quarta-feira, 24 de outubro de 2012
LANÇAMENTO -RONI BEN -HUR/SANTI DEBRIANO APRESENTANDO DUDUKA DA FONSECA - OUR THING
The occasion that produced Our Thing, a set of exquisitely played originals, jazz standards and Jobim tunes, must have been darn picturesque: Guitarist Roni Ben-Hur and bassist Santi Debriano played in a 12th-century church at Festi Jazz, the summer festival the two founded in the village of Saint Cezaire near the French Riviera. Those of us not fortunate enough to take in that concert, a trio show with Duduka Da Fonseca on drums, nevertheless can enjoy the lovingly performed and rendered recording.
The entire affair is relaxed, playful, alternately given to sly swinging and bossa or samba grooves, and characterized by the brown hues and appealing tonal textures of the leaders’ instruments, including Debriano’s occasional arco work. The trio begins strong with Thelonious Monk’s “Green Chimneys,” trick-started with syncopated rhythms. The bouncy melody leads into a sprawling, warm guitar solo, followed by the bassist’s high-flying derring-do and well utilized open space for Da Fonseca. The disc is capped with a fresh, Brazilian-fried reading of Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.” In between are two other familiar gems: a shimmering, laidback version of Jobim’s “Fotografia” and a similarly tinted rendition of his “Ela É Carioca.”
The originals shine, too. Debriano’s title track is open and airy, with quick shifts and surprising detours, while his blues-tinted “Afroscopic” is limned with Afro-Cuban rhythms and the slow-moving “Suave” hints at North African influences. Ben-Hur offers a pretty, stately ballad, “Anna’s Dance,” and the boppish, brushes-fired “Earl’s Key,” bolstered by loads of interplay among the three New York-based musicians. Given the gorgeous music and idyllic setting, could a companion DVD be forthcoming? JAZZTIMES.COM
Hugh Maseklela On the Move At 73, the South African icon is unstoppable
0/23/12
The powers that be, in music and in politics, have never been able to pin Hugh Masekela down because he’s always a step ahead. Apartheid drove him into exile but by no means muzzled him. He records in multiple genres and tongues, performs in venues from huge to intimate to downright claustrophobic, and voices opinions as proudly as he entertains. A master of trumpet, fluegelhorn and cornet, Masekela is a thrilling showman and a walking call to arms.
“I live in the world,” the 73-year-old says in his raspy tenor. “In my life, in my perspective of what life should be, we limit ourselves through conventions.” Excellence is all that counts. “For me, music is just music.”
Earlier this year he toured behind Jabulani, a disc he released in South Africa in 2010 and in the U.S. in January. A celebration of the wedding songs that informed Masekela’s childhood in Witbank, South Africa, it’s an homage to the “millions of children [who] came from millions of couples whose weddings were marinated and baked in these songs,” says Masekela. “To state that the songs are one of the most significant gateways to the magnificence of our heritage would be an unforgivable heresy, a gross understatement and an extreme case of dementia.”
While Masekela’s vocals (including some in English) and flugelhorn shape all ofJabulani’s 11 tracks, they’re not always the focus. The album is part of a larger Masekela reclamation project: raising the profile of South Africa’s heritage and its current, vibrant culture. He plans to spend much of his remaining time memorializing and celebrating his homeland’s musical culture, as “a major player in the game of heritage restoration and cultural revival visibility.” He is also eager to expand Africa’s image beyond pictures of wildlife and sunsets in the bush. “The amazing diversity of the African diaspora cultural heritage’s excellence is so unfathomable that the surface has hardly been tickled,” he explains.
Masekela’s career goes back more than 50 years. He got his first trumpet from anti-apartheid Archbishop Trevor Huddleston when he was 14, and has recorded music both deeply urban and very country, spanning township jive, dance-band tunes, protest songs, even African versions of the blues. After the Sharpville Massacre of 1960, when apartheid forces killed 69 Africans protesting the nation’s pass laws, he managed to get out of South Africa; eventually, with the help of Harry Belafonte and Masekela’s wife-to-be, Miriam Makeba, he began to make records, building an audience that extended beyond jazz. His trumpet bursts through the Byrds’ 1967 hit “So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star,” and that spring he performed at the game-changing Monterey Pop Festival. The following year, his “Grazing in the Grass” became a worldwide hit, even ascending to No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart in the U.S. He has worked with everyone from Herb Alpert to Abdullah Ibrahim to Fela to Makeba to Letta Mbulu, and he toured behind Paul Simon’s controversial album,Graceland. From 1995 to 1997, he owned a jazz club in Johannesburg.
He remains active, and it’s obvious that his natural state is restlessness. Masekela likes it that way. On March 31, he led a big, vocally sumptuous band at Kippies, a massive room at Cape Town’s International Convention Centre, drawing 2,500. The Kippies date was a highlight of the Cape Town Jazz Festival. A month later, he joined Herbie Hancock, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Tony Bennett, Sheila E., Lang Lang, Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding (among others) for the UNESCO-sponsored International Jazz Day concert in New York City. Around that same time, the Tribeca Film Festival premiered Alekesam (spell it backwards), a movie about his relationship with his son Sal, a journalist and action-sports figure who grew up in the States. This past spring also saw the release of Friends, a four-CD set of American standards—available only in South Africa—recorded with keyboardist Larry Willis, a longtime associate. And he is already mixing another record to follow up Jabulani.
“Being on the move is relaxation to me,” he says. “I’ve been on the move ever since my infancy, and it plays the most central part of my life. If you don’t move, you remain glued to one place. That is a boring way of life when there is so much to see, hear and learn.” jazztimes.com
GRACE KELLY EN EUROPA
La joven saxofonista Grace Kellyse encuentra finalizando una gira europea. Hoy se presenta en Austria y el 28 en la República Eslovaca, antes de retornar a un intenso calendario de conciertos en EEUU. Grace Kelly sólo tiene 18 años de edad, y ya ha grabado 6 álbumes, ha dado más de 500 conciertos en distintos países como líder de sus conjuntos y ha recibido una veintena de premios y honores. Tal como hemos informado en este blog, Grace Kelly ha tocado con algunos de los grandes del jazz, entre ellosPhil Woods, Lee Konitz, Dave Brubeck, Hank Jones, Wynton Marsalis, Kenny Barron, Esperanza Spalding, Terri Lyne Carrington, Cedar Walton y otros. Hace unos meses volvió a reunirse con uno de sus mentores, el veterano y experimentado saxofonista Phil Woods, en un concierto en el Centro de Artes Escénicas de Stockton, en Nueva Jersey. Ambos saxofonistas no sólo habían tocado juntos en el pasado, sino que grabaron un álbum titulado Man With A Hat, "Hombre con un sombrero" (en referencia a la costumbre de Woods de usar ese tipo de indumentaria).------------noticiasjazz.blogspot.com
terça-feira, 23 de outubro de 2012
Comentário: North Sea Jazz Festival 2012
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