Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Jeff Dingler: In Transit

9

Jeff Dingler: In Transit

By

View read count
Jeff Dingler: In Transit
Living and working between the African and North American continent, bassist Jeff Dingler combines the influences of the two essentially different musical cultures on his sophomore effort, appropriately entitled In Transit, creating a most fluent fusion of Ethio-Jazz in a Bebop context. The musicians enhancing and realizing his musical vision are drummer Gusten Rudolph, pianist Lou Rainone and guitarist Brad Shepik, who himself experiments much in fusing world-music and jazz—just recently apparent on his latest project Human Activity Suite, which seeks to score various continental cultures.

Ethiopian influences, present at all time, become especially prominent on opening "Bati Celebration." As the title suggests, the music at hand diffuses celebratory vibrations, deriving from the highly percussive drum work and hooks of pentatonic nature, composed in call and response fashion. Shepik uses the material presented in said chorus construction and builds upon it in a flourishing bop-guitar solo.

Pentatonic development reappears in the course of the eight charts, yet the main African touch is provided by the constant highly percussive drum work. Gusten Rudolph displays much virtuosity by playing moderate yet highly effective drum patterns, electrifyingly accompanying Dingler's tight bass lines and Shepik's clean yet crunchy scale-runs, leading to the flawless merger of musical cultures that is In Transit. Compositions such as swinging "Merkato Navigation" or the slow jam "Tiptoe" represent the more classic bebop approach on this record, leaving guitar and piano space for more typical soloing at high speed—Dingler adding a poignant and highly melodic solo on the latter as well.

Though clearly an African flavored collection of compositions, one is not confronted with the same level of folkloric elements as compared to recent oeuvres of similar nature—last year's super group recording Aziza or Rez Abbasi and Rudresh Mahanthappa's latest outings being among those significant releases. Rather than creating a pure blend of styles over the entire approach, many of Dingler's compositions build upon a bebop core that experiences world-music infused variations through percussive ornamenting. While the result might seem less exotic and challenging, it comes all the more natural due to the contagious easiness and comfort, that can only stem from a quartet of great chemistry—which is clearly the case here.

Track Listing

Bati Celebration; Orange Clouds; Addis Blues; Merkato Navigation; In Transit; Sebat; Tiptoe; Way Home.

Personnel

Album information

Title: In Transit | Year Released: 2017 | Record Label: Self Produced

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

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

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.