Carla BleyThe Lost Chords Find Paolo Fresu | Watt/ECM December 31,
2007 12:20:30 PM
|
For some, composer/bandleader Carla Bley long ago expended the avant-garde cred of her early years, but they’d be missing the fact that no one is writing — or playing — more beautiful jazz. Here she and her band, the Lost Chords (Bley on piano, saxophonist Andy Sheppard, bassist Steve Swallow, drummer Billy Drummond), have recruited the Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu for a suite called “The Banana Quintet,” plus a re-do of a couple of older Bley pieces. Bley’s limpid melodies are both funny (the titles should tell you that) and poignant, especially on ballads, but never sentimental. The ensemble textures are similarly transparent, Bley twining trumpet and sax, teasing them apart, the rhythms tending toward wave-like triple meters, Latin dance, 5/4. Pieces unfold like dramas — a lone trumpet, call-and-response with the band, a guitar-like bass solo on a different theme, a section of horn dialogue. With Sheppard and Fresu, their woolly tones nuzzling each other, that dialogue is like warm conversation at a sidewalk café. In this context, virtuoso skill is the soul of wit. This band breathes together — because that’s how the music was written.
|
|
Vote now in over 100 categories including the best local restaurants, comedian, filmmaker, performance artist, and yoga studio
Vote now in over 100 categories including the best local jukebox, bartender, dance club, and tattoo shop
Vote now in over 100 categories including best beer selection, bike route, gallery, and movie house
|
- Fans are paying the price for the Sox success: inside the Fenway fiasco
- Meet Adam Gaffin, Boston’s reigning Web czar
- The first political leader of my generation acts nothing like the rest of us — which might be how he’s gotten where he is
- Never mind its tough-girl alt-porn feminism: SuicideGirls has already moved on to a new generation
- Plus, this week in tedious headlines
- The Clean House at New Rep; Gary at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
- Will his handpicked trustees let him?
- 'Mo momos
- Fans are paying the price for the Sox success: inside the Fenway fiasco
- A dozen local filmmakers weave a musical, a serial-killer parody, and 10 other short movies into a cinematic patchwork quilt
- Teatro Lirico I at the Majestic Theatre, March 2, 2008
- Meet Adam Gaffin, Boston’s reigning Web czar
|
-
Holon | ECM
-
Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Indo-jazz connection
-
Interview: The Wire's "Prez" does the Bard
-
Vu-Tet | artistShare
-
Bob Blumenthal’s history of jazz
-
Lee Genesis at Johnny D's, January 9, 2008
-
DJ Spooky goes global
-
McCoy Tyner at the Regattabar, December 27, 2007
-
A wealth of winter jazz
|
- ATO
- Autumn Fallin' | Blue Note
- Words of Love | LML Music
- Sanders' Truckstop | Collector's Choice
- Black Habit | Paw Tracks
- Have a Good Look | Yep Roc
- Samuel James returns with Songs Famed for Sorrow and Joy
- Watch the Sky | Vanguard
- The Music of the Three Musketeers | Xauen
- Absolute Value | Fat Beats
|
|