Ravi Shankar, The Living Room Sessions Part 2

A titan has fallen. Ravi Shankar is no more. The Living Room Sessions Part 2 (East Meets West Music 1009), I can only assume, will be the last album planned and executed by Ravi during his lifetime, so it is in that sense his farewell to us.

I could fill many pages with how his appearance changed the course of Western Music and Western Culture. I will not do so today, except to say that his influence has been enormous. If today there are many here in the US who have become great appreciators of the classical Indian music tradition, if South Asian musical form has had great influence on both art and popular musics over the years in the West, much of that has to do with him.

And of course as an extraordinary composer and sitarist he has excelled and done much to extend ideas of form and to innovate with elements not ordinarily brought together in traditions of North and South India as well as with western elements. All this he has done. But it was primarily as sitarist brilliantly performing raga with tabla and tanpura that we first encountered him here and so it is perhaps fitting that he takes his leave of us in this way.

Part 2 continues where Part 1 left off, Ravi Shankar in the comfort and informality of his own living room giving us extended raga performances with talented tabla master Tanmoy Bose.

As in Part 1 the alap and mid-tempo portions of a raga performance predominate. Ravi was at this point somewhat frail and so mostly shies away from displays of technical wizardry that were a usual part of a performance in earlier years. We get some very absorbed and profound meditations from Ravi that make up for it, plus some gats (compositions) that stay in the mind. He sings effectively and briefly in the Sindhi Bhairavi performance what may be a part of a bhajan (devotional song) that then serves as a gat. He dampens the strings for a time and he sometimes repeats a motif to engage in more purely rhythmic interplay with Bose, and at one point makes of the sitar a drum, playing one note in various rhythmic articulations.

In the end, Ravi is having a great time here, as he enthusiastically exclaims at the end of the last track. And along the way he gives us some engaging and profound last thoughts, musically speaking. He takes liberties and operates in a free zone for much of this CD. It gives him joy and that joy is contagious. We are grateful for a lifetime of devotion and genius. We now say goodbye to his earthly presence. His music will live on. Thank you so much.

Mikrokolektyw, Absent Minded

I believe it would be just about impossible to make the sort of music the duo Mikrokolektyw thrives at and make a living by it here in America. It's too good, too advanced, too electronic and too out there in a combination that doesn't ring bar cash registers. I could be wrong. They are stationed in Poland so thankfully they don't have to face months and years trying to get an economic flow going here.

And I say all of that by way of a complement. We need music people don't know they need to hear at first, music that breaks barriers and combines things in ways that are "forbidden."

Well that, to my mind, is what I especially like about Mikrokolektyw. They have a new album out, Absent Minded (Delmark 5003), and it takes things a step further. The duo consists of Artur Majewski on trumpet and cornet and Kuba Suchar on drums and percussion. They both fashion the electronic backdrop, the wash of MIDI-live ostinatos, drones and third-voice musicality that they play so effectively over.

This new one is even freer than past efforts. It's tour de force mood freedom, with excellent improvs by the two and atmospheric electronics laying a carpet of sounds behind them.

They are so unique we are starting to hear imitators. But let's not go there right now. What's important is that these are very musical minds at work, two expressive spirits that need to be heard and so you should listen to the new album--and of course buy it. That's the point for the survival of such things!

Kris Davis, Capricorn Climber

Kris Davis is seemingly content to follow a direction that brings her music to a place all hers. And why not? Perhaps that music is not one typically played in the smoky, funky jazz clubs of yesteryear, with their modicum of tourists, drunks and traditionalists cheering and clamoring for endless choruses of bebop. Those places are nowadays harder and harder to fill up one's dance card with anyway, and what her music is deserves hearing in whatever places welcome the new, the avant, the smart. There are (potentially) plenty of them and her music should be welcomed there, I would think.

All this hits me as I listen again to her album Capricorn Climber (Clean Feed 268). It's a marvelous ensemble (quintet) effort with new music and improv at the forefront. Kris is on piano and contributes the compositions, all except one collective improvisation. She has an important place in the ensemble, often in the role of fellow front-line melodist and good-ideas improviser, but also as harmonic speller-out. Matt Maneri appears in his very inimitable viola style, a singular force. Ingrid Laubrock brings her tenor and gets a chance to wake us up to her own singularity. Then there is the very first-rate rhythm team of Trevor Dunn, bass, and Tom Rainey, drums, who interpret Kris's charts beautifully and take full advantage of the spontaneous freedom they get in imaginative, personal ways.

Those are the parts at work on this disk. The sum is quite engaging. There are very sublime moments of group counterpoint, and there are all kinds of shades of other music making happening too. Davis and ensemble give us the avant music of the present, of the "right now," and it is music that should be widely heard. Thank you Kris. Thank you quintet!!

Kahil el'Zabar Quartet, What It Is

Can you believe that Kahil el'Zabar has, with and without his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, released something like 58 albums to date? That's what I read and I am not really surprised because he has done it for years. Still that is an achievement.

So here he is with quartet and a new release, What It Is (Delmark 5002). This is an organ combo more into a post-Larry Young than post-Jimmie Smith thing because the modern post-Trane, post-Pharoah sound is there along with some of the Afro-Jazz elements Kahil has favored over the years. There are also the tribal grooves going, and more late-Trane fire when the organist switches to piano.

