Night Trains released their eagerly anticipated and critically acclaimed debut album, ‘Checkmate’ (1991) via B.G.P (Beat Goes Public), and it became a huge underground hit, before the band returned to Acid Jazz Records in the early 90's, releasing two more albums; ‘Loaded’ (1992) and ‘Sleazeball’ (1994), the latter featuring the international club hit ‘Lovesick’, a soulful, disco funk groove and the Night Trains’ most well-known track. Signing a US deal with Instinct Records in New York, Night Trains toured Europe and Japan headlining at venues such as The Jazz Cafe and the Marquee in London, Club Yellow Tokyo, Magazinni Generali Milan and the Paradiso and Melkweg Amsterdam, as well as touring with artists as diverse as Afrika Bambaataa, Jamiroquai and the late great Gil Scott-Heron. Always looking to keep the sound and vibe fresh, Brooker would constantly change the live and studio line-up of the band and a number of key musicians from the soul, funk and mod fraternity would perform with the band including Spider Johnson, Jennie Bellestar, Damian Hand, Mike “chilli” Watts, Tony Watts, Dave Priseman, Julian Bates and Gary Foote. Taking a break for Night Trains duties temporarily, in 1993, Brooker formed The Humble Souls with UK rapper and Fatboy Slim cohort, MC Wildski, which resulted in the album ‘Thoughts and Sound Paintings’ (1993), again released on Acid Jazz Records. After a successful year of international promotion, he returned to work on the new Night Trains album ‘Obstruct The Doors Cause Delay and Be Dangerous’ (1997). At the time, Acid Jazz records secured a major sponsorship deal for the band with legendary Italian fashion house Cerruti which resulted in various runway and TV appearances for the band across Europe creating extensive worldwide exposure. After a hiatus, Night Trains returned to Acid Jazz Records in the summer of 2012, with the 7” vinyl release of ‘No More Heroes’, a stomping northern soul reinterpretation of The Stranglers’ new wave classic. Three years later, the band teamed up with Back Burna Records and released the dancefloor filler ‘Black Whip’, before returning once more to their spiritual home at Acid Jazz Records with the release of ‘Lovesick 1987 – 2017’. Outside of Night Trains, Hugh Brooker DJs globally and has co-written, remixed and produced for artists as diverse as Sophie Ellie-Bextor and Earth Wind and Fire.
‘The Next Generation’ takes off like a rocket, opening with the first ever reggae big band song, ‘Vanity’ (12 horns). Lyrically and conceptually, the album stems from their previous release ‘A Miracle’, here shifting from the Mother of Creation to the child, ‘The Next Generation.’
The album takes you on a journey from the militant ‘Fossil Fuels’ and ‘Prophets & Profit’, to the subtle and heartfelt ‘New Life’ and ‘Father & Child’ and everywhere in between. The sound quality is impeccable, engineered by the great Jim Fox and recorded all on analog equipment from the 1970s.
Harrison Stafford’s unique reggae fusion can be heard from villages in Thailand, to the favelas of Brazil, from the mountains of New Zealand, to Moroccan cafes and college dorm rooms in the United States. “Groundation provides a musical vessel that allows me to create and perform the music that I hear in my head”. The sound comes in part from Harrison’s early childhood hearing Duke Ellington and Miles Davis from his grandfather and father who were both Jazz performers. He formalized his musical education at Sonoma State University (SSU) completing a degree in Jazz Performance, where he honed his skills for composing, arranging and producing. After completion, Harrison went on to teach The History of Reggae Music at SSU before embarking on his own musical journey.
Since 1998, Groundation have recorded 8 studio albums and performed in more than 40 countries, sharing the stage with such diverse artists as Jimmy Cliff, Sly and the Family Stone, The Roots, Kanye West, and Sonic Youth. In the past two years alone, Groundation has played shows in nineteen countries spanning four continents. Highlights include playing for over 45,000 fans in Morocco, 10,000 people in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and headlining the mighty SummerJam festival in Germany.
‘The Next Generation’ will stand as a testament that Groundation has reclaimed their position as leaders in the search for new original music and that true to form improvisational Reggae/Jazz experience.
