Category Archives: Previews

Blossom Blooms in Barbara Bentree

Barbara Bentree

Barbara Bentree

Vocalist/pianist Barbara Bentree wasn’t particularly impressed the first time she heard a
recording of the late vocalist/pianist Blossom Dearie. Bentree’s husband, pianist John Rangel, suggested that she check out the singer, whose career spanned seven decades and who won the respect of some of America’s greatest songwriters. “Then, of course, what I would pull up was ‘Peel Me a Grape’ or something,” says Bentree, “and I was ‘Hmm, I don’t know.’ ”

One day, though, Bentree entered Dearie’s name into the iTunes search field, and over 400 recordings came up. “I went, ‘Wow, that’s significant,’ ” she says, “and then, so I just started
playing them and then downloading them.” Bentree enjoyed the material that Dearie chose for herself, and the more she heard, the more she realized that the singer was not as “cutesy” as she had first believed, and had a wonderful “range in her sound.” When she started researching Dearie’s life, Bentree found a strong woman ahead of her time.

“I’m not a jazz aficionado, but in my mind, I just don’t know if she’s really gotten her due,”
Bentree says.green_cover-100

With Thursday’s concert at the Outpost, Bentree, who won the 2012 New Mexico Music Award for Best Vocal Performance on her album Green, hopes to raise Dearie’s visibility a bit, with the help of Rangel, guitarist Michael Anthony, bassist Andy Zadrozny, and drummer John Trentacosta. Continue reading →

Vijay Iyer Trio: Breaking Good

Vijay Iyer Trio: Stephan Crump, Vijay Iyer, Marcus Gilmore. Photo by Bart Babinsky.

Pianist/composer Vijay Iyer (Vid-jay Eye-yer) notes that he has been labeled as “dealing with
abstractions” in his work, and yes, there are abstract qualities to his compositions. It’s
something that you might expect from someone who was working on a Ph.D. in physics before altering course and choosing to pursue a career in music. (He has a Ph.D. in music cognition,
instead.) Nevertheless, his compositions are built on quite concrete ideas of what music is, how it is generated and perceived, and to what purpose. What’s more, his interaction with his
instrument reflects an alert physicality that is not at all abstract. You might say his compositions germinate in his brain but flower in his heart and hands.

DownBeat magazine’s 2014 Pianist of the Year, a 2013 MacArthur Fellow, and a 2012 Doris Duke Performing Artist, Iyer will bring brain, heart, and hands to the Outpost this week, with his long-standing trio, featuring virtuosi Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums. They are riding on the acclaim for the trio’s latest album, Break Stuff, Iyer’s third release on the ECM label since signing there last year. Continue reading →

Sofia Rei: ¡Voz y Corazón!

sofia_reiChoirgirl, classical mezzo-soprano, punk rock drummer, explorer of South American folkloric traditions, and student of jazz, Argentinian singer/songwriter Sofia Rei has crossed many
musical borders. Her passport has always been a strong and supple voice, one of those rare
instruments that bypasses the circuitry of the listener’s brain and plunges right into the chest—it’s a visceral experience.

Faced with choices of what and how to sing, the answer for Rei was easy: Sing it all. That
decision forced her to develop a vocal instrument capable of the task, and it has produced an artist as comfortable singing with John Zorn or Myra Melford as she is with Aquiles Baez or La Bomba de Tiempo. As a songwriter and arranger, she has forged a cross-cultural musical genre, blending jazz and folkloric, acoustic and electronic. It’s only fitting, then, that Rei’s most recent release, De Tierra y Oro, won the 2013 Independent Music Award for best album, and her song “La Gallera” also received top honors.

This Friday, the National Hispanic Cultural Center’s Latin Diva Series, under the umbrella of the Chispa musical season, presents Rei in concert with her multinational band, featuring Eric Kurimski (guitar) from the U.S.; Leo Genovese (keyboard), from Argentina; Josh Deutsch
(flugelhorn and trumpet), from the U.S.; Pablo Menares (bass), from Chile; and Franco Pinna (drums and percussion), from Argentina. Continue reading →

Opening the Opener: Patti Littlefield and John Rangel (With Update)

Patti Littlefield

Patti Littlefield

The New Mexico jazz audience has had this Thursday night marked on the calendar for weeks: the NEA Jazz Master vocalist Sheila Jordan and her bassist Cameron Brown will be opening the spring season at the Outpost Performance Space. That’s reason enough to get over there, but be sure you’re in your seat at 7:30, because you don’t want to miss the opening act: vocalist Patti
Littlefield and pianist John Rangel. We don’t get to hear either one of them often enough, and they will do
considerably more than just warm you up for Jordan. Continue reading →

This Band, by Any Name, Would Swing As Sweetly

Glenn KosturSaxophonist Glenn Kostur has had nothing but trouble with the name of the sextet he is
accidentally headlining. When Tom Guralnick, executive director of the Outpost Performance Space, offered him a Thursday night in the fall season, Kostur immediately thought of the nameless sextet that had coalesced last spring for a faculty recital by trombonist Chris Buckholz and a subsequent recording project.

“We enjoyed playing together, and we liked the sextet format,” says Kostur. So the group, which also included Paul Gonzales on trumpet, Stu MacAskie on piano, Colin Deuble on bass, and
Arnaldo Acosta on drums, decided to stay together and develop a repertoire.

With a slot to fill on the Outpost calendar, the band needed a name, and Kostur suggested Deep Six to the band members. What no one expected is that Deep Six, a perfectly benign play on words, somehow got tangled up—and I’m guessing here—with the title of a famous
pornographic movie in some minds. In fact, when Kostur ran the name out for inspection at a party, he induced a bit of blushing among the ladies.

The group settled on Six of One, but deep swing is still on their menu. Continue reading →