Justin Dillard mans the Hammond, along with piano and electric piano, and he does well. Kevin Nabors gets into zones you expect on tenor. Junius Paul logs in with ostinatos and general foundational goodness on acoustic bass. And of course Kahil plays some riveting grooves on the drum set (he isn't often given the credit he deserves as a drummer of a very together nature) as well as the African earth drum and the kalimba.

You get mainstays like "Impressions" and "Central Park West," good originals in bluesy groove and African outness, all played with fire and no-jive conviction.

It's another good one.

Triptet, Figure in the Carpet

Are there too many jazz/avant releases coming out these days? I recently read an interview with a prominent artist who expressed this thought. We sometimes forget how many releases proffered as jazz came out during the late-'50s-early '60s. Only a portion were truly worth your time, and there were many thousands that usually erred on the side of mood pablum. And some of the rote blowing sessions didn't always stand the test of time.

As someone who tries to keep up with the slog of output that hits our senses yearly, I will admit that there is much at times that seems premature and unnecessary today, partially because recording and releasing a CD is relatively easy and inexpensive. But there is some great music too that we might not have had a chance to hear in years past. It is an enormously time-consuming job to sift through what can be had--I know and I only get exposed to a part of it, so it's easy to overlook something.

Such a something might well be the latest album by Triptet, A Figure in the Carpet (Engine 2012). Hailing Sun Ra as primary influence, the trio winds their way through a live electro-acoustic set that has an acid-etched series of sound design episodes to give you pause and get your attention.

Who are these guys? Michael Monhart plays saxophones, splitting his signal so that the input goes into a laptop for further electronic manipulations. Greg Campbell plies a "junkstra" combination of set drums and percussive extensions, plays a beat up French horn and subjects things to laptop electronics as well. Tom Baker plays an acrid and wide-timbred fretless guitar, a theremin and too gets involved in electronic manipulations.

Can these guys play "Giant Steps" or "Cherokee?" I don't know about that. They don't try and it isn't a concern. Their version of tradition goes back to Ra in an out plugged-in and acoustic mode, and live electronic, live outside pioneers like AMM, MEV, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, to my ears, groups and artists that sought to create sound worlds where often there were no virtuoso soloists carrying the music further, but instead sought to create stimulating envelopes of improvised, experimental sound worlds, seeking an overall cohesion more than a Promethean individuality. I may overly simplify, but that's in essence what at least part of it was about.

So too Triptet. They create a widely travelling set of ten episodes that hang together as a legitimate, successful, poetic traversal of some of the possibilities available to them. This one gets fairly orchestral in its denseness and has the drama of dynamics and a kind of sustained-versus-punctuated dialog of contrasts.

If their next album was a great songbook-bebop revival I'd be surprised. But they do what they do with results that consistently interest, surprise and extend the listener's home turf, ultimately shooting him off to distant realms, trips of fancy and imagination.

If you are into the electro-acoustic realm of spontaneous outness, you will gravitate toward this, I think. Definitely recommended for those pioneering ear-souls!

The Dann Zinn 4, Gracie's Song

Here's a young tenorist Dann Zinn, who has found inspiration in the Trane and post-Trane zone and taken it to his heart. He has a tone and approach that combines Trane and the gutsy Texas tenors, with lots of Tranish note flurries, the cry and a trace of gutbucket kick. Oh, and a little later Pharoah in there? You tell me.

The band follows him into the zone. Taylor Eigisti has a McCoy influence that he wears well and makes his own place in it. The rhythm team of John Shifflett, bass, and Alan Hall, drums, get things burning with drive and finesse.

Zinn gives us seven strong originals and a version of Carmichael's evergreen "Stardust" that will give you pause.

Everything is the real thing and there's no nothing going on, so I found myself saying to myself, "yeah!" every so often. It's modern but it has deep roots. And Zinn can bring it on!

Louie's Dream, For Our Jazz Heroes, Eli Yamin, Evan Christopher

Time for that rather rare commodity these days, a pre-bop session for clarinet and piano. Eli Yamin plays the 88s, Evan Christopher the clarinet on Louie's Dream: For Our Jazz Heroes (Yamin Music 37574-8).

A warmly executed set of jazz classics and originals by Yamin and Christopher is what you get. Yamin plays a nicely striding, swinging piano in a mostly post-Ellington vein (to my ears). Christopher plays clarinet less like Goodman than Artie Shaw, maybe a little Edmund Hall in there, too. Or even Jimmy Hamilton. The tone is soulful and beautifully pellucid. And he plays!

Their originals are strong, especially the Mahalia Jackson tribute "Let His Love Take Me Higher," which others might cover too!

So the individual numbers, as implied above, are often dedicated to a "jazz Hero:" Duke, Mercer, Bigard, Bechet, Trane, Mary Lou Williams, and even Amira Baraka.

The vitality of the playing is what wakes you up, for starters. Both are very sincerely immersed in swing and pre-swing styles and they have the warmth of conviction. It's a heck of a nice set!! Recommended!