Carrying on Groundation’s rich history and the high standards, that were set by the musicians before are; Harrison Stafford (lead singer and guitarist), Will Blades (organ and clavinet/keyboard), Isaiah Palmer (bass player), Jake Shandling (drummer), Brady Shammar (harmony vocalist), Aleca Smith (harmony vocalist), Eduardo Gross (guitarist), Craig Berletti (keyboard & trumpet) and Roger Cox (saxophone).
1998 Grammy Award Winner Nonesuch Records' 1998 Grammy-winning recording of Steve Reich's landmark piece Music for 18 Musicians, performed by Steve Reich and Musicians, returned to vinyl in July 2018. First released on vinyl in a limited run for Record Store Day 2015, the album, mastered for vinyl by Robert C. Ludwig, is now available at a new, low price, pressed on two 140-gram vinyl LPs at Pallas Manufacturing in Diepholz, Germany. The New York Times says: "It would be hard to think of any American music more important than this." From the original 1998 release: At the close of the 1970s, the New York Times declared Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians one of the ten most important works of that decade. But the passage of time has proven that inaccurate. As K. Robert Schwartz writes in his liner notes, it is “one of the handful of late-twentieth-century works that can rightly claim to have altered the course of Western music.” Twenty-two years after its first release on vinyl, Steve Reich and Musicians deliver a new recording of Music for 18 Musicians on Nonesuch Records. Originally offered as a volume within the composer’s 10-CD retrospective box set in 1997, 18 is now available as its own album with graphics and liner notes prepared expressly for this issue. Reich himself admits that 18 marks a “high point” in his thirty-year career. “It’s undoubtedly one of the best pieces I’ve ever done. Sometimes everything just comes together and suddenly you’ve created this wonderful organism, and in this piece it happened. That accounts for its durability. but it also has a real structural backbone, so it continues to please me twenty years later.” The product of virtually continuous work from May 1974 to March 1976, 18 was finished when Reich was nearly forty, and reflects numerous influences that had made their mark on the composer’s life up to that point: bebop and Balinese gamelan, African drumming and modal jazz, the melismas of Perotin and the scat-singing of Ella Fitzgerald. These elements came together to define Reich’s essential harmonic language, one that had evolved well beyond the austere and reductive so-called minimalism of his earlier pieces. Along with the benefit of digital recording, this new 18 features many of the very same musicians that participated in its first recording as well as many of its concert performances over the last two decades: a team that could be said, over time, to have osmotically absorbed every nuance this richly-detailed score has to offer. A tempo change in the new album—governed by the breathing pattern of the clarinetist—has resulted in a version eleven minutes longer than the original. Some harmonic reinterpretation may be noted as well. Music for 18 Musicians has influenced a whole generation of young composers, as well as a legion of pop musicians. As much as ever, it remains an alluring marvel of coloristic shimmer and an evocation of non-Western music, of classical music, and of jazz—without sounding like any of them. Viewing it from a modest historical distance, is it still absurd to label it a minimalist work? Steve Reich replies, “Yes, I think it is. You can apply minimalism to 18 if you want, but what you’re really hearing is that whole phenomenon—at least in any recognizable, strict form—fade away into the distance.”
