The Dr. Lonnie Smith Trio performing at the Jazz Standard in 2010. Photo Credit: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

On one of the most bone-chilling winter nights of the year, Dr. Lonnie Smith’s organ spirit reached exhilarating heights in trio with guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg and drummer Jamaire Williams. Though this arrangement lies on the intimate end of Smith’s quintet and nonet spectrum, the band enveloped the Jazz Standard as would a full-sized orchestra. Stirred about by a gently permeating stream of chords off Kreisberg’s guitar, the set began its ascent toward whole-body catharsis with the tune “River Walk”.

The evening eased in with a reflective vibe in the hands of Smith’s bass-like organ hum and Williams’ tenderly rhythmic drums. The mellow piece, featured on Smith’s 1991 release The Turbanator, took an explosive turn a few minutes in, clearing the aural sinuses with an acidic yet soulful flavor. Heads began bobbing across the audience at first listen of Smith’s signature trail-blazing tang. The organist riffed, cascaded, and pounded on his Hammond B3 with blissful abandon, spearheading into assertive zest alongside Kreisberg’s jolting crescendos and Williams’ creative dynamism.

The trio grasped their flaming momentum by the reigns in a rock-jazz fusion jam taken from Spiral, their latest release. A drum-organ storm bubbled and broke the anthem into heavily rhythmic discord, zapped by blurts of guitar. The edgy turmoil abruptly whittled down to light acoustic for a few moments, steeping deeply in Kreisberg’s earthy chord bits and streaming riffs. And just as abruptly, his riffs morphed to fiery grenades, providing a virtuosic battlefield upon which Smith’s piercing, violin-like organ tousled into Williams’ intensely rocking beats. The resulting sound embodied explosive convolution to anarchic appeal, dancing upon the verge of spilling over.

Though the trio undoubtedly masters bold fanfare, its way with heart-touching composition is most gripping of all. “Pilgrimage”, a tune featured on Smith’s 2009 album Rise Up, carried the set to a bittersweet close, at the crossroads of serene romanticism and fierce melancholy. Kreisberg filled the shoes of alto saxist Donald Harrison (who appeared on the original recording), and soon twisted those shoes into a musical sculpture of his own. His tender tone set forth a gently captivating melody laced with enveloping aural warmth. Smith’s sparse vocals were the true clincher, however, mingling with his raspy organ as though the very same instrument.

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The author (third from the left) and fellow Music TRaCers backstage with TALIB KWELI and YASIIN BEY (aka MOS DEF).

Growing up I have always known of Mos Def (aka Yasiin Bey) and Talib Kweli‘s rap-duo Black Star. My mother was – and still is – very in love with them. When I asked her if I could attend their show at the Best Buy Theater she freaked out and told me she would make me go. After seeing them perform I now know why she freaked out.

That night was a night I will never forget.  It was like watching magic happen.  Everyone in the audience was having a good time and was extremely into what they were watching. Me, being someone who hadn’t listened to their music, very much felt like I knew exactly what they were talking about when I really did not. It felt so incredible to be there.

Black Star performs.

My night was interesting: I had shown up extremely early, seen two reality TV stars, heard a fight, and waited for a very long time for Mr. Bey to show up.  The performance and backstage experience made it worth all of it.

It seemed very surreal a kid from the South Bronx backstage at one of my mother’s favorite artist’s shows.  I can’t believe I got the chance to meet them. I can’t stop thinking about it. I just want to relive that show over and over again. I’m very fortunate that I was lucky enough to attend. It was an experience that was absolutely incredible and I am BEYOND happy I was there.

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Frank Wess playing with (from left to right): John Lee (bass guitar), Yotam Silberstein (guitar), and Jimmy Heath (sax). Photo credit: Fran Kaufman

The best way to ring in a new year? A party, of course. If Frank Wess’ 90^th birthday celebration at Dizzy’s Club is any indication of what’s to come in 2012, this year is bound to be a great one. Roy Hargrove’s crisp trumpet launched the festivities with “Dizzy’s Blues”, echoing the pungent, nuanced touch of Gillespie himself. As conductor of the aptly named Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band, Hargrove ebbed into rich tandem with the collective swell of over nine strings, saxophones, and trombones, and a powerhouse dose of five outspoken horns.

