Colin Vallon Trio: Live in Santa Monica - Concerts

The Jazz Bakery non-profit Culver City is one of the two or three sites most important jazz in the megapolis of Los Angeles for 17 years. He lost his lease, and closed in June 2009. Miraculously, he was rescued by a grant from the Annenberg Foundation $ 2 million. The Jazz Bakery returned in late 2012, a new space performance on the Washington Boulevard, a mile from its old site.

But that still leaves a period of 3 ? years without a location, so artistic director Ruth Price has created the "Jazz Bakery Movable Feast." She continued to present jazz in places such as the Institute of musicians in Hollywood, the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center in Los Angeles and Santa Monica borrowed keyboard Concepts.

Keyboard concepts is by far the smallest of these spaces, a room of 67-seat in a piano on the Boulevard of Santa Monica store. With its pure acoustic privacy and its magnificent Bosendorfer piano (price tagged @ $150 K), it is a chance for the Colin Vallon Trio setting. Santa Monica was the fourth stage on a tour of the United States, support ECM debut album of the trio Rruga.

It is always interesting to hear a set of jazz live immediately after the meet for the first time on record, especially when the folder is superb. Rruga continuously opens epiphanies and revelations. The question, given that the album is so spontaneous and free, was how different the Rruga live in Santa Monica would be saved by Manfred Eicher to Pernes, in France in May 2010.

In short, the answer is: very different. On the album, "Polygonia", composed by drummer Samuel Rohrer, is a mild hover triple wrinkles and chuchotees incantatory chords and then moves into something as the time time ambiguous, somewhere between 5 and 4). In Santa Monica "polygonia" was longer and more difficult and much more diversified. It is not unexpected for live music include the wider dynamic range. But Vallon in person of forms more dynamic and more impulsive, prepared to disrupt musical environments gentle with dark chords heavy and to undermine by fixing some of their fragments.

Two pieces by bassist Patrice Moret were also transformed. The folder "telepathy" slowly releases a gesture of melody above chordal obsessive repetition. In concert, she came out of its earlier cycles is diverted and dispersed. "Fjord" is the simplest on the album, a Crystal melodic, ornate, alternating with a rustle of Rohrer percussion. Keyboard Concepts has begun with a prelude of free time, Vallon plucking strings of the piano, and when he sat down and the song was quickly departed into a set of new ideas that arise for the three players in the moment.

What is important on the Colin Vallon Trio, it is that they lead you to the understanding of musical organization and space music. While they were often more aggressive in person, they were also a ready set barely impinge on silence, to reduce the content basic patterns and repeated like mantras, stay with simple figures until they melted into a trance. It is the opposite of linear music. There is no single story. There is a succession of various beautiful forms the relationship to another is never explained. But just where you thought it was music on meditation and the quest Interior, just at the point where you thought Vallon had abandoned and transcended the pianistic technique and stripped at basic runes and symbols, it broke with a right hand long, spectacular run. By integrating the most classic of development, even if exceptionally fast and complex, Vallon that see you the possibilities of musical form that you didn't know existed. They are forms which place jazz high level we know next to unfamiliar abstraction and render to manifest itself in an arc of discovery.

As Moret and Rohrer, they are independently articulated voice. Bill Evans jailli loose trio for piano, fifty years ago free bassist and drummer from their escort role. The Vallon trio gave this concept its extension farther away to date. Often, Moret and Rohrer were not clearly answered Vallon or to one another, but the assumed parallel realities. Moret drawn implacable, torsion of the lines as private rituals, sometimes broken, sometimes continuous. It was difficult to take your eyes off Rohrer. He was constantly in movement, clicks and chiming total cacophony, tapping bells with little sticks, barely affected cymbals with brushes, then suddenly erupts, securing his snare. Moret and Rohrer juxtaposed representations with the Vallon and three models superimposed in a fourth, the whole evolution which was this music. A drone in place increase and fall and take on small details. Gradually, their collective actions, the music would greatly fear the future, the rise in intensity and speed not seen before it on you.