Steve Reich, marimba, piano
Rebecca Armstrong, Marion Beckenstein, Cheryl Bensman Rowe, sopranos
Jay Clayton, alto, piano
Russell Hartenberger, Bob Becker, Tim Ferchen marimbas, xylophones
Nonesuch released the first recording of John Adams's 2005 opera, Doctor Atomic, on June 29, 2018. Longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars created the libretto for Doctor Atomic, drawing from original sources. The composer leads the BBC Singers and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in this recording, which features a cast led by Gerald Finley, who originated the role of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer. The two-CD boxed set includes a 64-page bound booklet with archival photos, libretto, and an essay by Mark Swed. In addition to the San Francisco premiere, Finley has sung Oppenheimer in productions in New York, Amsterdam, Chicago, and London. He is joined on the album by Julia Bullock (Kitty Oppenheimer), Brindley Sherratt (Edward Teller), Samuel Sakker (Captain James Nolan), Andrew Staples (Robert Wilson), Jennifer Johnston (Pasqualita), and Aubrey Allicock (General Leslie Groves). This recording was made possible in part through generous support from New Music USA. "His most visionary and ambitious stage work to date," said the Guardian. "Adams's conducting, second to none in his own music, had tremendous conviction and unique authority, with every facet of the score's terrible beauty laid bare … thrilling playing and choral singing … Gerald Finley conveyed Oppenheimer's moral agony with singing of great refinement and subtlety." "A magnificent accomplishment that easily takes its place alongside the other Adams-Sellars triumphs," exclaimed the Los Angeles Times. "It contains music of unearthly splendor … gorgeous lushness and … rich expressivity." Doctor Atomic concerns the final hours leading up to the first atomic bomb explosion at the Alamagordo test site in New Mexico in July 1945. The focal characters are the physicist and Manhattan Project director, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer; his wife Kitty; Edward Teller; and General Leslie Groves, US Army commander of the project. Sellars's libretto draws on original source material, including personal memoirs, recorded interviews, technical manuals of nuclear physics, declassified government documents, and the poetry of Muriel Rukeyser, an American poet and contemporary of Oppenheimer. John Adams's works, spanning more than four decades, have entered the repertoire and are among the most performed of all contemporary classical music, among them Harmonielehre, Shaker Loops, Chamber Symphony, Doctor Atomic Symphony, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, and his Violin Concerto. His stage works, all in collaboration with director Peter Sellars, include Nixon in China (1987), The Death of Klinghoffer (1991), El Niño (2000), Doctor Atomic (2005), A Flowering Tree (2006), and the Passion oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary (2012). In November 2017, Adams's new opera Girls of the Golden West, set during the 1850s California Gold Rush, received its world premiere at San Francisco Opera. The opera's libretto, assembled by Sellars, includes original Gold Rush song lyrics, letters, journal entries, and personal memoirs from the era. Doctor Atomic is Nonesuch's thirty-first recording of the works of John Adams, beginning with Harmonielehre in 1986; the label has released forty-seven first recordings of Adams pieces.
The Story Behind Punch Brothers' New Album, "All Ashore"
All Ashore, Punch Brothers' fifth album and the first to be self-produced by the quintet, is both ambitious and easygoing, a lot like the "ridiculously eclectic" combo, as London's Guardian once called the band. The work has the feel of a nine-song suite, one that invites you to unravel the threads of its connected themes and stories over repeated listening. Each track segues seamlessly, even a little sneakily, into the next. Before you know it, "The Angel of Doubt," a dark-night-of-the-soul drama featuring a vocal from singer-mandolinist Chris Thile, has glided into "Three Dots and a Dash," an instrumental that veers from ruminative to rave up, named in tribute to a classic Tiki cocktail, Thile's latest recreational obsession. Thile calls All Ashore "a meditation on committed relationships in the present day, particularly in light of the current unsettled political climate—certainly the most unsettled one that anyone in the band has ever experienced." He continues, "We were hoping we could create a thing that would be convincing as a complete thought, sort of a nine-movement or a nine-song thought, even though it's rangy in terms of what it's talking about and in the characters doing the talking." When Punch Brothers released its last album, The Phosphorescent Blues, in 2015, Rolling Stone noted, "The genius of Thile and bandmates guitar player Chris Eldridge, bassist Paul Kowert, banjo player Noam Pikelny, and fiddler Gabe Witcher is the artistry with which they mix bluegrass, roots, rock, pop, jazz, and classical to create a unique, contemporary sound." All Ashore also has an appealingly relaxed virtuosity to it, self-assured but never showy. In a more pronounced way than on prior discs, All Ashore comes across as a glimpse into Punch Brothers' current real life, as these artists who have spent more than a dozen years playing together grapple with marriage, family, and their ever-accelerating individual careers as producers, composers, arrangers, and front men. On the album's early tracks, it candidly addresses the state of their own world. In smart and satirical later songs like "Jumbo" and "All Part of The Plan," it tackles the state of our collective one. Understated ballad "The Gardener" poignantly combines the personal and political in its evocation of a dedicated tradesman who brings beauty to a family's garden but remains a stranger, a mysterious other, to them, only glimpsed occasionally from a window. The five band members took time from their families to once again come together United Sound in Los Angeles (formerly Ocean Way), where they'd previously recorded The Phosphorescent Blues with T Bone Burnett as well as their 2010 album, Antifogmatic. Pikelny says. "When we first got together as a band, we were mostly single guys in our mid to late twenties. We shared a musical vision but there was this sense of fraternity, of brotherhood, that really sealed the deal and laid the groundwork for a long lasting collaboration." He adds, "We had so much more free time than we have now, with fewer family and professional commitments. Our time together early on would happen spontaneously, casually, and often included stumbling home from cocktail bars at 3am in New York. We now have to be much more organized with our time to make sure we have opportunities to be together and make music. We're no longer all living in the same city, three of us are married, and there are three Punch Brothers kids running around."