Once Wess graced the stage on “Without You, No Me” (composed by saxist Jimmy Heath, who also performed throughout the evening), the powerful set infused with vivacious complexity. His tenor saxophone, understated yet intricate, brewed forward amid the song’s fiery flair, as did his flute on the tune “Search”. Wess’ delicately assertive way with the flute was an interesting complement to his brassy craft, both floating above and lushly melting into the cruising, urban vibe of the Gillespie Big Band.

Roberta Gambarini belting out some James Moody. Photo credit: Fran Kaufman

Roberta Gambarini’s vocals echoed that breezy instrumental atmosphere on “Moody’s Groove”, a piece penned by saxist, flautist, and Wess collaborator James Moody. Gambarani conjured Moody’s wittily bold musical style with finesse, diving into the highest and lowest of pitches as smoothly as Douglas Purviance’s yipping bass trombone. Her inventive range shook the band – and audience – to riveting heights on another Moody original, liberally salted with regal horn accents and John Lee’s plump bass guitar inflections.

Gambarini edged her vocals into a tide of flaring trumpets, sparking a scat-brass battlefield that gripped just about every pair of ears in the full house. Hargrove spontaneously jumped out from behind his horn a few minutes in, playfully countering Gambarini’s vocals with some “bee-bap-de-baps” of his own. If that surprise weren’t enough, drummer Lewis Nash halted his light beat and emerged from a corner of the stage to join in on the scat, while claps from the audience kept the rhythm alive.

It’s not every day that an NEA Jazz Master and sax legend like Wess rings in a ninth decade of prolific artistry. But after this evening of both signature classics and wild surprises at Dizzy’s, it’s not just 2012 that’s going to be a great one: here’s to a happy 90^th year for the great Frank Wess – and many more to come.

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Alicia Hall Moran + the motown project. Photo Credit: Pagan Harleman.

A flamenco guitarist strums rapidly, his hands painted lavender by the overhanging lights and lasers that coat the walls of New York City’s Highline Ballroom. To the beat of this six-stringed accompaniment, a tall woman walks elegantly from the right wing. Slow steps carry her to center stage where she stops before a microphone stand. Alicia Hall Moran sings her first note of the evening, lets the vibrato linger then fade.

The first few moments of Moran’s Motown Project — the vocalist’s operatic take on a series of handpicked Motown classics — feels distant and sounds experimental. For example, the use of harp alongside Japanese percussion to support classical opera style vocals may be innovative, however is does make one wonder, “Where exactly does Motown fit into all of this?” The question is answered with the sound of a recognizable lyric, such as in the Handel-esque interpretation of the Four Tops’ “Sugar Pie Honey Bunch”, or in the Marvelettes’ poppy 1961 hit, “Please Mr. Postman“, when sung as a mournful love ballad.

Nevertheless, not even Alica Hall Moran herself can deny the humor in such an unexpected blend of styles. This Manhattan school of Music graduate laughs along with the audience and holds conversation not as an uptight performer, but as a regular person. Well maybe she is bit wacky, but only in a good way.

The Motown Project takes the inspiring soul of Motown, and surgically transplants it into the body of nontraditional classical music. Moran is simply using an experimental method to access the blues-rooted emotion that already exists in Motown. Such a reminiscent performance can be enjoyed by anyone, however it does have a specialty for those with a true understanding and appreciation for this 1960’s motor city music.

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In a single word, Yotam Silberstein’s recent release Resonance is captivating. But with a dictionary’s worth of words, the descriptions of his poignant artistry are infinite. Over the course of eleven tracks, Silberstein plucks the heartstrings as he does his guitar, crafting a record of alluring charm that resonates in every cranny of the soul.

Silberstein makes no haste in the album opener “Two Bass Hit”, immediately jolting alive with electric wit. Pianist Aaron Goldberg echoes his speedy streams of guitar, propelled by Christian McBride’s rolling bass rhythm. Gregory Hutchinson’s cymbal-drum swoops tie the aural scene with succinct harmony, carrying the piece into swelling union. The air soon unravels, however, expanding into an eclectic sprawl of tinny cymbal variations and swift piano gymnastics, punctuated by an offbeat switch to bowed bass. Silberstein’s elaborate guitar ribbons weave through with cool ease, assuming lightning velocity one second, and delicate sparseness the next.

