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Christophe Wallemme: Namaste
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
The achievement of Namaste--and it is a genuine achievement--is also the achievement of Miles Davis's In a Silent Way (Columbia, 1969): namely, providing room to breathe in a crowded room of musicians--soloists all, not a big band. (On Miles's subsequent Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1969), in contrast, a crowded room of musicians was happy to sound like ...
Ismael Lo: Senegal
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
For every world music enthusiast who celebrates musical cross-pollination, there's a naysayer bemoaning the risk that the mix will only produce a watered-down lowest common denominator. Of course the enthusiasts have lots of support for their position: Youssou N'Dour's Egypt (Nonesuch, 2004) masterfully combined Senegalese mbalax and Arabic classical music, while Thione Seck's Orientation (Stern's Africa, ...
Francois Jeanneau: Quand Se Taisent Les Oiseaux
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
François JeanneauQuand Se Taisent Les OiseauxBee Jazz2007 Soprano saxophonist François Jeanneau is first of all among the grand old men of French jazz--although he would certainly chafe at being called “old," at least insofar as it describes his music. An important educator, he created and led for many ...
Exploding Star Orchestra: We Are All From Somewhere Else
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
This record bristles with the hubris of an artist who ignores conventional notions of prevailing styles, blithely imposes his own aesthetic vision, and achieves a rousing artistic success in the end. That artist is Chicago-turned-São Paulo cornetist Rob Mazurek, who composed and conducted this performance.This record also bristles with the sound of electric eels. ...
Dan Willis: Velvet Gentlemen
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
It's hard not to like a band that calls itself “Velvet Gentlemen, even before learning that the moniker derives from a nickname given to the velvet-clad composer Erik Satie by children in his Parisian neighborhood. It's similarly easy to appreciate the sound of the compositions and arrangements on this record even before knowing that they are ...
Satoko Fujii Four: When We Were There
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
"Sandstorm, the opening cut on this album, is one of those all-hands-on-deck-and-make-some-noise extravaganzas that seem to be coming back into fashion (check out “3:10 Local on Dan Willis's Velvet Gentlemen (OmniTone,2006), or “Cosmic Tomes For Sleep Walking Lovers Part 1 on the Exploding Star Orchestra's We Are All From Somewhere Else (Thrill Jockey, 2007)). But, though ...
Enrico Pieranunzi: Untold Story
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
By my count, pianist Enrico Pieranunzi has, in the last couple of years, released no fewer than six records to critical acclaim ranging from ebullient to ecstatic: FelliniJazz (CamJazz, 2004), Les Amants (Egea, 2004), Special Encounter (CamJazz, 2005), Play Morricone (CamJazz, 2005), Live in Paris (Challenge, 2006), and Ballads (CamJazz, 2006). He even found the time ...
Sean Noonan Brewed By Noon: Stories To Tell
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Sean Noonan Brewed By Noon Stories To Tell Songlines 2006 The electric guitar has now been around in jazz for more years than it wasn't, but it still sometimes sounds like the organism might reject the graft. This has nothing to do with a shortage of great jazz ...
Christophe dal Sasso: Exploration
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
The story goes that flautist/bandleader Christophe dal Sasso, in his tireless quest for new sonorities for his arranging tasks, absorbed the lessons of saxophonist Dave Liebman's treatise A Chromatic Approach to Jazz Harmony and Melody. Onstage some time later with a big band at Paris's Sunset nightclub, he applied those lessons to an arrangement of Woody ...
Heinz Sauer and Michael Wollny: Certain Beauty
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Tenor saxophonist Heinz Sauer, who turns 74 this month, was a mainstay of the extraordinary European free jazz experiment of the 1960s. He played with late-sixties incarnations of the Globe Unity Orchestra, alongside a truly mind-boggling array of heavyweights (Derek Bailey, Han Bennink, Willem Breuker, Evan Parker, Alexander von Schlippenbach); he would enjoy an even longer-standing ...