Pikelny continues "On top of that, the current political and cultural situation in this country really contrasts with anything the five of us have experienced in our lifetimes. All our previous albums were made in times of relative calm, compared to the present time. But who better than your closest musical family to help navigate and makes sense of these increasingly foreign and challenging times? This album seemed like a momentous re-gathering of the band, an opportunity to really get to the core of what Punch Brothers represents. " Additionally, the band's individual projects influenced them on All Ashore. "We were hearing new things out of everyone," says violinist Witcher, "and that's what going off and doing something else does for you. We had this whole collection of influences, new experiences, a broadening of scope." Thile has always juggled multiple projects throughout his career with Punch Brothers and as a member of Grammy Award–winning trio Nickel Creek. He currently hosts the public radio show, Live from Here, often abetted on stage by one or more Punch Brother. In 2017 alone, he released a duo album with jazz pianist and Nonesuch labelmate Brad Mehldau; a set of Bach trios with the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his longtime mentor and friend, double bassist Edgar Meyer; and Thanks for Listening, a studio set of "Song of the Week" tunes he'd composed for Live from Here. Witcher produced albums for Nickel Creek's Sara Watkins (2016's Young in All the Wrong Ways), Pikelny (his 2017 solo disc, Universal Favorite), and the acoustic guitar duo of Punch Brother Chris Eldridge and Julian Lage (2017's Mount Royal). Nonesuch label mate Rhiannon Giddens recently engaged Witcher to create orchestral arrangements of her repertoire for concert appearances with symphony orchestras. Kowert just released Unless, the debut disc with his Nashville-based quartet Hawktail produced by bandmate Eldridge and featuring frequent Live from Here guest star violinist Brittany Haas. Eldridge also recorded and toured with Julian Lage, a prodigious guitarist who melds his jazz background with folk, rock and bluegrass. In early 2017, Pikelny released a purely solo album, Universal Favorite, and toured the country extensively with his one-man show. He produced Motel Bouquet for singer-songwriter Caitlin Canty, with whom he also performs. In fall of 2017, he was again awarded Banjo Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association.
Hypes come and go and boundaries are being crossed every time a Chinese tourist says cheese. It is easy to overlook that around the world real jazz albums also keep appearing with the regularity of the clock. Also in The Netherlands, which has a solid mainstream jazz scene, a great history of welcoming American musicians and, in the guise of Marius Beets, one of its most prominent bass players. Beets released This Is Your Captain Speaking on his Maxanter label. The album includes tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, pianist (and brother of Marius) Peter Beets, guitarist Joe Cohn and drummer Willie Jones III. They perform ten original compositions by bandleader Marius Beets. So there’s the cream of the crop delivering high-level improvisation, swing and a healthy dose of blues, inspired by the catchy and challenging tunes of Marius Beets. Eric Alexander is a master of execution who loves to explore the sonic extremes of his instrument. His seemingly effortless integration of these idiosyncracies in his stories, in themselves an ongoing evaluation of the work of Alexander’s heroes like George Coleman and John Coltrane, is striking. He enlivens the boppish The End Of The Affair and the Latin-type line of Dextro Energy with hip twists and lurid fragments of scales. The ending of his remarkably crafty solo during This Is Your Captain Speaking, a clever, blues-based Horace Silver-ish tune, is a bossy bark that must’ve cracked up people in the studio. 62-year old Joe Cohn, the son of saxophonist Al Cohn, who uses a prickly yet full sound, is never short on ideas, which he strings together with staccato notes and supple single lines. He sets fire to Tafkamp Is Still On The Scene, a funky vamp that segues into a driving 4/4 section. The interaction of Marius and his brother Peter, internationally acclaimed pianist, is special, perhaps not surprising considering their life-long association. Emandem especially reveals their subtle interplay of bass lines.
