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September 2012 - The New York City Jazz Record

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(JAZZALDIA CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13)<br />

Håkon Kornstad’s concert, after midnight under<br />

the dome of a converted church in the Museo San<br />

Telmo, was spellbinding. It began with his tenor<br />

saxophone wafting up into the towering, reverberant<br />

space. <strong>The</strong>n he used digital loops to turn himself into a<br />

tenor saxophone choir. <strong>The</strong>n he added another tenor<br />

tone, his own operatic singing voice. <strong>The</strong>n two more<br />

musicians joined, Harkaitz Martínez de San Vicente<br />

and Mikel Ugarte. Together, they played an ethnic<br />

Basque percussion instrument, the Txalaparta. Striking<br />

tuned planks with mallets, they surrounded Kornstad<br />

with ringing, chiming clouds of sound. Kornstad is an<br />

original thinker and a poet of the first order.<br />

Terje Rypdal does not so much play songs as<br />

generate huge looming sonic events. His sound on<br />

electric guitar is his own: seagull cries over oceans of<br />

the night, waves crashing into rocks. <strong>Jazz</strong>aldia put<br />

Rypdal and three kindred spirits (Ståle Storløkken,<br />

keyboards; Nikolai Eilertsen, bass; Paolo Vinaccia,<br />

drums) in the Sala Club beneath the Teatro Victoria<br />

Eugenia, at one in the morning. In the small space it<br />

was scary-loud, the antithesis of bedtime music.<br />

Some of the most intriguing music came from<br />

Basques. Cantus Caterva, led by drummer Hasier<br />

Oleaga, was a quintet that snuck up on you, because<br />

their intelligent version of new millennium jazz was so<br />

subtle. All the fresh, clear melodies were Oleaga’s. Two<br />

notable players were Iñaki Salvador, a sinuous,<br />

seductive pianist, and alto saxophonist Mikel Andueza,<br />

whose solos were flowing and serene (even on “Mamu<br />

Sumoak”, which means something like “expecting the<br />

monster”). On the last night, under the high dome of<br />

the San Telmo, Gonzalo Tejada on bass and Olivier Ker<br />

Ourio on harmonica played a recital as rapt as a séance.<br />

<strong>The</strong> harmonica is a niche instrument in jazz, but its<br />

sonorities can be uniquely affecting, especially in an<br />

acoustic environment that extends every yearning note<br />

with long decays. “Both Sides Now” and “Moon River”<br />

were piercing in their poignance.<br />

Nils Petter Molvær played long after midnight on<br />

the last night, under the stars in the “claustro”<br />

(cloisters) of San Telmo. His trio with guitarist Stian<br />

Westerhus and drummer Erland Dahlen is one of the<br />

most revolutionary and important projects in current<br />

jazz. Molvær plays trumpet with spare, cryptic<br />

lyricism, but his horn is just one design element in a<br />

gigantic symphony of sound and light created by his<br />

band’s daring, aggressive use of electronics and video<br />

imagery. A simple figure from Westerhus or Molvær<br />

can be digitally exploded into seething sonic oceans.<br />

No one in jazz uses technology more creatively than<br />

Molvær. He makes his own world with it. He makes<br />

music of dark beauty with haunting melodies within<br />

the maelstrom, music that touches secrets of the<br />

<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>City</strong> <strong>Jazz</strong> <strong>Record</strong><br />

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IMPROVISED MUSIC IN NEW YORK CITY<br />

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www.nycjazzrecord.com<br />

50 <strong>September</strong> <strong>2012</strong> | THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD<br />

