REVIEW: ALICE RUSSELL, DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET, AL DIMEOLA WORLD SINFONIA
JUNE 30, JULY 1 & 2
TORONTO JAZZ FESTIVAL
Alice Russell is a cheerful blonde imp with a powerhouse voice that belies her physical stature. It can growl, soar and be intimate equally.
I discovered her on a compilation of new music (A New Groove) released a couple of years ago by the excellent world music label Putumayo (Canada was represented by K-Os). Russell's contribution, High Up on the Hook, was one of the best out of a very strong selection of material and it led me to her first album, My Favourite Letters. But hearing her on disc did not prepare me for her live performances.
Russell is a superb performer, and she and her extremely tight band radiate energy. They smoked the club where they appeared both last year and this, though the shows were different.
Last year's concert was split into two sets (sold as separate shows, but in fact audience members who had bought tickets to the first set were allowed to stay through the second). Russell had only one album out then, so there was repetition between the sets, her songs augmented by tunes from the Quantic Soul Orchestra, a group with which Russell has also done occasional vocal duties.
This year, with two albums to her credit, there was one solid set, obviously with a wider range of material to draw on. Unfortunately, the sound system seemed worse this year, with the club speakers distorting, but the band's enthusiasm was so infectious it didn't seem to matter.
Russell and her violin player, Mike Simmonds, are British and speak like Jamie Oliver. Two other band members were Americans and the keyboardist was a Canadian. Russell's producer, TM Juke, who was in the lineup last year, was missing from this year's group.
Stylistically, the second album, Pot of Gold, has more of a throbbing dance beat than the first, though still shot through with very deep soul roots. Simmonds told me after the show that the finishing touches are being put on a third album next month.
The highlight for me, both years, was the song Munkaroo from the first album. "Soft as the tail of a Munkaroo", Russell sings and I once e-mailed her agent. I'd looked on the Internet, in dictionaries and encyclopedias and could find no reference to such a thing. What the heck is a Munkaroo anyway, I asked.
He forwarded the following reply from Alice: "Some people just want to live in a world of facts. I will put him straight - or wonky. A Munkaroo is a mythical animal...not many have seen him...and he has a tail. That's all Mike needs to know (as Munkaroos are also shy)."
Interestingly perceptive. Since I spent my career as a journalist, which Alice didn't know, I did live in a world of facts.
1959 was a watershed year for jazz, with the release of five now-legendary albums: Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come, Mingus Ah Um by Charles Mingus (which contains his iconic Goodbye Pork Pie Hat), John Coltrane's Giant Steps, and Time Out by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. It was the first album I ever bought (though not in 1959 - I was too young).
Brubeck's brain-teasingly exotic time signatures gave his music a cerebral quality but also a distinct hipness which makes this album sound modern even now. I always thought Time Out and Antonio Carlos Jobim's Brazilian jazz were the musical epitome of cool.
At that time, though, Brubeck and his group looked like university professors. Today, the members of the quartet have changed and the sound of the band is quite different, largely due to the change in texture of one of its leading voices, the saxophone. The sax sound now is harder than the ethereal lilt of Paul Desmond's instrument.
It's amazing that Brubeck is still performing. At 89, he's tall, thin, looking and sounding
somewhat frail. He was helped up to and off the stage, yet he kept getting up from the piano between numbers to regale us with witty stories and observations. His playing is as assured as ever. There was never a moment's hesitation in anything he did, his inprovisation was masterful, he playfully threw bits of other songs into numbers, and he slid around among those complex time signatures with an ease that had the other members of the group shaking their heads and smiling in admiration.
The concert started off with several slow, almost dirge-like numbers. But the tempo picked up and about half-way through, Brubeck brought out one of his sons, Matt, a cellist who quit touring, Brubeck told us, because he's 6' 8" tall and found it was just getting too tiresome trying to sleep on tour buses. He's teaching jazz improvisation for stringed instruments at Toronto's York University. Then, displaying he's lost none of his cool, Brubeck introduced the next number in which Matt would start out playing the melody. "Then, he's going to improvise and that will set him free", said the old man with a chuckle.