The abundance of hard bop/post bop makes This Is Your Captain Speaking highly enjoyable. The funky ode to Cannonball Adderley, Brother Julian, boogaloo-based Moody’s Groove and The One And Only, an album highlight in the tradition of mid-sixties avant-leaning Blue Note point out the group’s versatile use of the mainstream jazz language. Besides, the group also plays sweet and light – El Capitano, Carpe Diem. The overall sound is, in fact, pleasantly light without becoming lightweight. The crisp and clear sound of the crackerjack drummer Willie Jones III’s ride cymbal underlines that particular canvas. It is a contemporary sound, but also has a foot in the past, the early 70s Muse/Strata-East ‘feel’ in particular. The album is recorded at the studio of Beets, who partakes in myriad musical activities beside bass playing. You can count on Marius Beets, the bass player. He’s a tasteful, highly skilled accompanist with a tremendous bottom groove. Beets also delivers a number of melodic solos with sustained momentum. Not only did he write an album of superb tunes, he also picked a world-class crew. Not a trace of hesitation by these gentlemen. Dig those solo entrances, time and again! Those are a joy to listen to, as much as the excellent development of their stories.
Marius Beets (bass)
Eric Alexander (tenor saxophone)
Joe Cohn (guitar)
Peter Beets (piano)
Willie Jones III (drums)
Dextro Energy
Brother Julian
El Capitano
The One And Only
Emandem
Tafkamp Is Still On The Scene
Carpe Diem
This Is Your Captain Speaking
The End Of The Affair
Moody’s Groove
Check out album info and the website of Marius Beets here.
There were many highlights to her musical career: the concerts she gave in the Netherlands between 1968 and 1989 feature prominently among them. This CD is a faithful rendition, thanks especially to the remarkable audio quality. Dearie masterfully performed in all the instrumental formations, from solo shows to the great Metropole Orchestra. She sang repertoires of every kind, from film music – she brought a new dimension to “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” – to Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”, sensitively revisited. Not to forget a masterpiece whose music she composed, “Winchester in Apple Blossom Time”, with Marilyn Monroe-style boo-be-doops – two superb versions of which can be enjoyed here, as well as her other compositions, those mentioned, and “Bring All Your Love Along”, whose first recording, made in Laren, 1982, is featured here. Blossom, so aptly named, bids the audience adieu, and makes a graceful bow. ''The Lost Sessions From The Netherlands is a must-have for lovers. Because of the obscure nature of the music, but also because of the historical significance of these recordings.'' - JazzNu ''Blossom Dearie's legacy is great, she still inspires musicians around the world and people listen to her music. Therefore, the release of this album can not go unnoticed.'' - Jazzflits
Roots Remix: How Creole Torchbearer Sean Ardoin Decided to Do His Thing and Bring the World to Louisiana on Kreole Rock and Soul
Sean Ardoin is a fourth-generation Creole accordion whiz. But he’s here to tell you: “I’m going to be the artist I want to be.” Ardoin may have a serious pedigree in Louisiana’s often underappreciated Creole tradition but he uses that as a jumping off point to invent new approaches, without abandoning all the goodness he and his forebears have cultivated. “Generally the industry and people who discover Creole music want to keep it in a box. I had to jump out of the traditional box and create a new thing. I grew up listening to all sorts of music, from Earth Wind and Fire and Kiss to Fishbone and Bob Marley, as well as the old-school music. As a guardian of the Creole culture, I will always point back to Louisiana, but I’m going to stop at other places, too.” Ardoin calls the new genre, Kreole Rock and Soul, a roots-based sound that embraces and incorporates contemporary pop and classic rock. He lays it down on Kreole Rock and Soul (release: September 14, 2018), full of tasty accordion licks, catchy songs, and a brash, upbeat attitude that inspires as it persuades you to get up and dance. Though it all pivots on Ardoin’s quicksilver accordion and earthy, expressive voice, Ardoin’s signature style ropes in acoustic guitar, fresh songwriting, and electronic elements--something Creole artists have been exploring for over a decade at Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas’ festivals and trailrides. “What you hear on the touring circuit is way more traditional than what you’d hear at current Creole events,” explains Ardoin. “Creole music, Zydeco and now Kreole Rock and Soul is just one part of that, it’s living music, and living music is always changing.”