subconscious. <strong>The</strong> video backdrops are the mystery<br />

made momentarily visible in flickering glimpses.<br />

<strong>Jazz</strong>aldia was a five-day jazz festival with almost<br />

100 concerts that built to a climax and ended with its<br />

single most powerful performance. v<br />

For more information, visit heinekenjazzaldia.com<br />

(NEWPORT CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13)<br />

<strong>The</strong> next day, at the Harbor Stage, Mahanthappa<br />

led his band, Samdhi, comprised of guitarist David<br />

Gilmore, electric bassist Rich Brown and drummer<br />

Rudy Royston. <strong>The</strong>y started with the appropriately<br />

titled “Killer”, a pulsating, funky raga. Mahanthappa<br />

overdubbed himself on alto, with a computer assist, on<br />

the funky and whimsical “Enhanced Performance”.<br />

“Breakfastlunchanddinner”, which had a dance groove<br />

with a bop border, underscored Mahanthappa’s<br />

wonderful sense of humor. Mahanthappa ended his<br />

outstanding set, sweat-soaked and beaming, with the<br />

ballad “For All the Ladies” where even his stridency<br />

and harmonics had structural balance and coherence.<br />

Following Mahanthappa was the string/vocal trio<br />

of Gretchen Parlato, Lionel Loueke and Becca Stevens.<br />

Loueke was on guitar and vocals while Stevens and<br />

Parlato played various stringed instruments between<br />

them. <strong>The</strong>y opened with Loueke’s “Farfina” and their<br />

collective vocalizing was sharp and colorful. Parlato<br />

then sung lead and played ukulele on her arrangement<br />

of the Jacksons’ “Push Me Away”. Loueke sung one of<br />

his songs, “Akwe”, whose theme was, as he stated<br />

succinctly, “Just don’t waste water!” Parlato’s phrasing<br />

on another Michael Jackson song, “I Can’t Help It”,<br />

seemed self-conscious, as if she was vocalizing from<br />

memory and not emotion. <strong>The</strong> last song of the set was<br />

the best, Parlato on charango (a small stringed<br />

instrument made from the back of an armadillo). <strong>The</strong><br />

song, “Magnus”, was based on a melody that the titular<br />

child invented to sing to his future sibling, who was in<br />

his mother’s belly.<br />

<strong>The</strong> Maria Schneider Orchestra, a virtual all-star<br />

team, was at the Fort Stage. Accordionist Gary Versace<br />

duked it out with guitarist Ben Monder on “Green<br />

Piece”, until Frank Kimbrough stepped in wonderfully<br />

on piano. Schneider’s lovely tribute to Gil Evans,<br />

“Evanescence”, featured excellent solos by altoist<br />

Charles Pillow and trombonist Marshall Gilkes. <strong>The</strong><br />

driving “Gumba Blue” was highlighted by Ryan<br />

Keberle’s quicksilver trombone and Greg Gisbert’s<br />

soaring trumpet. <strong>The</strong> orchestra then performed the<br />

premiere of Schneider’s “Home”, a commissioned<br />

suite for <strong>New</strong>port, which was dedicated to George<br />

Wein. It was a lovely, lilting, soaring piece highlighted<br />

by more of Versace’s accordion and stellar baritone sax<br />

by Scott Robinson. Schneider closed out with the<br />

uplifting “Hang Gliding in Rio”, again featuring lovely<br />

tenor work by Donny McCaslin.<br />

One constant remains at the <strong>New</strong>port <strong>Jazz</strong> Festival:<br />

Wein is still on the scene. One of the great sights of the<br />

weekend was seeing the convivial 86-year-old icon<br />

being driven around in a golf cart that was rechristened<br />

the “Wein Machine” in his honor. v<br />

For more information, visit newportjazzfest.net<br />

(JAZZ EM AGOSTO CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13)<br />

<strong>The</strong> outdoor concerts take place on the first two<br />

weekends of August. This year the intervening<br />

weekdays included three nights at the Teatro do Bairro<br />

in the narrow winding streets of Lisbon’s Bairro Alto,<br />

trading the perfumed woods of the Gulbenkian Park<br />

for a cigarette-scented black box theatre.<br />

Nuova Camerata is a recently formed, Lisbonbased<br />

quintet that matches the sonic and harmonic<br />

vocabulary of mid-20th century European formal<br />

music - Messiaen, Boulez - with the methodology of<br />

improvisation. Veteran violinist Carlos Zíngaro is<br />

adept at spontaneously generating music that sounds<br />

uncannily like the advanced mathematics of serialism<br />

while classical percussionist Pedro Carneiro, a<br />

newcomer to improvisation, is possessed of very quick<br />

ears as well as hands. <strong>The</strong> younger string players -<br />

violist João Camões, cellist Ulrich MitzIaff and bassist<br />

Miguel Leiria Pereira - diligently followed Zíngaro’s<br />

clear leads, creating pieces of striking coherence.<br />

At the opposite pole of sound, the Leeds, England<br />

band Trio VD worked at the edge of chaos with<br />

telepathic organization, using minimal cueing to create<br />

an ever-shifting montage of sharp-edged fragments.<br />

Saxophonist Christophe de Bézenac and guitarist Chris<br />

Sharkey constantly shifted between articulating<br />

acoustic bits then sampling, processing, combining<br />

and recombining them, all of this matched to the<br />

precision drumming of Chris Bussey to oscillate<br />

violently between playground and psychodrama.<br />

<strong>The</strong> third band to appear at the Teatro do Bairro<br />

was the trio Das Kapital. Guitarist Hasse Poulsen,<br />

tenor saxophonist Daniel Erdmann and drummer<br />

Edward Pérraud performed Hanns Eisler compositions<br />

from Bertolt Brecht plays and Hollywood movies, even<br />

the East German national anthem. <strong>The</strong> trio created a<br />

free jazz cabaret in the festival’s most entertaining set,<br />

mining Eisler’s plaintive melodies and hard-edged<br />

rhythms for maximum effect, then exploding them<br />

with expressionist bursts. <strong>The</strong> evening was capped by<br />

DJ Sniff, whose turntable and sampler exploration of<br />

free jazz began as collage but developed into a kind of<br />

sustained dream state.<br />

<strong>The</strong> theatre’s emphasis on deconstructed melody<br />

was matched by the younger bands on the main stage<br />

at the Gulbenkian. <strong>The</strong> British quintet Led Bib plays a<br />

form of latter-day fusion, emphatic funk rhythms<br />

underscoring the two-alto frontline in which Pete<br />

Grogan seems to shadow Chris Williams’ rapid, rollercoaster<br />

lines.<br />

<strong>The</strong> final concert in the garden was also one of the<br />

best, with bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten’s Chicago<br />

Sextet achieving rare levels of drive and invention,<br />

with fellow Norwegian Ola Kvernberg channeling the<br />

ghosts of jazz-rock violin and an assemblage of the<br />

Midwest’s finest. Guitarist Jeff Parker and drummer<br />

Frank Rosaly were as adept at overdriven rock as free<br />

jazz. Vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz and saxophonist<br />

Dave Rempis were brilliant, the latter’s unaccompanied<br />

exploration of baritone multiphonics lingering long<br />

after the festival’s final note. v<br />

For more information, visit musica.gulbenkian.pt/jazz

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