Things we like: Humanization 4tet, Patty Waters
Two months into quarantine, with our state government giving the go-ahead (unwisely, I think) for businesses to reopen before our infection rate is under control, a package in the mail from Clean Feed Records in Lisbon brought some surprising wonderment from close to home, reminding me of some days and shows gone by.
It's hard to believe that it's been almost two years since Portuguese guitarist Luis Lopes' Humanization 4tet played shows in Dallas and Fort Worth that I attended, in the company of good friends after spending some time off the set. The Dallas show -- the group's first together in seven years -- was a tad shaky, but things were sounding more cohesive by the time they rolled into Fort Worth, with three more shows under their belts, and by the time they entered NOLA's Marigny Studios a week later, they were firing on all cylinders. Believe, Believe, the document of their interaction, reminds me of nothing so much as the duet performance by Nels Cline and Julian Lage that I witnessed at the Kessler in Oak Cliff back in 2015. It was the last night of their tour, and from the opening notes of their set, the two guitarists sounded like they were resuming a conversation that had been interrupted moments before. That's the vibe on this recording, too.
All four musicians in Humanization 4tet -- besides the leader, that'd be Lisbon-based saxophonist Rodrigo Amado and a pair of estimable brothers from Oak Cliff, Aaron Gonzalez on bass and Stefan Gonzalez on drums -- are agile improvisers capable of playing with great intensity, which is in ample evidence here. Just listen to Amado's composition "Replicate I," where Stefan's snare splatters beats to match Lopes' shooting sparks of Sharrockian skronk -- but there are some surprises, as when they open the proceedings with the bluesy strains of "Eddie Harris" (a tune by bassist Bill Lee -- father of film director Spike Lee -- that former Mingus tenor man Clifford Jordan cut for Strata East in 1973) before exploding into Stefan's "Tranquilidad Alborotadora" (which the Gonzalez brothers previously recorded with both Yells At Eels and Unconscious Collective). Perhaps the best moment here is Lopes' "She," an Ornette-like dirge that finds all four men in a more ruminative frame of mind.
A couple hundred miles further south from here, Houston's Nameless Sound provides an invaluable function, bringing world-class creative artists to H-Town to perform and teach in public schools, community centers, and homeless shelters. (Austin's Epistrophy Arts has a similar charge.) Founding director David Dove is a gifted improviser in his own right, whom I once saw point the bell of his trombone at the floor of Fort Worth's Firehouse Gallery to use the building's pier-and-beam foundation as a resonating chamber -- making a speaker, as it were, of the house. Back in April 2018, Nameless Sound brought pioneering avant-jazz vocalist Patty Waters to town, fronting a trio led by her 1960s ESP-Disk label mate Burton Greene, with drummer Barry Altschul and bassist Mario Pavone. An Evening in Houston captures their performance.
It's been over five decades (!) since Waters astonished listeners with her primal scream rendition of "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair," taking the song places even Nina Simone never imagined and blazing a trail for vocal daredevils like Linda Sharrock and Yoko Ono to follow. These days she eschews such stratospheric explorations, but her voice retains its expressive quality in the same way as Billie Holiday's did when all she had left was her phrasing (which was all she needed, at the end of the day), or Joni Mitchell's did after years of cigarettes obliterated her high range. Her Houston set list pays tribute to Holiday with versions of "Strange Fruit" and "Loverman," and revisits a couple of items from Waters' 1966 College Tour album ("Hush Little Baby with Ba Ha Bad" and "Wild is the Wind") that demonstrate her capacity to convey anguish is undiminished. Throughout, the intimacy of her delivery is a great strength.
It's hard to believe that it's been almost two years since Portuguese guitarist Luis Lopes' Humanization 4tet played shows in Dallas and Fort Worth that I attended, in the company of good friends after spending some time off the set. The Dallas show -- the group's first together in seven years -- was a tad shaky, but things were sounding more cohesive by the time they rolled into Fort Worth, with three more shows under their belts, and by the time they entered NOLA's Marigny Studios a week later, they were firing on all cylinders. Believe, Believe, the document of their interaction, reminds me of nothing so much as the duet performance by Nels Cline and Julian Lage that I witnessed at the Kessler in Oak Cliff back in 2015. It was the last night of their tour, and from the opening notes of their set, the two guitarists sounded like they were resuming a conversation that had been interrupted moments before. That's the vibe on this recording, too.
All four musicians in Humanization 4tet -- besides the leader, that'd be Lisbon-based saxophonist Rodrigo Amado and a pair of estimable brothers from Oak Cliff, Aaron Gonzalez on bass and Stefan Gonzalez on drums -- are agile improvisers capable of playing with great intensity, which is in ample evidence here. Just listen to Amado's composition "Replicate I," where Stefan's snare splatters beats to match Lopes' shooting sparks of Sharrockian skronk -- but there are some surprises, as when they open the proceedings with the bluesy strains of "Eddie Harris" (a tune by bassist Bill Lee -- father of film director Spike Lee -- that former Mingus tenor man Clifford Jordan cut for Strata East in 1973) before exploding into Stefan's "Tranquilidad Alborotadora" (which the Gonzalez brothers previously recorded with both Yells At Eels and Unconscious Collective). Perhaps the best moment here is Lopes' "She," an Ornette-like dirge that finds all four men in a more ruminative frame of mind.
A couple hundred miles further south from here, Houston's Nameless Sound provides an invaluable function, bringing world-class creative artists to H-Town to perform and teach in public schools, community centers, and homeless shelters. (Austin's Epistrophy Arts has a similar charge.) Founding director David Dove is a gifted improviser in his own right, whom I once saw point the bell of his trombone at the floor of Fort Worth's Firehouse Gallery to use the building's pier-and-beam foundation as a resonating chamber -- making a speaker, as it were, of the house. Back in April 2018, Nameless Sound brought pioneering avant-jazz vocalist Patty Waters to town, fronting a trio led by her 1960s ESP-Disk label mate Burton Greene, with drummer Barry Altschul and bassist Mario Pavone. An Evening in Houston captures their performance.
It's been over five decades (!) since Waters astonished listeners with her primal scream rendition of "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair," taking the song places even Nina Simone never imagined and blazing a trail for vocal daredevils like Linda Sharrock and Yoko Ono to follow. These days she eschews such stratospheric explorations, but her voice retains its expressive quality in the same way as Billie Holiday's did when all she had left was her phrasing (which was all she needed, at the end of the day), or Joni Mitchell's did after years of cigarettes obliterated her high range. Her Houston set list pays tribute to Holiday with versions of "Strange Fruit" and "Loverman," and revisits a couple of items from Waters' 1966 College Tour album ("Hush Little Baby with Ba Ha Bad" and "Wild is the Wind") that demonstrate her capacity to convey anguish is undiminished. Throughout, the intimacy of her delivery is a great strength.
posted by stashdauber at 4:28 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home