Creole music making has long been wildly adaptive and spontaneously creative. Take Ardoin’s grandfather’s cousin, Amedée, who was known for his ability to steer his horse-drawn cart with his feet, leaving his hands free to serenade the people he passed in their yards and fields. “He’d make up songs about what he saw on the spot,” recounts Ardoin. Amedée was inspired by the blues from further east and Sean by Soul, R&B, Reggae, Hip Hop and Rock and he brings all of this and more to the Creole table. However, by the time Sean took up the torch, taking over his father’s band, Zydeco often relied on the same basic songs, with a few new lyrical hooks here and there.“The old Creole songs were songs, they had lyrics and a hook, but Zydeco songs largely relied on catchy hooks. I wanted to write complete songs in order to advance the music” says Ardoin. “I started writing songs and borrowing from the pop music of the day. I went deep in and incorporated reggae, hip hop, R&B, gospel, and rock.” Ardoin has played Carnegie Hall and major music festivals worldwide. His music was featured on MTV, BET, VH1, and most recently on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN Network and Bravo TV. To help preserve and promote Creole language and culture, he established a Creole language initiative and started the Creole Hall of Fame, which is about to announce its second round of inductees this year. An in-demand performer regionally as well as a Motivational Speaker, Ardoin’s plate is full. But on the musical front, he felt restless. He wanted to take things further, to set what he does apart from what everyone assumes Creole music should be. His latest album is a calling card, a road map to a new Creole style that honors Ardoin’s deep rural roots in spirited cosmopolitan ways.
He knows there are a few things that you have to have, to have a good Creole song. “You have to have the accordion,” he laughs. “That’s the center of it all. The accordion makes the Creole sound.” You have other important instruments, like the washboard. And you’ll have a specific rhythmic sensibility, a rhythmic center that Ardoin has heard popping up in pop music in recent years. “When I heard Pharrell’s ‘Happy,’ I heard a Creole song, because it had that rhythmic center,” Ardoin states. He heard a similar affinity in a range of songs on Kreole Rock & Soul, from The Cars’ “Just What I Needed” and Steve Miller’s “Abracadabra” to Estelle’s “Do My Thing.” “I’ll hear certain songs and think, that’s a zydeco song, just without the scrub board and accordion. They’ll have the right time signature and the basic beat. It’s in the consciousness of the music industry right now. I believe we’re poised to finally get our moment in the sun. We Creole folks have the swag, the food, the dance, and the language. We just need to reach people outside our community,” one reason the album’s songs are all in English. Ardoin reaches out by blending what he heard from his first moments growing up in a musical family with decades of open-eared listening. He brings southern rock sensibilities into tracks like “Kick Rocks,” and that special R&B ballad vibe on tracks like “Butterfly,” a tribute to Ardoin’s wife that brings back the old tradition of the Creole slow dance, often called “buckle shining.” He keeps family tradition alive, co-writing with his son on tracks like “Ovedose,” while giving some love to close musician friends like fellow Southern Louisiana singer-songwriter Cory Landry on tracks like “What Do You Want to Do.” To help shape the new style, Ardoin tapped respected colleagues, multiple Grammy-winning producer and songwriter Aaron Lindsey and engineer Carl Nappa, best known for his multi-platinum selling work with NSYNC and Nelly. For Ardoin, collaborating with people outside the Creole/zydeco box is a necessary part of his mission to keep the music vital and keep it moving forward. “As a constant self-assessor and observer, you have to recognize trends. You have to ask how you can break through the rigid assumptions and get to the point where they will listen to you, so that you regain control of the narrative,” Ardoin reflects. “I thought about it a long time, and I was like you know what? Kreole Rock and Soul. That describes what I do, and that can bring people to what I do. Now, I can bring them to Louisiana, on our own terms.”