This concert was not by any means a greatest hits recital. Only the last two numbers were from that landmark recording of 50 years ago: Three to Get Ready and the finale, Take Five, the first jazz tune ever to sell a million copies. The audience erupted as soon as it heard the instantly recognizable piano opening but that was as far as familiarity went. In good jazz tradition, the song is a framework for improvisation, so on Wednesday night, we all ended up hearing essentially a new piece.
The local connection continued the next evening when Al DiMeola got up on stage and introduced his first number - written for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra which, he said, finally really meant something now that he was saying it in Toronto (the band is on a world tour).
DiMeola was a 19-year-old whiz kid guitarist when he joined Chick Corea's Return to Forever in the '70s. He's since become a guitar god to a lot of people, mainly guys, who idolize him for the electronic fusion jazz of the period. He has since moved on, but it's a phenomenon he acknowledged in an interview in the Toronto Star, saying fusion was primarily a male head-banger thing that women had difficulty getting into. From my own observations over the decades, I'd have to concur.
That demographic made up a substantial - and the most vocal - part of the audience. Now middle-aged men who discovered DiMeola in university and were hungry for those blindingly fast, searing electric guitar runs. They wolf-whistled and hooted like they were at a sporting event. Some called out the titles of cherished past hits. A lot of the time, audiences don't seem content to hear what a musician is doing now. They want it to be 35 years ago.
DiMeola was having none of it (until the very end). This tour was all about Argentinian tango-
infused jazz, the latest incarnation of his World Sinfonia group. The inspiration for this music is the deceased Argentinian accordian player, Astor Piazzolla, whom DiMeola credits with changing the course of his musical life. When he explained this mid-show to the audience, there was a roar of approval and DiMeola expressed his admiration for our musical knowledge. "I'm impressed," he said. "In the States, they wouldn't know [who Piazzolla was]." I suspect, though that those audience members knew about Piazzolla from DiMeola's first World Sinfonia, and not because their music collections are respositories of the Argentinian's own albums.
DiMeola has created a Latin-infused, feiry, comlex jazz worlds away from the rocking fusion of his past. He played mainly acoustic guitar and he has lost none of his dazzling technical viruosity. In fact, I think he's got better.
He was also visibly impressed when he launched into the show's closer, Mediterranean Sundance. The crowd leapt to its feet and stood for the entire number, DiMeola beaming at the recognition. He went away, I think, with the impression that Toronto audiences are not only enthusiastic and appreciative (a feeling that seems to be shared by most musicians who play this city) but also knowledgable.
JUNE 30, JULY 1 & 2
TORONTO JAZZ FESTIVAL
Alice Russell is a cheerful blonde imp with a powerhouse voice that belies her physical stature. It can growl, soar and be intimate equally.
I discovered her on a compilation of new music (A New Groove) released a couple of years ago by the excellent world music label Putumayo (Canada was represented by K-Os). Russell's contribution, High Up on the Hook, was one of the best out of a very strong selection of material and it led me to her first album, My Favourite Letters. But hearing her on disc did not prepare me for her live performances.
Russell is a superb performer, and she and her extremely tight band radiate energy. They smoked the club where they appeared both last year and this, though the shows were different.
Last year's concert was split into two sets (sold as separate shows, but in fact audience members who had bought tickets to the first set were allowed to stay through the second). Russell had only one album out then, so there was repetition between the sets, her songs augmented by tunes from the Quantic Soul Orchestra, a group with which Russell has also done occasional vocal duties.
This year, with two albums to her credit, there was one solid set, obviously with a wider range of material to draw on. Unfortunately, the sound system seemed worse this year, with the club speakers distorting, but the band's enthusiasm was so infectious it didn't seem to matter.
