23 | June | 2012 | Woodshed Entertainment Collective

The week in Caribbean Jazz ending June 22, 2012 – a sampling from the Woodshed

June 23, 2012 Leave a comment

Caribbean-Jazz – a sampling

On Tuesday, June 19, Ginny’s Supper Club welcomed Grammy award-winners and three-time Grammy nominees Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra (ALJO) to their stage at 310 Lenox Avenue, New York, NY 10027 for the premiere of its new suite, “The Offense of the Drum.” Ben Ratliff of the New York Times sat in on the gig. Here is his take of the show.

Sounds Out of Several Worlds Converge in a Harlem Supper Club

Arturo O’Farrill Band at Ginny’s Supper Club in Harlem

by Ben Ratliff

Published: June 20, 2012

The pianist Arturo O’Farrill was introducing a fresh composition on Tuesday night at Ginny’s Supper Club, the new room underneath the Red Rooster restaurant in Harlem, and it was hard to find the patrons’ attention, much less keep it….

But Mr. O’Farrill fought back, first with ideas, then with sound. As the leader of the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra he reflexively thinks on an enormous scale; he’s drawing at all times, in various combinations, from Africa, Europe and the New World. The new piece, about 15 minutes long and in two parts, was called “The Offense of the Drum,” inspired by attempts to silence drum circles in New York City public spaces….

And his 18-piece band started up: first one unaccompanied trumpet in a minor key, then a full brass arrangement, then a pile of 6/8 rhythm with backbeats and melody threading through it. Suddenly there were stop-time breaks, and different kinds of drum sounds came from the back of the room: a djembe, the West African hand drum, as played by Ayanda Clarke; and a Japanese taiko drum, played by Hiro Kurashima. The swirl of sound was exactly what the set needed; that’s exactly what it took to get the audience on board.

Otherwise the band played some of the repertory it has been building up over the last decade, most recently in its home-base performances at Symphony Space and Birdland; it included Guillermo Klein’s dense, stirring “El Minotauro”; a salsa piece by the Spanish composer Miguel Blanco; and a piece by Mr. O’Farrill called “On the Corner of Malecon and Bourbon,” which walked backward through jazz history, connecting individuals and styles.

The piece started with Mr. O’Farrill’s splashy, polytonal Cecil Taylor impression, ran through some aggressive baritone-saxophone blues (the sound of Hamiet Bluiett, as played by Jason Marshall), to Charles Mingus (a bass solo by Ricardo Rodríguez), eventually to ragtime and finally to the clave. The music was both schematic and full of rough joy. Whether you knew jazz or not, it didn’t require explanation.

Come Sunday, the ALJO will be at Confederation Park in Ottawa for the city’s annual Ottawa Jazz Festival.

O’Farrill was the winner of the Latin Jazz USA Outstanding Achievement Award in 2003. The ALJO took the award for “Best Latin Jazz Album” in 2009 for its 2nd album, Song for Chico.

Winding back to Monday, June 18, The Wicked Jazz Trio of St. Maarten – drummer Fred York, pianist Christian Amour and Jerrel Seymonson – gigged at L’éssentiel Live Music Place located at Hope Estate on the French side (St. Martin).

Tuesday, Tessa Souter was in concert at the Montage Grill on 50 Chestnut St, Rochester, New York 14604-2318 for the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival.

JAZZ FEST 2012, DAY 1: TESSA SOUTER…

by Ron Netsky

You might say that Tessa Souter chooses her collaborators wisely. We’re talking guys like Beethoven, Fauré, and Chopin. Her new album, “Beyond The Blue,” features her lyrics set to some of the greatest melodies ever written, and she sang a lot of them Friday night during her first set at Montage Grill. Even though they were not familiar to the audience the way jazz standards would have been, she got strong responses.

My favorite song of the night was “Prelude To The Sun,” based on the second (slow) movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The arrangement (by Rochester’s Joe Locke, who plays on the album but was not at the show) beautifully accents the tune’s wonderful counterpoint.

Souter’s voice was gorgeous on the classical/jazz fusion pieces and on the few standards she performed. The audience seemed absolutely entranced by her rendition of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “The Look Of Love,” which featured a mesmerizing guitar solo by Tom Guarna.

Fete De La Musique has run for 31 years. Since 1982, the French Ministry of Culture has facilitated this free all-night celebration, also known as World Music Day, all over the world where Alliance Française has put down its roots. The Fete takes place every year on the longest day of the year, June 21, in 100 countries including countries in Europe and the Caribbean.

In Trinidad, 15 bands – some professional, some amateur – performed at 4 different venues, namely Coco Lounge, Drink Wine Bar, Fiesta Plaza Movietowne and Shakers Cocktail Bar. Guitarist Dean

Fete De La Music pics

Williams Band played at Shakers on the Avenue, drummer Sean Thomas Quartet of the Jazz Alliance of Trinidad and Tobago (JATT) at Fiesta Plaza.

Not to be left out of the mix, Alliance Française de Bridgetown, Barbados presented C4 and Guests performing music from France and the French Caribbean. C4 comprises virtuoso pannist Andre Forde, keyboardist Stefan Walcott, producer and drummer Lowrey Leon Worrell, and bassist Richard ‘Bill’ Evans.

Still in Trinidad, on the same day, Thursday, the annual Birdsong Scholarship Benefit Concert, held at the National Academy of the Performing Arts (NAPA) in Port of Spain, featured a multinational cast involving Trinidadian pianist Rafael Robertson and the Birdsong Small Ensemble, honorary Trini panman Andy Narrell and Vincy keyboardist Frankie McIntosh.

Yet again, the Blackberry Bro, Nigel Campbell was in the house from where he texted that the production was of the highest standard of live performance with Raf finding “the “jazz” in the compositions of [Andre] Tanker and Shorty I…. His sextet making real the possibilities of Antillean music in the world fusion landscape.”

For Nigel, the arrangement of “Sailing” was sparkling. And the piano and voice duet of Frankie McIntosh and Vaughnette Bigford could be described with “One word: sublime.”

If Nigel had one reservation, it would be that Raf didn’t play his compositions! “Our artists need to maximise their copyrights and create demand for the local canon,” he lamented, even as he praised the quintet for faithfully reproducing the Andy Narell sound.

Rounding off the week in Caribbean Jazz, the renowned pianist Mario Canonge and Mitan Trio with Michel Alibo (bass) and Arnaud Dolmen (drums) are doing two consecutive nights at Centre Culturel Sonis (at Rond-point Ignace) in Abymes, Guadeloupe. Their stint ends, Saturday, June 23 2012, at 8:00pm.