La Vie en Bleu: The Blue Dahlia’s Red-Hot Music From Around the Atlantic Explores the Double Meaning of La Tradition Américaine
The music she heard at night inspired her, as did the people she met at the club. “I decided to get some songs down as a demo,” she recalls. Her fellow regulars joined in, and a band was born. The Blue Dahlia has bloomed in two places at once, on the streets of Paris as well as in New York clubs. The Atlantic-spanning band’s latest album weaves French, Mexican, Caribbean, and Eastern European, American folk and soul elements together into La Tradition Américaine(release: August 10, 2018). Guided by a puckish refinement and gritty ingenuity, Dumont explores the US’s double-faced tradition of welcoming diversity while wallowing in backwater closed-mindedness and mindless devotion to work and money, through a global lens and with collaborators who take everything from Yiddish poetry to pint glasses and chopsticks to make free-thinking, high-spirited songs.
“My influences stem from growing up in New York as a first-generation American, but also from all the musicians that I work with, all the sides of American music out there,” reflects Dumont. “As I was thinking about the song of that name, and then about this album, the notion of the American tradition went in two seperate directions in my head and heart, the dark bigotry and the amazing openness that’s shaped art. We’re highlighting the beauty of the American tradition, the cultural diversity you find in our music,” be that a Mexican-inflected playful French waltz (“Canal Saint Martin”), punk string quartet (“Blah Blah”), or a klezmer meets dub (“Wake Me Up”).
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One of those nights at Barbès, Dumont struck up a conversation with an accordionist. It was George Saenz, originally from Laredo, Texas whose band Cumbiagra plays frequently at the club. They became friends, and Dumont approached him about her songs, the product of years of reflection, piano lessons, poetry, and travel. “I really heard an accordion accompanying my songs,” recalls Dumont. “George was willing to invest in the project, even though I didn’t have much money. He really dug into the songs we began creating together and believed in them.” Saenz brought his own unique experience to the process, which includes playing with LIla Downs and running Calpulli Mexican Dance Company. Just as Dumont invited Saenz into her world, he began drawing her into his. “I’ve started to feel that music, and it’s incorporated into my music and my life,” she says. “I’ve had the luck to listen to and play Latin music through jam sessions and concerts. We also both love to play around with soca and dancehall rhythms.” Saenz and Dumont also connected with fellow club-goer Japanese-born, New York-based bassist Yoshiki Yamada, who became a friend and musical partner in crime. “The New York band today has grown and there are some newer faces,” says Dumont, “but Yoshiki, George, and I are the heart.”
The Blue Dahlia also has another, French side, a whole other band that influences Dumont’s writing and arranging. Dumont discovered the musicians who would become the core of this iteration of the band when seeking France-based musicians for a French tour. They clicked, and the band grew to embrace players as diverse as its American version, a trombonist from Reunion, a drummer with roots in Morocco. No matter which side of the Pond it’s on, The Blue Dahlia builds songs by bricolage, by finding elements that work together, juxtaposing and repurposing them. Dumont loves to try new ways to perform older material, coming back to songs and adding new arrangements. The romantic “I See Trees Differently” found a deeply American folk form, and also a more reggae-inspired form. Both needed to happen, Dumont feels, and both made the album. ‘Le rȇve’ is a recreation of a song on the previous album,” explains Dumont. “The way my French band played the song was so different and cool. I wanted their touch.” The song’s rhythm section and vocals were recorded in France, with overdubs in the US. That scrappy urge to put things together, like the sand painting of the American flag that graces the album art, guides Dumont in her songwriting and collaborations. It shaped the way La Tradition Américaine was recorded, in sessions that leaped the Atlantic. There’s a seat-of-the-pants spirit, characterized by the impromptu instruments snagged by Argentine drummer Lautaro Burgos, who used pots, pans, pint glasses, and chopsticks (heard on “La Tradition Américaine” and “Your Love”) to expand the percussion palette. Yet the diversity never drowns out the harmony and the grooves Dumont and company find in their multiple sources. The layers of voices, recorded on two continents, speak to this. One of the most telling and compelling moments on the album comes during the bridge of “Wake Me Up,” a Yiddish poem recited by Dumont and French band members in chorus, an exploration of Dumont’s Eastern European roots. “It’s is a big choir-sounding 3-part harmony of a Yiddish poem by French klezmer singer Eléonore Biezunski, who was inspired by one of my songs,” Dumont says. “It’s a powerful point in the song. But more than that, it’s true the Blue Dahlia, our international family.”
