Cyrus Nabipoor: Live At The Marigny Opera House

Whatever Mother Nature or callous venture bankers do to the battered city of New Orleans, its music keeeps getting passed from legend to legend to legend, to the next wave of youngsters that best exemplifies the historical resiliency of a people and their city. And perhaps one of the busiest and most inventive A-listers on New Orleans' thriving jazz scene is trumpeter Cyrus Nabipoor, whose bold, magnetic lines and openness to free falling genres—Thelonious Monk, funk, rock, trad, hip-hop, bop—makes him ever-present in such NOLA bands as Brass Lightening, Doombayala, and Noruz. Having quickly established himself as a young player rolling, Muhammed Ali-like, with every punch thrown his way, he leaves listeners witnessing an old soul, who may have checked in for a couple earlier lifetimes on stage and commanded your ear and intuitive need to move forward.

For a musician intent on blurring the future and past, the Marigny Opera House, build in 1847, rebuilt after a consuming fire 1851, and deconsecrated by the Church in 1997, is the pitch perfect venue to bring his art and vision to life, making Live at the Marigny Opera House a finely paced, well crafted, quietly revealing debut with a keen sense of smoldering tradition and youthful investigation.

Melody, inferred, implied, inherent, envisioned and performed with real time vigor sits at the core of Nabipoor's playing and writing. And so it begins with the eager confidence and dark swing of "What is This," a gumshoe soundtrack with enough ensemble switchbacks in musical scenery to prick the ear and keep you in your seat. Establishing his glowing, songlike tones early, "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" lets each player pace this folkish ballad as he sees fit, as Nabipoor laces through each setting with a sustained warmth. Surrounding himself with the acutely adventuresome creme of NOLA's young legionaires—vigorous saxophonist Brad Walker, versatile guitarist George Wilde, and the ever sympathetic rhythm section of bassist James Singleton and drummer Brad Webb—that bring a fundamental dynamism to such time honoring Nabipoor compositions as "Spector," the country shuffle turned guitar driven rock ecstasy of "Huckleberry Madness," to the true NOLA nod "NOK Blues." Stay tuned.

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