Gilfema: Massimo Biolcati, Lionel Loueke, Ferenc Nemeth
Kenny Barron and Dave Holland. Photo by Sylvain Gripoix.
Johnathan Blake. Photo by Hans Speekenbrink.
Romain Collin, Bill Frisell, Grégoire Maret. Photo by Neutrø.
Jazz speaks in many dialects, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that different musical genres find it easy to apply jazz techniques to their native material. Gilfema (Lionel Loueke, Massimo Biolcati, Ferenc Nemeth) applies them to a West African musical palette; the Kenny Barron|Dave Holland Trio, Featuring Johnathan Blake, to a collection of compositions squarely in the mainstream of the American jazz tradition; Grégoire Maret, Romain Collin, and Bill Frisell, to a range of material in the Americana songbook. In sum, we have three outstanding trios offering three satisfying new recordings across a range of sensibilities.
Kirk Knuffke and Ernesto Cervini take acoustic and electric approaches, respectively, in their sophisticated and accessible new releases. Both deliver terrific new compositions (Cervini adds a jazz standard and a Vince Mendoza song), and the compelling performances give me hope for the future of jazz just when I was beginning to think that every solo I was hearing sounded just like the previous one and that complex vacancy was the order of the day.
The word jazz embraces music of many different styles and concepts. Pianist Eunhye Jeong’s The Colliding Beings, CHI-DA, explodes familiar forms with freely improvised compositions that marry avant-garde concepts with Korean folk traditions, while Cri$el Gems from bassist Paul Bryan takes an electric, groove-based approach to more familiar forms.
Who says jazz isn’t world music? On saxophonist Oded Tzur’s meditative Here Be Dragons, recorded in Italy, we have an Israeli playing East Indian–inflected music on an instrument invented by a Belgian in the context of American jazz. With Tobias Hoffmann’s lively Retrospective, recorded in Vienna, we have a native German writing tunes rooted in American jazz, playing an instrument invented by a Belgian, and working with Swiss and Austrian musicians. Unlike football, baseball, or the United States Constitution, jazz has rooted itself in the imagination of people everywhere, just like its progenitor, the blues, and its younger siblings, R&B, soul, and rock and roll.
A singing encounter with theater group Casa Talcahuano, Buenos Aires. Photo by Martin Bertolami.
In the fall of 2018, Alejandro Tomás Rodriguez—actor, musician and member of the internationally recognized trio Engine, and currently a visiting professor at UNM—introduced a series of singing encounters called Coming Alive through Song, which he described this way in an invitation: “Coming Alive through Song is a cycle of singing sessions open to all. . . . In these encounters, we will dive into a fluid interaction of song, movement, and rhythms rooted in Afro–Latin American traditions, as well as spirituals and shouts from the Deep South of the United States. Part of the day will be dedicated to physical work: exercises of synchronization and reaction contained within a structure that unfolds through different rhythms and games.”
These encounters have continued, and with his return to Albuquerque for the spring semester, they are about to begin again. Rodriguez, who will colead the sessions with collaborator Lloyd Bricken, shared his thoughts about the nature of these encounters, their objective, and their provenance in an interview reproduced here in an edited version, along with a promotional video, details about the upcoming sessions, and a brief profile of Rodriguez’s professional background.
