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Amazonas Inexperienced Jazz Pageant, July 21-July 30, 2023, Manaus, Brazil.
On this first of three reviews, we welcome New York-based journalist Ted Panken to LJN. Ted reviews for us from the Amazonas Inexperienced Jazz Pageant, which ran from July 21 to July 30 in Manaus, the capital of the Amazonas State in Brazil. As this basic evaluate hopes to impart, the excessive programming of this distinctive occasion rivaled its milieu for range and fecundity.
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Positioned in Brazil’s equatorial inside, on the juncture of the Rio Negro and the Amazon River (also called Rio Solimões), surrounded by the rain forest, the town of Manaus, now the house of two.2 million, was based throughout the rubber growth of the 19th century, when its four-tiered, 700-seat French Revival opera home, Teatro Amazonas, was constructed. Nonetheless remoted from the remainder of Brazil by huge distance and tough terrain in 2023, Manaus — which was established as a free export and import zone in 1957 — is house to a number of hundred worldwide companies and a well-educated inhabitants, and is the capital of the State of Amazonas, whose Secretariat of Tradition sponsors an opera firm, a dance firm, a theater, a folkloric guitar firm, a symphony orchestra, a 70-voice choir, and an completed jazz large band with a magical groove. This digital island can also be house to a classy, utterly realized delicacies that can not be replicated elsewhere, primarily based on regional fish species, fruits, root greens, and grains.
The surreally spectacular Teatro Amazonas, most famously depicted within the Werner Herzog movie Fitzcarraldo, was the prime locale of the 2023 version of the Amazonas Inexperienced Jazz Pageant. Pageant Director Rui Carvalho — himself a conductor-educator-composer-drummer-anthropologist-author — curated the applications with abiding hipness, aesthetic soulfulness, and pragmatic daring, juxtaposing live shows by famend and obscure Brazilian musicians, a lot of them regional, with worldwide bands, and likewise commissioning large-scale programmatic works. Carvalho additional signified on the Amazon milieu by explicitly acknowledging “girl warriors,” i.e., Amazonas do Jazz,” by inviting quite a few teams fashioned or led by girl, as indicated by the competition brand, on which the phrase “Ellas” (“she” in Portuguese) subtitled a head shot of Ella Fitzgerald.
Carvalho introduced these parallel streams on night time one. The competition started with Amazonia Inexperienced Perpetually Suite, comprising 5 separate items by Ed Sarath that integrated a number of rhythms and timbres of Brazil, carried out by the Coral do Amazonas and the massive band,. Significantly memorable had been scorings of “Uma Vida (One Life)” and “Constatação (Discovering)” by Manaus-born poet-journalist-composer Anibal Beça (1946-2009) on which the refrain raised a joyful noise, at one level collectively improvising on a big passage earlier than resolving again to the harmonic construction.
The second act was a quintet helmed by Camille Thurman-Inexperienced together with trumpeter Wallace Roney, Junior, a chip off the previous block who performed a sequence of well-proportioned, idiomatic solos, and pianist Victor Gould, who did the identical. On 4 instrumentals, amongst them a reharmed “My Coronary heart Belongs to Daddy” and the Miles Davis-associated “So Close to, So Far,” Inexperienced performed tenor sax with broad registral vary and a husky tone that, for some purpose, evoked Stanley Turrentine crossed with Bennie Maupin. She sang one other 4 with a seemingly no–limits voice, together with a “Going out of My Head” that mashed up the types of Dianne Reeves and Betty Carter. On “Simple to Love” she opened with a bravura intro upon which, after Roney mentioned his piece, she elaborated with a number of impressed scat choruses.
Per week later, Sarath (the topic of a forthcoming LJN profile) introduced an inspiring 5-movement interpretation of the Maya Angelou poem “His Day Is Achieved,” written after the demise of Nelson Mandela, with the Amazonas Symphony, once more joined by the choir and a top-shelf Detroit-centric jazz cohort together with violinist Regina Carter, resourceful percussionist Mark Stone, bassist Marion Hayden, drummer Gayelynn McKinney, and Sarath on flugelhorn, together with Capetown-based percussionist-flautist-little devices grasp Dizu Plaatje. Earlier than a capability crowd, the strings and brass met the music’s appreciable dynamic and rhythmic challenges; the refrain projected a collective soulfulness and keenness that did justice to the topic.
