Brazilian jazz? Yeah,
me too. I liked it the first 5,000 times
I heard it. But, like a lot of other
things, it got to be a cliché after a while, every album sounded like the one
before, the same tropical groove, the same rhythmic patterns, the same
lightweight feeling. That is, until I
heard this latest project by the Sao Paulo-born, New York City-based bassist
Nilson Matta, and my interest in the genre has been rekindled.
Unlike nearly every South American-styled CD that's crossed
my doormat in recent years, this uniquely creative offering has got some real
force and punch to it. The blend of
South (Romero Lubambo, Cyro Baptista) and North (Anne Drummond, Craig Handy)
American musicians– as well as pianist Edsel Gomez from Puerto Rico - is a
wonderfully balanced mixture of jazzy sounds from the two hemispheres. It's soothing and relaxing in places, but
gutsy and bold in others – it utilizes the conventions of the genre creatively
and, at the same time, refuses to be limited by them.
At the center of it all is Nilson Matta, who is both an
outstanding bassist and an exceptional maestro, to employ another overused
term. As a bandleader, he has an innate
sense of orchestration, of flow, of sequence, of musical space and together
with New York based producer/arranger Humberto (Howard) Léder (no stranger to mixing musical cultures, e,g.
B.B.King with legendary Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos), they
masterfully conceived an idea to make one piece, with specifically-sized
ensembles and a unique groove, and to proceed emotionally and logically, how to
make a well-known melody seem fresh and exciting, and then, how to contrast it
with something not quite so familiar.
I may be showing bias for the home team when I state that
much of my enthusiasm is for the two locally grown reed players, Mr. Handy and
Ms. Drummond. They are all over this
record, often as not, complementing each other and intertwining their flute and
saxophone lines in a delightful souffle of sound.
Mr. Matta opens the album with a highly danceable original,
"Sertao" (which means, in English, "Sertao," as Paquito
D'Rivera would say), co-arranged with Mr. Léder, within which his own melody
and Jesse Lynn's beautiful vocals are combined with the inimitable Cyro
Baptista's very instrumental like vocals and exotic instruments that he uses to
offer sounds that at times are like double flutes and berimbao playing at once,
and with gutsy guitar rhythms and solos by the great Romero Lubambo presenting
a very hard edge within the tropical context……and then a full blown jazz
statement by Craig Handy's tenor, that happens to be made in the middle of a
Brazilian band thus becoming not strictly Brazilian….!
If Mr. Matta's bassistry is at the center of this project,
then he makes his allegiances and influences clear with two pieces offered up
in honor of the greatest bassist-bandleader of them all, Charles Mingus. Mingus is feted both on one of his most
celebrated compositions, "Boogie Stop Shuffle," and on Mr. Matta's
original "Proemio Do Mingus."
The first is a melody that was treated to a Brazilian
interpretation famously as "Boogie Bossa Nova" by Quincy Jones and
his Orchestra – yet I think it's much more effective here that Mr. Matta
restores that unforgettable melody back to the instrument that it was written
for, as a tune for bass fiddle, but within the Brazilian context.
Opening with appropriate bass intro, then tenor & bass,
flute harmonizing tightly on the theme, sounding more like a bigger horn
section playing an elaborate line together, tenor then going off on its own,
then flute, then the pianist with a kind of a postmodern splash, with notes
spilling out to the left and then the right of the keyboard, then Nilson's
solo, given an especially big sound, and closing with a great shout chorus at
the end, like big band chart.
"Proemio do Mingus" is a feature for Mr. Matta's
ringing strings, which, commendably says all that it needs to say within less
than a minute in honor of the greatest of all bassist / bandleader /
iconoclasts, this is a highly declamatory solo - an exciting and brief
statement that hardly wears out its welcome.
"Verde" and "Blue In Green" are a pair
of other pieces that are also two of a kind.