Stylistically, the second album, Pot of Gold, has more of a throbbing dance beat than the first, though still shot through with very deep soul roots. Simmonds told me after the show that the finishing touches are being put on a third album next month.
The highlight for me, both years, was the song Munkaroo from the first album. "Soft as the tail of a Munkaroo", Russell sings and I once e-mailed her agent. I'd looked on the Internet, in dictionaries and encyclopedias and could find no reference to such a thing. What the heck is a Munkaroo anyway, I asked.
He forwarded the following reply from Alice: "Some people just want to live in a world of facts. I will put him straight - or wonky. A Munkaroo is a mythical animal...not many have seen him...and he has a tail. That's all Mike needs to know (as Munkaroos are also shy)."
Interestingly perceptive. Since I spent my career as a journalist, which Alice didn't know, I did live in a world of facts.
Brubeck's brain-teasingly exotic time signatures gave his music a cerebral quality but also a distinct hipness which makes this album sound modern even now. I always thought Time Out and Antonio Carlos Jobim's Brazilian jazz were the musical epitome of cool.
At that time, though, Brubeck and his group looked like university professors. Today, the members of the quartet have changed and the sound of the band is quite different, largely due to the change in texture of one of its leading voices, the saxophone. The sax sound now is harder than the ethereal lilt of Paul Desmond's instrument.
It's amazing that Brubeck is still performing. At 89, he's tall, thin, looking and sounding
The concert started off with several slow, almost dirge-like numbers. But the tempo picked up and about half-way through, Brubeck brought out one of his sons, Matt, a cellist who quit touring, Brubeck told us, because he's 6' 8" tall and found it was just getting too tiresome trying to sleep on tour buses. He's teaching jazz improvisation for stringed instruments at Toronto's York University. Then, displaying he's lost none of his cool, Brubeck introduced the next number in which Matt would start out playing the melody. "Then, he's going to improvise and that will set him free", said the old man with a chuckle.
This concert was not by any means a greatest hits recital. Only the last two numbers were from that landmark recording of 50 years ago: Three to Get Ready and the finale, Take Five, the first jazz tune ever to sell a million copies. The audience erupted as soon as it heard the instantly recognizable piano opening but that was as far as familiarity went. In good jazz tradition, the song is a framework for improvisation, so on Wednesday night, we all ended up hearing essentially a new piece.
DiMeola was a 19-year-old whiz kid guitarist when he joined Chick Corea's Return to Forever in the '70s. He's since become a guitar god to a lot of people, mainly guys, who idolize him for the electronic fusion jazz of the period. He has since moved on, but it's a phenomenon he acknowledged in an interview in the Toronto Star, saying fusion was primarily a male head-banger thing that women had difficulty getting into. From my own observations over the decades, I'd have to concur.
That demographic made up a substantial - and the most vocal - part of the audience. Now middle-aged men who discovered DiMeola in university and were hungry for those blindingly fast, searing electric guitar runs. They wolf-whistled and hooted like they were at a sporting event. Some called out the titles of cherished past hits. A lot of the time, audiences don't seem content to hear what a musician is doing now. They want it to be 35 years ago.
DiMeola was having none of it (until the very end). This tour was all about Argentinian tango-
DiMeola has created a Latin-infused, feiry, comlex jazz worlds away from the rocking fusion of his past. He played mainly acoustic guitar and he has lost none of his dazzling technical viruosity. In fact, I think he's got better.
He was also visibly impressed when he launched into the show's closer, Mediterranean Sundance. The crowd leapt to its feet and stood for the entire number, DiMeola beaming at the recognition. He went away, I think, with the impression that Toronto audiences are not only enthusiastic and appreciative (a feeling that seems to be shared by most musicians who play this city) but also knowledgable.
To see more of Alice Russell check out her you tube channel www.youtube.com/alicerussellrocks
Posted by: James | July 10, 2009 at 07:12 PM