His casually ingenious vibe blossoms into shining brilliance in “McDavid”, one of the guitarist’s own compositions. The light tune stirs about a modest radiance, laced in an acoustic funk quality that ebbs and flows as the minutes pass. But between the lines of Goldberg’s relaxed piano and Silberstein’s tangy cascades lurks a trace of bittersweet nostalgia. Both musicians almost imperceptibly lapse into melancholic softness amid their upbeat tempo, magnetizing the melody with piercing complexity.

Two outliers do emerge from the album, kindling an understated, misty-eyed warmth that humbly lingers in the heart. Silberstein adapts “The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Kindergarten)” from vocalist Yehudit Ravitz’s Hebrew song of the same name, morphing the work into an unornamented meander through a pensive musical road. He mingles with Goldberg, McBride, and Hutchinson in a harmony that takes its time, inching forward with the dreamy sultriness of a romantic lullaby.

“Merav”, however, illustrates Silberstein’s craft in most intense and evocative form. Every second of the six minute track unfolds into tentative mistiness, richly steeping in the hands of Goldberg’s reflective piano and Silberstein’s subdued chords. Both artists intertwine with raw elegance, the former player’s slivers of classical piano seeping into the latter’s mellower jazz mood. Shrouded in sensuously mysterious undertones, the piece at once embodies and evades both genres, wearing the introspective weight of the world on its shoulders.  Though crafted with intricate grace, “Merav” is never tender as it is somberly hypnotic, beckoning to the ears time and again – only to wistfully retreat.

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Karita Mattila accompanied by Martin Katz at Carnegie Hall. Photo Credit: Ian Douglas.

If you think classical music is boring, you’re in for a big surprise…

I went to Carnegie Hall to see Karita Mattila, the famous Finnish soprano, sing in a concert.  The hall was beautiful — velvet seats, walls like a gilded shell, and outstanding acoustics.

I was impatient to hear her – I’m choosey about my taste in music, I do not just listen to anything.

She finally stepped on stage with her pianist, Martin Katz, to a tidal wave of applause. Katz sat at the piano, his hand readying for the first note.  Mattila opened her mouth — and sang a haunting song in French.  Her voice was delicate, smooth, but with hidden strength.  It was rich, and sweet, and she used a good, healthy technique.  Her pianist was very talented, too. I’ve noticed in concerts that the pianist never gets as much recognition as the singer, and just think of it!  What would a classical singer sound like without any accompaniment? It would just sound… awkward.

Mattila’s pitch was perfect, and the melody seemed to flow easily from her.  When Mattila sang, a tsunami of emotion came through her eyes, and though I hardly understand French, she illustrated the songs with her voice and body, making it understandable.

The translations of the songs in the program were gorgeous and lyrical — they actually were old poems with music composed just for them.  They talked about love, some about death, still others about travel and happiness, and one that was particularly poetic was called ‘The Death of the Lovers‘.  It filled my mind with images and made me want to sing along. She then sang some songs in her native tongue — slow, sweet, sleepy songs about the night, and dreams, things of that theme, followed by some lively arias in German.

Mattila’s performance would be a very good introduction to classical music, and I would gladly listen to her hypnotizing singing again.

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Darcy James Argue's Secret Society in Brooklyn Babylon. Photo Credit: Rahav Segev.

Brooklyn Babylon, performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music by Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society in collaboration with graphic novelist Danijel Zezelj featured live music, animation, and live painting. The show open with music played by musicians dressed like street urchins from Elizabethan England. They performed a number, which was followed by Danijel Zezelj appearing on a platform in the background. He went to the center of this platform, picked up a roller and began painting. A few minutes after he started, a screen came down between him and the audience and animations started to play on it. These animations told a story of the building of the Tower of Brooklyn which was to be the tallest tower in the world. The story was told from the point of view of an old man and his grand-daughter. The old man was a carousel builder and the mayor had commissioned him to build one for the top of the tower. He did as the mayor had asked of him but he noticed that some of the little girl’s favorite places were destroyed to make room for the tower, one of them being a cafe that she loved. The old man noticed how sad this made her, so he decided to give her a surprise.

When the tower was finished and the carousel installed, the old man and the little girl were the first to ride it. The carousel started to spin at a regular speed but it slowly started spinning faster and faster until it flew off of the top of the tower. When the carousel was airborne a parachute device came out of the top of it. It flew through the air until it finally landed in Coney Island. Once there, a group of people ran to it and started to work on it. When they finished the carousel had become the cafe that had been destroyed during the tower’s construction.