As the titles indicate, both are especially verdant: lush, ripe,
overgrowing with rich melody. The first
is a trio piece that's mostly built around the compelling piano work of the
wonderfully gifted and not enough heard, Edsel Gomez. A sensual, romantic piece driven by the
piano, almost suggesting a bolero. I love his touch here – the notes sound
quite like raindrops falling on a jungle leaf, within a very lovely, positively
verdant tropical style piano trio, I'm always amazed that they can get such a
distinctive South American feel with standard North American instrumentation including
regular trap drums, as opposed to latin percussion.
The second is the Kind of Blue masterpiece given a wholly
different complexion, with emphasis on Mr. Lubambo's guitar – I've never heard
this iconic melody expressed in quite this kind of way, opening with bass and
then Mr. Handy's bass clarinet, which, in this context, gives Miles Davis'
melody a uniquely other-worldly sound.
In this version, the melody is much more green than blue, and like
"Verde," it's positively verdant, and in fact, extends the verdant
feeling - pastel and relaxed, but with the more intense purposeful kind of
meandering that we associate with Miles…. a lovely and imposing gallery of
sound and textures clustered around a familiar tune, well not only a tune. …
Miles Davis wrote a mood as much as a tune,.. And both are firmly established
by Romero's guitar and Handy's mournful bass clarinet.
Over the years, we've been inundated with so much Jobim –
mostly the same three songs over and over – that I had long since abandoned the
idea of ever actually hearing anything new with Jobim's name attached to
it. Imagine my delight to find two
compositions performed so inventively new to me. "Ângela" was
performed and recorded by the composer himself (on Urubu, which, spelled
backwards is Uburu) and "Mojave" was likewise recorded and performed
by the composer on his iconic 1967 release "Wave". They're both such
remarkably performed and recorded here, that I fear it will make it even harder
for me to sit through "Ipanema" and "One Note Samba" the
next time somebody in a jazz club chooses to inflict them on me. (This is not anti-Jobim bias, I feel exactly
the same way about "Over The Rainbow," "Summertime," and
"Skylark," beautiful songs that have all been overdone the same way
to death.)
"Angela", a lovely medium ballad is highlighted
and begins with an intertwining of Drummond's flute and Nilson's bass before
the rest of the rhythm section and Mr. Handy join in, the latter playing his
big toned instrument in a manner of such boudoir tenors as a Gene Ammons and
Houston Person or Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins.
"Mohave" is a particularly insistent melody and an
eloquent duet for flute and bass, with Nilson doing the work of an entire trio
all by himself. I could swear there are
moments when the mind drifts slightly and one swears that one hears piano and
drums in there (brushes at the very least) in addition to bass, but no,
listening more closely behind Ms. Drummond, it's all Nilson, fully filling the
role.
"E Menina"is Joao Donato'and Gutemberg Guarabiras
classically covered Brazilian samba/pop melody, arranged here with piano - some
mirrored chords, a Cuban feeling, not strictly Brazilian…. and drummer Vince
Cherico (c. Candido, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Carlos "Patato"
Valdez, Ray Barretto, Jazz at Lincoln Center's "Afro Latin Jazz
Orchestra", etc) also a lot more aggressive, more like an American player
with Brazilian accents, Ayja's vocals harmonizing with horns, sounding like a
choral group, and then very appropriately, it ends on a fade, which to me
suggests a street parade marching off into the distance.
Ever since Eric Dolphy, most famously allied with Mingus,
the bass clarinet has primarily been used in what we, for lack of a better
word, call avant-garde or free jazz, but the way Mr. Handy wields the unwieldly
instrument shows that it can also be used beautifully on more traditionally
melodic forms of jazz such as with Mr. Léder's homage to Jobim, "Luas de
Nadine", which spotlights the unique combination of bass clarinet, flute,
Mr. Lubambo's guitar and Nilson's beautiful arco solo.
"Mambo Inn" is an appropriate piece to sum
up. This is the Latin jazz classic by
Mario Bauza (most famously performed by George Shearing and Armando Peraza) and
it illustrates that at least three of the Americas (North America, South
America, and the Cuba-Puerto Rico continuum) can work together in concert, as
they say, to create outstanding jazz, and especially well when sparked by the
tradition of the en clave piano of Senor Gomez.
