Alex Chadsey: Invocation

The fourth album from the trio Duende Libre is entitled Invocation, the act of summoning a deity or the supernatural. The band's name itself is rooted in flamenco culture, a term of great emotion that identifies a magical quality in an artist. The concept was famously theorized by Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, identifying elements that quantify this conception—irrationality, earthiness, a heightened awareness of death, and a touch of the diabolical. It is both a gift and a burden, a deep and powerful surge of feeling that can destroy as well as inspire (deep breath). Miles Davis had duende. Lorca identified certain bullfighters as having duende, as did Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar. The band name and the title would then create the impression of some sort of mystical purpose behind the music, and perhaps there is—after all, is there not mystical and spiritual intent behind all music?

The band name and title can also give the impression of the music being Latin based, or flamenco influenced, when in fact the band is quite a bit more steeped in world rhythms and musical conception. Pianist Alex Chadsey is a jazz musician with an open mind to cultural immersion—this is the foundational premise of the group, the stuff that binds. Moscow-born bassist Farko Dosumov crossed paths with Chadsey in Seattle where they both reside. Dusomov is a hybrid player with great articulation and a devastating ability to act as a soloist beyond his duties as the directional bottom end of the band's harmonic gesture. Jeff Busch, whether seated behind the drum kit or engaged percussively elsewhere, is a great wandering spirit of rhythm and imagination, having spent time traveling the world and gathering cultural rhythmic traits from places visited. While Chadsey is the bandleader and composer, Busch is the presence that opens up a world of possibilities.

"Stibro" is not the track that one would highlight as a publicist, or introduce first to media outlets. But it serves as a vessel that captures all of the elements of the band's explorations to date in one place. It is a hybrid piece that seems to sift all of the cultural labeling the band endures and offers a fusion that identifies an original sound. Busch and Dosumov seem to break through the Cuban-Brazilian-Mediterranean narrative that largely occupies the band's recorded history. Chadsey's acutely post-bop solo is swinging yet mildly abstract, holding on to Dosumov's walking bass with a loose grip. Busch's drum solo is kit-based and exposes his jazz tendencies within his complex, world rhythm persona. The theme in and out of the piece is Afro-Cuban with a touch of mystical purpose that may create an image of the band's intention better than anything they have ventured into to date.

The title track opens with a dynamic and highly visual ostinato that eventually breaks down to a grounded, thundering solo from Dosumov. Busch creates an undercurrent of swing that leads to Chadsey offering imaginative figures that once again come from a place that is definitively post-bop. While Duende Libre is shrouded in Cuban and Brazilian influence, the pianist seems to find his moments of free expression in the music as it was created by Black struggle in America, influenced greatly by one of his major mentors in jazz pianist Marc Seales.

Chadsey invokes the spirit of Seales in the aptly-titled, "Song for Seales," bringing to the forefront the pianist's zeal for combining electric keyboards with acoustic piano, while adding popular rhythm and blues patterns to his jazz playing.

There are times when a conception or vision of what something can be dictates prematurely what that conception or vision actually is. One can get that feeling from Chadsey, upon the realization that his virtuosity as a jazz pianist, as an interpreter of Black American music, can get lost in the ideals set by the premise that Duende Libre ultimately portrays. His trio mates in this band are modern virtuosos, and very unique quantities in themselves. But the listener must understand that what the pianist unavoidably adds to the recipe is the foundational premise of what we call jazz. He has summoned Dosumov and Busch to foster a vision of what jazz can be when it reaches out and embraces world culture in the spirit of bringing greater understanding, to bridge differences with compassion and curiosity. Invocation can offer at least a glimpse into that ideal.