Really listen to improvised music, is not a passive activity. It requires creativity on the part of the listener. Colin Vallon Trio requires unusual levels of patience and attention and imagination of his audience, in return, he offers unusual rewards.

Pharoah Sanders: Live at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival - Concerts

Each year, Festival of Jazz of Cheltenham, UK, promises to host at least one of the living legends of jazz. Past masters to adorn the main stage include free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman, funk master Herbie Hancock, jazz guitarist John Scofield extraordinary. This year, expectations were running high after the Festival organizers announced that legend sax tenor of 70 years, Pharoah Sanders, would be starring.

Under a background properly psychedelic, Sanders conducted a series of six-track, to each room with rates of exciting technique. Decorated with an African tunic golden and its iconic white goatee, Sanders resembled a former Saharan God. The venerable saxophonist impeded and off-scene, regularly sitting between the solos on the edge of the stage to rest his arthritic joints. Yet, even when perched in the wings, his charismatic and impressive presence effective radiated across the stage.

Sanders is one of the most important musicians to have emerged in the "free jazz" movement of 1960s. He has performed with John Coltrane on the seminal albums like Ascension and meditations and played alongside the great man before his untimely death in 1967. The Pharaoh has kept the flame of Trane combustion since with an extensive tour and recording; his quartet at Cheltenham marked no departure from it.

The show opened with a "Giant Steps of Trane" coruscating rendering, exploded forward by Gene Calderazzo furious drums. Impeccably dressed pianist Jonathon Gee sent showers of notes plummeting to wire the ever-changing melody, turbulence brew of the strings in a prodigious view of technical brilliance. The first match was followed by a return mouth-watering "naima," tenor in which Sanders marked red iron with explosions of foghorn and softened with moments of pure lyrical tenderness.

The highlight of the show is undoubtedly for the return of the band of the anthem of Coltrane of modal jazz, "my Favorite things". He was also close that anyone would now get in the hearing of Coltrane playing in concert. Soprano, hand Sanders resembled a snake charmer whose hypnotic progressions cascade rose higher and higher above the swirling waltz in 3/4 below. "The opening of the next tune did more that a few spectators jump as Sanders did end in the microphone, I've got the blues!"-prior to retrieving a number quite lazy, somewhat haphazard 12-bar blues. This is not large, but most punters received a handful of toe-tapping moments out of it.

For a man once at the forefront of the movement of free jazz, Sanders delivered a surprise show safe. Although there is no doubt of the moments of inspiration, the directory has been a bit standard (even tired, although beautifully played, "A Nightingale blood in Berkeley Square" received a broadcast). More that a few members of the audience in the bar afterwards expressed their disappointment that Sanders had neglected his own catalogue of substantial back. However, the Group did round off the show with most famous number of the Pharaoh, the dream of sumptuous hippy of "the creator has a Master Plan". He was just as brief but hear deep Sanders, voice rich crooner "creator makes but an application /Happiness through all the land" was really a delight.

Avant-garde saxophonist Albert Ayler said, "John Coltrane is the father, Pharoah Sanders, the son, and I am the Holy Spirit." Sanders has certainly reaffirmed his status as a living legend here and his game is undeniably world-class. It is not perfect all well; Perhaps with a few repeats more, his group formed in haste could have done even more impact. Nevertheless, it is a privilege to sit among more than thousand people and witness to a real great 20th century jazz Recalling with this Husky gusto a heritage forged in furnaces of jazz of the 1960s.

But perhaps the best part of the evening - certainly for this criticism - was the moment when I reached a round door cloakroom of the Pharaoh after the show and observed the great saxophonist meditating in the corner. It can be done a little, but the man still is the spiritual leader of the free jazz.

Editor's Note: examination of the Losh of a performance by Andy Sheppard and his trio again at the same festival is here.

