Archive for the ‘Ben Street’ Category
David Sanchez: Cultural Survival (Concord Picante – 2008)
It’s been almost four years since saxophonist David Sanchez released Coral (Columbia, 2004), the disc which marked the end of an eleven year relationship with Sony Music—and it’s wonderful to have his big, singing, prolix tenor back, on song and kicking.
Sanchez has not been idle since Coral, touring extensively with his own band, on a world tour with singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, and on a US tour with guitarist Pat Metheny. He also gave a few headline performances in the US of Eddie Sauter’s “Focus,” a suite originally written for tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, who recorded it on Focus (Verve, 1961). Sanchez was also Artist in Residence at Georgia State University during the 2005/06 academic year.
Of these experiences, the one that has had the most obvious impact on Cultural Survival, Sanchez’s Concord Picante debut, is the tour with Metheny. Though pianists Danilo Perez and Robert Rodriguez are heard on three tracks, their’s are guest appearances, and it is guitarist Lage Lund—a vibrant in-the-tradition player with an interesting sideline in subtle, textural, digital effects—who is the album’s key chordal player and second soloist.
There are seven originals and one cover—a gorgeous version of Thelonious Monk’s “Monk’s Mood.” Aside from this track and the elegiac “The Forgotten Ones,” the disc is up-tempo, assertive, and fiercely energetic. Most of the music sounds like it must have needed detailed written arrangements—there are frequent shifts in tempo, rhythm and dynamics, the introduction of secondary themes, and tension-building passages centered on reiterated motifs—but it all sounds remarkably fresh and organic.
After four years away from the studios, Sanchez has a lot to say, and he solos vigorously, richly, and at length. But while he is generally tagged as a muscular, freebooting player, there’s a delicate side to him too. This shines through in the more pastoral passages on Cutural Survival, and is enjoyably reminiscent of saxophonist Phaorah Sanders during his astral jazz explorations of the late 1960s. The African-derived drums, percussion and chanted vocals which open and close the twenty minute opus “La Leyanda Del Canaveral,” carry unmistakable echoes of “Upper Egypt And Lower Egypt” from Sanders’ Tauhid (Impulse!, 1967). So, too, do Rodriguez’s trippy note clusters. The bass ostinato that introduces Sanchez’s main theme, however, references Jimmy Garrison’s on “Acknowledgement” from saxophonist John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1964).
Sanchez has been missed. Cultural Survival is a brilliant return to disc.
1. Coast To Coast
2. Manto Azul
3. Adoración
4. Monk’s Mood
5. Ay Bendito
6. Cultural Survival
7. *The Forgotten Ones
8. La Leyenda del Cañaveral
David Sanchez: Ten Sax, percu(1, 2), vocal (8);
Lage Lund: electric guitar;
Danilo Perez: piano (2, 6);
Robert Rodriguez: piano and Fender Rhodes (8);
Ben Street: bass (1-7);
Hans Glawisching: bass (8);
Henry Cole: drums (1, 4, 5, 8);
Adam Cruz: drums (2, 3, 6, 7);
Pernell Saturnino: percussion (2, 8).
Original Release Date: May 20, 2008 – Label: Concord Records
Danilo Perez: …Till Then (2003 – Universal/Verve)
Interpretations of intent—always confounding—become both particularly difficult and intriguing with works of artistic expression as simultaneously precise, pleasurable, and subtly constructed as …Till Then. Intense musical innovations often stem from the simplest, most confined of experiments, rather than an intellectually driven perspective. The kind of artistic directedness found on …Till Then often creates a finished product either too forced to be aesthetically satisfying or too aesthetically driven to be convincing. Avoiding both these pitfalls, Danilo Perez has shaped a work of rare tonal consistency that quite astutely maintains a focused intellectual agenda while providing a moving, seamlessly natural experience.
In may ways, Perez’s current release is the fulfillment of the experiment begun with the earlier Panamonk, which unabashedly combined Monk’s rhythmic and compositional legacy with so-called Latin jazz. By expanding on his previous work, Perez has debunked many preconceptions regarding Latin jazz’s possibilities. In fact, Perez’s experiment has been so successful as to virtually erase the lines of division previously relegating Latin music to a separate, second class citizen of jazz.
The artist’s innovations indicate that jazz and Latin jazz should be seen as one continuum. After all, Spanish, African, Caribbean, and other Latin inflections have existed within the jazz idiom from its earliest origins, and have year after year been tremendously influential on its further development. With pieces such as the steel pan-colored “Gracias a la Vida,” the sumptuous ballad “Vera Cruz,” and his own “Improvisations in Red,” Perez states quite clearly that though Latin elements can be isolated and expanded, they can also be completely integrated into the jazz sphere. Or perhaps the other way around. Jazz elements can be completely integrated into Latin structures.
Such a musical statement would be significant enough, but in many ways this is only the formal background upon which Perez founds this album. If the formal concept indeed relies on synthesis and integration of stylistic elements, then the album as a whole represents a call for integration of a higher order, namely an integration of peoples, governments, and philosophic stances.
How else to explain the all-too timely inclusion of Joni Mitchell’s classic protest song, “Fiddle and the Drum,” the lyric of which quite dramatically raises concerns about America’s international actions and responsibility? Further, the overall sedate, more refined, and lamenting feel of the album suggests contemplation and introspection instead of the more energetic and vibrant material displayed on some of Perez’s previous material. This is not, however, the personal lament of an inward turning individual, but the iron-shod lament of emotional, political, and philosophic engagement.
In the end, under the influence of Perez’s arrangements and instrumental skill, musicians John Pattituci (bass), Brian Blade (drums), Ben Street (bass), Adam Cruz (drums), Donny McCaslin (soprano saxophone) and Liz Wright (vocals) all contribute excellent performances to the balanced and unusually concise nature of the album. The result is an intriguing, powerfully evocative outing which raises pertinent questions regarding cultural hegemony, isolationism, and the potential of music, in this case quite literally at times, to not only vocalize these concerns, but transcend them.
Franz A. Matzner (All About Jazz)
1. Native Soul
2. Gracias a la Vida
3. …Till Then
4. Overjoyed
5. Trocando em Miudos
6. Improvisation on Red
7. Paula C
8. Rabo de Nube
9. Fiddle and the Drum
10. Vera Cruz
Personnel:
Danilo Perez: (Piano,Fender Rhodes Piano)
Lizz Wright: (Vocals) (3,9)
Donny McCaslin: (Soprano Saxophone) (5,10)
Ben Street: (Bass) (1,4,7,8)
John Patitucci: (Bass)
Adam Cruz: (Drums,Steel Drums,Percussion) (1,4,7,8)
Brian Blade: (Drums) (2,3,5,10)
Original Release Date: August 4, 2003 – Label: Universal/Verve
Across Rhythm 