Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Zoe Rahman Trio: Live with special guest Idris Rahman

436

Zoe Rahman Trio: Live with special guest Idris Rahman

By

View read count
Zoe Rahman Trio: Live with special guest Idris Rahman
Zoe Rahman was most recently heard on disc, as leader, with the enchanting Where Rivers Meet (Manushi, 2008), in which the British-born pianist explored her Bengali father's musical heritage. The core band for that album included Zoe's clarinetist brother, Idris, and her regular bassist Oli Hayhurst and drummer Gene Calderazzo, an American who's long been resident in London. The same quartet is featured on Live with special guest Idris Rahman, with Idris guesting on two tracks.



Live was recorded at London's Pizza Express Jazz Club in April 2007, a month before the sessions for Where Rivers Meet, and a hint of what was to come is given on Bengali composer Hemant Mukherjee's exquisitely pretty "Muchhe Jaoa Dinguli," featuring Idris. The tune was previously recorded on Zoe's otherwise straight-ahead, Mercury Music Prize-nominated album, Melting Pot (Manushi, 2005).



A technically gifted player who studied at Berklee College of Music, where one of her tutors was Joanne Brackeen, Zoe is an unusually empathetic musician. She inhabits a broad range of material, from bop to Bengali, with an ease verging on osmosis, getting deep inside each tune and investing her improvisation with its particular character, rather than simply using its changes as the basis for a more or less unrelated solo. She describes herself as culturally "very English," yet sounds like she has been playing Bengali music all her life (she hasn't), and is equally at home on Live with two twitchy Brackeen tunes, "Friday 13th" and "Epyptian Tune Dance," Abdullah Ibrahim's rhapsodic "The Stride" and dramatic "Tuang Guru," Phineas Newborn's funky "Harlem Blues" and the sunny vibe of Portugese composer Mario Laginha's "Ha Gente Aqui."



This musical shape-shifting—from the pastoral and intimate, as on "Muchhe Jaoa Dinguli," to the explosive and dissonant, as on the two Brackeens and her own "Last Note" (another tune from Melting Pot)—makes Rahman an unusually well rounded stylist and improviser. She is, typically, a big, energetic and exuberant player, with a penchant for cascading, harp-like, Alice Coltrane-ish cadenzas. (She also recently proved herself to be a seriously funky electric keyboardist, guesting on the 2009 Manushi release One More Reason, made by the Soothsayers, the genre-mashing south London band co-led by Idris).



Hard swinging and outgoing, Live is an infectious goodtime album and provides a valuable record of where the Zoe Rahman Trio was at in early 2007. The story, engrossing so far, promises to travel a lot further.

Track Listing

The Stride; Ha Gente Aqui; Friday 13th; Tuang Guru; Muchhe Jaoa Dinguli; Harlem Blues; Egyptian Tune Dance; Last Note.

Personnel

Zoe Rahman: piano; Oli Hayhurst: bass; Gene Calderazzo: drums; Idris Rahman: clarinet (2, 5).

Album information

Title: Live with special guest Idris Rahman | Year Released: 2009 | Record Label: Manushi Records

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante
All In Motion
Dave Redmond
Cat & The Hounds
Colin Hancock's Jazz Hounds Featuring Catherine...

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.