Andy Sheppard and Libero Trio: live at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival - Concerts

Maestro sax British Andy Sheppard shot weekend of Cheltenham Jazz Festival of world class of the United Kingdom with the first release of his new outfit, Trio Libero. This special collaboration featuring drummer Sebastian Rochford and French bassist Michel Benita was a first triumphant, setting the bar very high for acts that followed the Festival. Under soaring marble pillars and the majestic boxes deprived of the era of the Regency Town Hall, supported by a swirling projection multicolor immense proportions psychedelic, visionary saxophonist has delivered what was probably the best performance of the whole festival.

A report in a good mood among the players was palpable at the outset, despite being a relatively new company. Sheppard whispering ascents of sax and your fabulously rubbery Benita were supported by extraordinary percussion of Sebastian Rochford, the young prodigy, pokerfaced of the reputation of the polar bear. Drummer, complete with a stunning afro was typically deadpan form, but exposes a exquisite include cymbals, out a seemingly unlimited supply of rhythms imaginative and exotic rhythms.

Sheppard is one of the few jazz musicians British influence manner on the international jazz scene. He is a collaborator of series, having worked with three composers key jazz modern, Carla Bley, George Russell and Gil Evans. Saxophonist originates from the hub of culturally rich in Bristol, UK, a city whose musical heritage is famous built on reggae, dubstep, jazz, Afrobeat and trip - hop. Sheppard relies on a wide range of styles, making compelling use of African, Indian and South American rhythms and is perhaps most distinctive for its evocative melodic touch.

The concert begins in mode conversation with the composition of the Trio Libero, "liberino." Sheppard on tenor articulated the theme before moving on to the wire at the Benita, for the first of a series of bass solos very agile, sophisticated. While far from a household name, jovial timeless French bassist, proved the low frequency perfect Sheppard soaring solo sax worksheet. Next up was "Land of nod," in which Sheppard changed for soprano to play a melody charming, almost racist. The dialogue between soprano Sheppard and Benita bass was captivating, propelled forward by scintillatingly delicate hand-drum of the Rochford. Melody melody spry contrasts strongly against the cosmic soundscape of the next tune, "Walking in space". This minute twenty long seen astral travel Benita successfully loop phrase arco on his bass, interspersed with solo pizzicato line. Sheppard indulged too, a few live loops gorged with delay and reverb, much in the vein of Jan Garberek. It was a narcotic, meditative interlude.

The boppish and refreshing "Rubbernecking" from the audience of deep space, with a tenor melody agile ripple over rhythms of choppy and fun of Rochford. The oldest bassist and saxophonist sometimes almost examine dotingly on their young drummer, giving him a drum solo broadcast in which he could free his latent power, raw. The show ends with the ballad wonderful, "where we live on The Stars", furnished with several solo bass vigorous Benita. The trio, however, he returned with a still in the form of the jaunty "be Be Skippy", described simply by the laconic Sheppard as "a happy melody". A happy tenor dance above jumping bass and drum Groove lines before the public gave the trio a deservedly enthusiastic applause.

The Group fresh grooves and derogatory themes, simple was easy on the ear but the level of musical sophistication was obvious. Solos has refrained from showing off the coast. demi-semis tumbling lines would come when this is necessary and Sheppard appeared just as comfortable blowing barely audible air, into his sax producing sounds only by the alignment of the various keys low, as was done in a brilliantly underestimated ending. Its lightness of touch and easy with also emerged in the course of his brief and wry introductions to the audience, where he has proven himself guilty, although totally eccentric, interlocutor. But in the course of music, Sheppard turn inward and chaired benevolent over its group, often with his eyes closed. He rarely is facing the audience, maintains his face without contention in contemplative focus quiet in the direction of members of his group.

Provide oversight for the trio of (still anonymous) first album on the label this month. If their memorable performances and mesmeric to Cheltenham thing going, record promises to be an essential purchase for 2011.

[Editor's Note: a review by Losh of Pharoah Sanders performance at the same festival is here.]