Giant,” a welcome acceleration
given the mid-tempo concentration of much of the disc. Still, this
disc veers away from the visceral in favor of the cerebral, revealing itself
in gradually unfolding layers. —Shaun Brady
Zembla Variations: PushBar (For Emergency Exit); Zembla Variations; 10,000 Leagues; Koan; Gently;
Oxygen; Red Giant; Jakewalk. (58:47)
Personnel: Eli Degibri, tenor and soprano saxophone; George Colligan, piano, Fender Rhodes; Josh
Ginsburg, bass; Rudy Royston, drums.
ordering info: bjurecords.com
70 DoWNBEAt JUNE 2012
Harrison wrote in the liner notes that he
included the Allman Brothers’ “Whipping
Post,” for which Gary Versace breaks out the
Hammond B3, as a way to break up the severity
of the album. Here the tune gets a rock drum
beat and some more bluesy playing by Harrison,
but the piece is still in keeping with the blend of
classical and jazz that carries the album.
Search ends with a short solo piano coda,
heavy on the sustain pedal, by Versace. The
disjunct melody moves rapidly over the keyboard
in a simple sendoff to a hamornically rich
album. Versace never stops to take a breath,
constantly moving forward, echoing the underlying
pace of “Search.”
Holy Abyss, on the other hand, is much
more of a combo record and is billed as a collaboration
between Harrison and bassist Lorenzo Feliciati. The guitarist
is on equal footing with the rest of the band—and his guitar, distorted
or with a clean tone, leads the way, usually mimicking Cuong Vu’s
muted brass. Compositionally, Harrison also is an equal player, offering
three tunes out of the eight total tracks (Feliciati and Vu also write a few
tunes). The songs are much less dense than on Search, and many of them
are imbued with an atmospheric, dreamscape quality. —Jon Ross
Search: Grass Valley And Beyond; A Magnificent Death; All The Previous Pages Are Gone; The Beauty
Of Failure; Whipping Post; O Sacrum Convivium; Search. (58:08)
Personnel: Joel Harrison, guitar; Donny McCaslin, tenor saxophone; Gary Versace, piano, organ;
Christian Howes, violin; Dana Leong, cello; Stephan Crump, bass; Clarence Penn, drums.
ordering info: sunnysiderecords.com
Holy Abyss: Requiem For An Unknown Soldier; Saturday Night In Pendleton; Small Table Rules; Faith;
Solos; North Wind (Mistral); Old And New; That Evening. (53:22)
Personnel: Joel Harrison, guitar; Lorenzo Felicati, bass; Cuong Vu, trumpet; Roy Powell, piano; Dan
Weiss, drums.
ordering info: cuneiformrecords.com
Sidi touré
Koïma
THRILL JOCKEY 301
★★★★
On last year’s Sahel Folk, Mali’s
Sidi Touré took an exceedingly
simple approach, pairing himself
with friends for each song and
recording everything in a house in
one take.
For Koïma, Touré takes a different
course, assembling a band with two guitars, bass, percussion, the
violin-like sokou and a female backing vocalist. With a consistent cast
in place for every song, the album is definitely a band record, with a distinctive
sound.
Touré’s voice and cycling rhythm guitar are still at the heart of the
group’s music, but the band is dynamic. Lead guitarist Oumar Konaté
plays acoustic, but his style is often reminiscent of the electric players
of Mali’s great dance orchestras, with fluid phrasing and complementary
rhythm playing that bounces cleanly off Touré’s solid ostinatos. The
rhythm section’s main job is to hypnotize, and they lock into patterns
early in each song that are rarely broken.
One of the most interesting elements of the band is the interplay
between Touré and backing singer Leïla Ahimidi Gobbi, whose pinched
vocals add a tart rejoinder to his dusty leads. Touré can really sing, too.
When he cuts loose near the end of “Ishi Tanmaha,” showing off vocal
power he usually plays down, it’s shocking how much volume he can
summon seemingly from nowhere. —Joe Tangari
Koïma: Ni See Ay Ga Done; Maïmouna; Aïy Faadji; Woy Tiladio; Koïma; Ishi Tanmaha; À Chacun Sa
Chance; Kalaa Ay Makoïy; Tondi Karaa; Euzo. (52:18)
Personnel: Sidi Touré, guitar, lead vocals; Oumar Konaté, lead guitar; Charles-Éric Charrier, bass; Alex
Baba, calabash; Zumana Téreta, sokou; Leïla Ahimidi Gobbi, backing vocals; Douma Maïga, kurbu (1).
ordering info: thrilljockey.com