Vocalist Patti Littlefield has been a popular mainstay on the Albuquerque–Santa Fe scene for many years, but she’s been out of sight for several years thanks to a variety of personal circumstances that sapped her energy. On November 2, at the Outpost, newly energized, she’ll be fronting a band of local all-stars for the first time in almost five years, and you will want to hear what she’s been cooking up.
Brazil Project (left to right): John Bartlit, Patty Stephens, Rob “Milo” Jaramillo, Frank Leto, and Bert Dalton
Pianist Bert Dalton’s Brazil Project is on a mission: to make the music of Brazilian composer/
pianist Manfredo Fest more widely known and appreciated. Dalton first crossed paths with the late Fest (1936–1999), one of the innovators of the bossa nova movement in the late 1950s, more than 30 years ago. He was immediately and permanently smitten with Fest’s energetic music. He’s played it ever since, wanting to expose a wider audience to its seamless blending of bop influences and Brazilian pulse.
For this special mission, Dalton is augmenting his Brazil Project personnel—Patty Stephens
(vocals), Rob “Milo” Jaramillo (bass), John Bartlit (drums), and Frank Leto (percussion)—with Ali Ryerson, one of the world’s top jazz flutists, and Phill Fest, son of Manfredo and a guitarist whose albums place high on the jazz charts. The septet will present three concerts titled “Dig This Samba!” this week—in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and El Paso—with the El Paso concert being recorded live for an upcoming album. Continue reading
Just back from vacation in Portland, Oregon, where our godson, Noah Kite, graduated college. (Noah and Corey Distler cofounded the group zinnie for short. Check their music out, and
expect earworms.) For those of you in New Mexico, I can assure you that rain still exists, as do daytime temperatures in the 60s and 70s. The Pacific Ocean put on a splendid son et lumière for us, too. Thanks to the Kites for a memorable visit.
Now, back to the listening couch. Here’s part three of a continuing series on New Mexico artists: a review of bassist Jon Gagan’s Transit 3: migration.
Transit 3: migration, Jon Gagan (Spiral
Subwave Records International)
Bassist/keyboardist/composer Jon Gagan is no hostage to genre. Though an eminently
accomplished jazz bassist—he’s backed such luminaries as Mose Allison, Milt “Bags”
Jackson, Nat Adderley, and Eddie Harris—he started off playing garage rock, and he’s equally comfortable in funk and world music settings. He made his name as bassist, arranger, and musical director for Ottmar Liebert, the “nouveau flamenco” guitarist who’s sold gazillions of records.
Gagan’s own compositions reflect that broad experience and his desire to create instrumental music that ignores “the genre thing,” as he told me in an interview a few years ago. Gagan wants to appeal to “a different sort of person, who’s not necessarily just interested in, let’s say, instrumental prowess or jazz skill—but just likes the sound of music.”
The impeccably produced Transit 3: migration, like its predecessors, Transit and Transit 2,
accomplishes that objective, blending jazz, world beat, funk, and wordless pop to tell “the story of mankind’s escape from a depleted Earth.”