As the animation was projected, the musicians played and gave the story feeling. They played slow calm music during parts of the animation that showed the actual construction of the tower, and fast panicky music during suspenseful parts, like when the carousel started spinning off of the tower. There were breaks in the animation where Danijel Zezelj could be seen painting on a long white canvas. The final picture he drew was of the tower itself from a view that was not shown during the animation. All the different parts of this performance went together perfectly. Each element supported the others, creating a whole experience that was greater than the individual parts.

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Rez Abbazi. Photo Credit: Jazz Music Archives.

“I’m having a brain…you know,” sighed guitarist Rez Abbasi, out of breath and close to speechless after a full-throttle rendition of “Onus on Us”. After such a wildly evolving piece, a bit of brain freeze is understandable – perhaps even inevitable. Under the band name Invocation, Abbasi’s five-member powerhouse took the Jazz Standard by a storm in a CD release concert for the new album Sonu Sonu, echoing a soul-drenched heartiness truly akin to invocative prayer.

An ingeniously uncanny duet of sorts opened the evening on “Thanks for Giving”. Rudresh Mahanthappa’s signature sax slurs swelled into nearly pitch-perfect harmony with Abbasi’s eclectic and fluid guitar riffs, both musicians rising and dipping in tandem with tense melodicism. Though this pairing soon whittled down to subtly agitated momentum, the most captivating aural duel arose from two unlikely battlers: the piano and the drums, courtesy of Vijay Iyer and Dan Weiss.  The latter’s rolling rhythms brewed the tune forward with a charming blatant quality, led by a rippling snare drum, then outright bangs – until settling upon assertive drumstick on drumstick beats. Iyer broke into Weiss’ acerbic bubble with warm classicism, bringing forward a lightly authoritative tone to flip the aggressive band dynamic upside down. This convoluted dichotomy danced upon the divide between intriguing discord and jarring discombobulation, setting the scene for all pieces to come.

“Onus on Us” leaned toward an appealing avant-garde disjointedness, though infused with graceful breaks into harmony to quell the impact. Mahanthappa brought a trumpet-like, blaring brassy propulsion to his sax, meanwhile bassist Johannes Weidenmueller set forth a gently audible bounciness, rooted in classic jazz. Abbassi’s guitar assumed the smooth-mannered fluency of a crooning vocalist, tousling through the higher pitches. And further piling onto the tune’s expanding textural repertoire was a rock-inspired Weiss, gloriously playing with a drumstick held in his mouth – and, eventually, with only his hands. The sum of these hotly opposing instrumental parts dissolved into a surprising anticlimactic tenderness. Iyer and Weidenmueller rose from the grandiose midst in a soft but willful duet, rolled forward by pondering piano tones and halted by commanding plucks of rich bass.

Though the band showed impeccable balance amid many near-dives into rhythmic and textural overload, “Nusrat” did slip over the discordant edge. Abbasi’s calmly meandering solo opened the tune with Hindi undertones and electric coolness, uniting his Middle Eastern and eclectic contemporary jazz inspirations with an effortless appeal. But as soon as Weiss and Mahanthappa delved in, a lack of distinctive rhythmic progression steadily swirled the piece into a muddle of unrest.  The drummer’s forward momentum took a caustic leap into intrepid cymbal slams, pungently interjected by marathon blurts of saxophone, courtesy of Mahanthappa’s virtuosic lungs. Iyer, Weidenmueller, and even Abbasi were drowned out by the argumentative uprising. Some ground did eventually settle beneath the tune’s restless feet, however, in the form of Iyer’s crystal-clear, timeless brilliance. Alongside a cruising cymbal array from a toned-down Weiss, his cerebral piano infused the piece with a refreshing, catchy groove, conjuring the conversational ease of George Gershwin.

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Dave Barnes. Photo Credit: Rachel Parker.

