CD Reviews

Frank Carlberg | The American Dream

Red Piano (2009)

By JON GARELICK | April 21, 2009

4.0 Stars

Other jazz musicians have set the poetry of Robert Creeley to music — Steve Lacy with singer Irene Aebi and, on the 1979 ECM album Home, Steve Swallow with Sheila Jordan. Pianist Carlberg and singer Christine Correa lean more toward Lacy's hard edges than Swallow's rounded harmonies. Here poetry takes on the form of incantation in the repetition of Creeley's short, oblique verses.

Correa clears the table immediately with a banshee wail — in control and on pitch — before digging into Carlberg's funky line for "We Get Crazy": "We get crazy, but we have fun/Life is short & life gets done." The rhythm and melody of those staccato syllables sets the whole piece, Carlberg repeating the figure in his left hand even as his right takes off on boppish runs with bassist John Hebert, drummer Michael Sarin, and tenor sax Chris Cheek.

The leaping intervals and staccato declamation etch each word, each syllable, Correa adding heat with her sharp diction. The approach also works for ballad-tempo pieces like "Speech" and the war lament "If Ever There Is." More than spare settings, these are full art-song arrangements for jazz band, from slow drones to fast-running swing. The melodies help you remember the words; the words help you remember the melodies.

FRANK CARLBERG QUINTET | Lily Pad, 1353 Cambridge St, Cambridge | April 24 @ 7 pm | $10 | www.lily-pad.net

Blink. | The Epidemic Of Ideas
Aside from the general aggressive, post-rock, post-jazz underground feel, there’s pretty tunes here.
Portland Music News: April 10, 2009
We have a tentative street date for cheek-metal purveyors PIGBOAT 's new album, Float: April 21, with a release show later that week, April 25, at Geno's
Portland music news: March 13, 2009
Pianist/composer FRANK CARLBERG releases his new The American Dream with a show at Woodfords Church April 23.
The Fully Celebrated | Drunk on the Blood of the Holy Ones
After two albums with cornettist Taylor Ho Bynum, and now dropping "Orchestra" from their name, this venerable Boston avant-garde street band are again a trio — and they're still a virtuoso ensemble.
The Horse's Ha | Of the Cathmawr Yards
Despite a solid roster of Chicago underground vets, the Horse's Ha fail to show signs of life on what proves to be a sleepy album of wispy folk.
Steve Lehman Octet | Travail, Transformation, and Flow
Young alto saxophonist/composer Lehman has been earning props both for his playing and his use of "spectral harmony" in his writing — where "attack, decay, and timbre provide the source material for orchestration and musical form."
Meet the Beatles!
Swallow says that when he first picked up an electric bass, "My immediate impression was: 'Oh, shit! I'm in deep trouble here!' "
Dave Douglas and Brass Ecstasy | Spirit Moves
One of the most genial CDs in Douglas's vast discography is also one of his most accomplished.
Inside out
Charlie Kohlhase's love affair with jazz began with the avant-garde. As a high-school kid in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, he found that it was Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago who rocked his world.
Interview: Steve Swallow on the Gary Burton Quartet
DO YOU REMEMBER EXACTLY HOW YOU GUYS FIRST GOT TOGETHER? I have a memory. I tend to distrust them, but my recollection is that I met Gary when he called me up and asked me if I would consider playing in Stan Getz's band, which he was already in.
The odd couple
Apollo Sunshine's Jesse Gallagher recently announced that Biff Rose would be traveling from the Big Easy for a rare, one-night-only show this Wednesday at the cozy Lily Pad.
Less

Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Music, Media, More

Comments

Add a Comment

view all

[ 11/22 ] Girls, Guns & Glory @ Patriot Place

[ 11/22 ] Mystic Chorale @ Tremont Temple Baptist Church

[ 11/22 ] Salem Cigarette Machine @ Dodge Street Bar & Grill

[ 11/22 ] "Bomo Sundays - Harum Scarum 2" @ Zuzu

[ 11/22 ] Talk Modern + Quixote + Ghost Box Orchestra @ Great Scott

ARTICLES BY JON GARELICK

MIXED MEDIA | November 18, 2009
Film noir has been a running theme in composer/pianist Ran Blake's work since the beginning of his career — his very first album, The Newest Sound Around (RCA, 1962), with singer Jeanne Lee, began with David Raskin's theme to Otto Preminger's Laura .

LIVE AND ON RECORD | November 04, 2009
To call Darius Jones’s music avant-garde seems almost beside the point. In its way, it’s older than old — it’s ancient.

HENRY THREADGILL ZOOID | THIS BRINGS US TO, VOLUME 1 | October 28, 2009
Henry Threadgill has been reinventing his language — and by extension the jazz language — for at least 30 years, beginning with the trio Air in the 1970s.

SLOW HAND | October 21, 2009
In his Village Voice review of Jeremy Udden’s Plainville (Fresh Sound New Talent), Jim Macnie recalled how a friend of his tried to file it as “jazz for Wilco fans.” As Macnie explained, that’s not the whole story with Udden or Plainville , but it’s not a bad starting point.

DAFNIS PRIETO SI O SI QUARTET | LIVE AT JAZZ STANDARD NYC | October 14, 2009
Prieto is one of the supermen drummers of contemporary jazz — Cuban-born, fluent in all idioms, a multitude of patterns flowing through him and into his hands and feet at any given point.

See all articles by: JON GARELICK

Most Viewed

Most Emailed

WE'RE KILLING THE OCEANS
I meet world-renowned undersea photojournalist Brian Skerry at Legal Seafoods, across from the New England Aquarium, where he's the explorer in residence. He orders a chicken Caesar salad.

REVISITING THE GREATEST HARVARD-YALE GAME
It takes some doing to make Harvard look like an underdog in anything. But Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29 — Kevin Rafferty's 2008 movie (out now on DVD) and new book (released this past month) about the famous football rivalry — does just that.

REVIEW: THE BLIND SIDE
It’s tough for any self-respecting critic to refrain from joyously tackling a Sandra Bullock movie — so it’s a good thing The Blind Side isn’t one.

INTERVIEW: GABOUREY SIDIBE
"While reading the book, I realized that I knew this girl in so many different people. Not just girls but boys, and not just black people but white and Asian and Indian."

REVIEW: PLANET 51
The opening for the latest animated kids’ fantasy is promising — but it’s for another movie.

WE'RE KILLING THE OCEANS
I meet world-renowned undersea photojournalist Brian Skerry at Legal Seafoods, across from the New England Aquarium, where he's the explorer in residence. He orders a chicken Caesar salad.

REVISITING THE GREATEST HARVARD-YALE GAME
It takes some doing to make Harvard look like an underdog in anything. But Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29 — Kevin Rafferty's 2008 movie (out now on DVD) and new book (released this past month) about the famous football rivalry — does just that.

TAXING CATHOLICS
Should the Roman Catholic Church, and the various subsidiary groups and organizations that exist under its umbrella and operate at its direction, be entitled to state- and federal-tax exemptions?

GROUP EFFORT
If you're inclined to play punk rock, chances are you've got a self-esteem problem. It's not an æsthetic that attracts the well-adjusted. Exhibit A: Mark Lind. As bassist and frontman of the Ducky Boys, he's opened for Rancid, U.S. Bombs, and Flogging Molly.