Guitarist Ricardo Grilli launches crowdfunding campaign and NYC concert in support of new recording
1962, slated for release in early 2019, is the follow-up to Grilli’s acclaimed 1954
“Grilli’s considerable chops are in full effect in each setting…an admirable outing.”—Bill Milkowski, DownBeat
“There’s an attractively questing quality in the album’s opener…it has a driving rock groove over which Mr. Grilli unfurls a coolly billowing solo.”—Nate Chinen, New York Times
Acclaimed Brazilian guitarist Ricardo Grilli is getting ready to record a new album. He heads into the studio in early August with saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Kevin Hays, bassist Joe Martin, and drummer Eric Harland to lay down tracks for 1962, the follow-up recording to Grilli’s acclaimed 2016 release, 1954. The recording will be Grilli’s third, and he’s launched a crowdfunding campaign in support of it.
Like 1954, the new record will be an homage to Grilli’s parents and the decades in which they were born, the 1950s and 1960s. Grilli synthesizes historical and musical elements from those time periods including bebop, hard bop, rock, bossa nova, and the Space Age to create a mesmerizingly modern sound. Despite gleaning inspiration from the past, Grilli’s music is decidedly of the moment, replete with sleek, captivating melodies over tense, balance-challenging rhythms, combined in intricate but emotionally engaging structures. His compositions reveal the influence of modern masters like Kurt Rosenwinkel and Mark Turner alongside adventurous pop experimentalists like Radiohead and Rodrigo Amarante, with a relaxed but expressive melodicism imbued by a youth spent absorbing the tropical sounds of Jobim and Elis Regina.
Brazilian-born, New York City-based guitarist and composer Ricardo Grilli is one of today’s most prominent jazz guitarists. He’s earned international acclaim in publications including the New York Times, DownBeat, JazzTimes, All About Jazz, Jazz Podium, and many others. Grilli has performed with notable artists like Chris Potter, Eric Harland, Will Vinson, Aaron Parks, and Joe Martin at venues such as The Blue Note, The Rex in Toronto, the A-Trane in Berlin, and JazzB in Sao Paulo. In 2013 critic JazzTimes critic Steve Greenlee named Grilli’s first recording, If on a Winter’s Night, a Traveler, the best debut of the year. Grilli holds degrees from Berklee College of Music and New York University.
Japanese free/jazz sax legend, Kaoru Abe, dies at the age of only 29 in 1978, living a fast and crazy life and dieing of a drug overdose. His entire music career was only 10 years, from 1968 to 1978. In that short period, he was well recorded with around 30 releases, ten of which are solo sax efforts, duos with guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, bassist Motoharu Yoshizawaand drummer Sabu Toyozuma. Mr. Abe also toured and recorded with Milford Graves, Derek Bailey and Toshinori Konda in 1977 & 1978. Sadly, nothing by Kaoru Abe has been in print for many years until now…
Many of his rare CD’s & LP’s go for big bucks on the resale market. This disc was recorded at two concerts in Tokyo in January and July of 1978, the year that Mr. Abe passed away. Those in the know, free/jazz freaks worldwide, should know of drummer Sabu Toyozumi from his work with Peter Brotzmann, Derek Bailey, Misha Mengelberg and Haino Keiji. ‘Part 1’ kicks things off with an immense blast with Mr. Abe on alto sax and Mr. Toyozumi on drums. Abe sounds a bit like Albert Ayler, although he plays alto & soprano saxes, bending and twisting every note in his own unique way. This duo recorded a few disc together and they sound just right working together, shadowing each other, tightly connecting no matter where they soar. If you savor what is essentially the beginning of fee/jazz in Japan, then you should really hear this disc. It is some 73 minutes long and it all flows together in powerful waves. So good to finally a disc back in distribution that captures the amazing talent & passion filled music of Kaoru Abe and Sabu Toyozumi. - Bruce Lee Gallanter, DMG
Kaoru Abe - alto, sopranino and soprano saxophones