In a rare New York City appearance, singer-songwriter Dave Barnes stood on the stage of B.B. King’s Blues Club (Oct. 12) with only his guitar as company. His intro for the Christian rock band Jars of Clay was as brief as it was richly poignant, pared down to the acoustic basics that Barnes crafts irresistibly well. Without a word of introduction, his Southern-lilted, rugged crooning took flight in “Grace’s Amazing Hands”, adorned with pungently raw but harmonious plucks of guitar. Selected from Barnes’ early album Brother, Bring the Sun, the track resonated with hearty soul and a curiously appealing quaintness, setting the evening’s brewing, down-to-earth ambience.

Though his dramatic jump into “Grace’s Amazing Hands” echoed the quietly introspective approach of alt-rock vocalist Dan Layus, Barnes emerged from the tune with charming wit, peppering the remainder of his set with comedic jests and playful quips. He strung together his tunes of love and life with endearing anecdotes of on-stage mishaps, even beckoning listeners to sing the chorus lines to “Little Lies” and “God Gave Me You”. The latter tune, however, saw more than just the audience’s back-up vocals. Jars of Clay band members Charlie Lowell and Matthew Odmark appeared on stage with the accordion and the ukulele respectively, underscoring Barnes’ guitar with an added layer of musical depth. But when left to his own passionate momentum, Barnes rose to full musical impact. The Tennessee-native brought “On A Night Like This” to magnetic radiance, delivering the sparse, romantic piece with lingering reflectiveness. Barnes took his time hitting the high inflections, though always reaching them with soul-drenched perfection and whole-hearted immersion.

Barnes’ musical artistry truly shone in his unplugged renditions of “Until You” and “You Give Me What I Need”, which on their respective albums (Me and You and the World and What We Want, What We Get) are propelled by powerful, rock-inspired rhythms. Without drums, a piano, or any instrumental accompaniment save for his guitar, Barnes propelled each tune forward with power of a different sort. Mingling his grainy vocals with lightly assertive guitar rhythms, he cleared through the fog of polished sound editing and loaded instrumental loops, bringing his music into its native, ruggedly pure context.

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Zach Condon of Beirut. Photo Credit: Joe Grimaldi and Bailey Baffert

Unnerved by the threat of violent thunderstorms, most people decided to stay inside on the night of June 17th. Not among those people were the many Beirut fans who flocked to McCarren Park in Brooklyn in their shorts and sundresses to plant themselves with little ceremony and next to no waterproof protection on the wet, concrete ground. No, excessive moisture didn’t stop this relatively small for an outdoor concert, but enthusiastic crowd from enjoying the work of Zach Condon and his backing band. Audience members swayed, spun and slow-danced, gazed at the stars, the stage and their shoes, sang along and basked in the prolonged serenade, not allowing the elements to limit their enjoyment of a truly powerful performance. Those who didn’t buy tickets refused to be excluded, rooting themselves in the nearly vacant tennis courts adjacent to the stage’s courtyard, where some (this reviewer included) frolicked, a few weaved through the nets on their bicycles, many clung to the fence separating them from the stage and simply watched.

All this enjoyment would not have been had without, of course, high quality music. With a hodgepodge ensemble including a glockenspiel, flugelhorn, upright bass and ukulele to name just a few, Beirut created a unique soundscape inspired by Balkan folk music and, to a lesser degree, electronica. This concert, though, provided only a snapshot of a frequently fluctuating and expanding lineup of instrumentalists; Beirut started as Zach Condon’s solo project, an expression of the musical interests the native New Mexican acquired while traveling through Europe after dropping out of high school. Since its formation in 2006, the band has taken on multiple players and contributors, adding greater and greater dimension to its aural landscape.

The band’s idiosyncratic performance often favored emotion over technical achievement, to great effect. Zach Condon’s tremulously demure vocals suited his poetically plaintive lyrics perfectly. An accordion, ukulele and keyboards acted as subdued leaders for a lusty horn section, which added booming heartiness to each bittersweet strain. The pairing of shakily heartfelt delivery with touchingly emotional songwriting, in well-loved singles like “Elephant Gun” and “Postcards from Italy” as well as in lesser-known ditties like “The Shrew,” made for a profoundly and joyously moving experience. The ominous storm clouds looming overhead certainly didn’t detract from the deeply affecting atmosphere of the concert, nor did it suppress the significant reaction from the audience. After each unassuming “Thank you” uttered by Condon in between songs, one could hear at least one enthusiastic “No, thank you!” from the appreciative audience, who left the park that night feeling immeasurably pleased, if a little damp.

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