On the next night, July 28, the aforementioned personnel and Brazilian pianist Cris Bloes convened because the Afrodiaspora-oriented World Jazz Collective, performing one piece per member. Not all the things suited the instrumentation, and the set started tentatively. The momentum palpably shifted midway via with Sarath’s “19/8,” picked up momentum with Carter’s “Black Backside Dance” (that includes the composer’s high-energy solo), and concluded with a highlife on which Plaatje sang and danced, projecting his abiding musicality on a number of ingeniously self-constructed and indigenous devices.
On that night’s first present, Recife-based pianist Amaro Freitas introduced his singular Afro-Brazilian-Jazz idea, taking part in primarily songs from his third CD, Sankofa, with a kinetic, breathe-as-one trio, concluding with a protracted solo piece (foreshadowing the format of an upcoming 2024 album with collaborators together with Shabaka Hutchings, Hamid Drake, Brandee Youthful and Jeff Parker) that highlighted his distinctive mix of Afrofuturistic attributes. He is aware of his post-Coltrane/Hancock/Shorter concord; creates melodies that join strongly to his viewers and narratives centered round Brazil’s African and indigenous cultures; juxtaposes fluent classical (legato) and percussive strategies that evoke Cecil Taylor and Don Pullen, augmented by homegrown ready piano implements that morph the piano right into a digital synthesizer (significantly when Freitas addressed the strings and the piano’s exoskeleton with a small shaker) and a drum choir.
Pianist-composer Ellen Rowe, Sarath’s College of Michigan colleague, introduced her “Portraits of Girls in Movement” suite by an octet propelled by Allison Miller, who locked in with the at all times on-point Marion Hayden on a sequence of well-organized shuffles, swingers, second-liners and funk tunes with good melodies and improvisation-facilitating modifications. Nadje Noordhuis evoked varied Ellington trumpeters with relentless lyricism, and tenor saxophonist Virgina Mayhew uncorked a number of recent solos, as did Felipe Salles (subbing for Rowe’s scheduled altoist, who was unable to journey), who elicited a Sanbornish tone from a borrowed horn, interacting with Miller’s varied syncopations and accents.
Himself a extremely completed tenor saxophonist and composer, Salles introduced a top-shelf sextet — Noordhuis, Natalie Cressman, trombone and vocals; Nando Michelin, piano; Keala Kaumeheiwa, bass; and Bertram Lehmann on drums — to play reductions of concerned, extremely satisfying items from his completed new album House Is Right here, which options bespoke “tones parallel” to Paquito D’Rivera, Melissa Aldana, Yosvany Terry, Jacques Schwarz-Bart, Chico Pinheiro, Magos Herrera, Sofia Rei, and Noordhuis for 19-piece orchestra, the themes primarily based on interviews with the soloists.
Salles introduced one other 5 numbers culled from totally different factors alongside his timeline with the Amazonas Massive Band (performed by Maestro Carvalho), which nailed all of the complexities. Earlier within the set, Carvalho danced the band via a number of of his inventive, Gil Evans-ish charts on “Chega de Saudade,” “Desafinado,” “Dindi,” and a number of other others, together with a number of with native singer Márcia Siqueira, whose soulful contralto evoked Leny Andrade, who’d handed away earlier that day. Previous them, one other completed Amazon-region guitarist, Ismail Nascimento, performed primarily unique songs with a robust trio propelled by a very good drummer (didn’t catch his identify) who had an array of samba-jazz rhythms at his disposal.
Salles’ sextet live performance adopted a terrific “straight forward” quartet set by guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg (with Roy Haynes’ pianist of alternative Martin Bejerano and drummer Colin Stranahan) who concluded with a vertiginously metric-modulated, multi-perspectival tour via “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” Bejerano remained on the town to play trio with the long-lasting Havana-born drummer Ignacio Berroa (Dizzy Gillespie, Gonzalo Rubalcaba) and bassist Edward Pérez, utterly in synch on a definitively swinging set, fueled by maestro Berroa’s elegant metric modulations and Bejerano’s kinetic improvisations on bebop and Cuban vocabulary. Earlier within the day, Berroa introduced a grasp class on his lived and familial expertise of a Cuban music timeline spanning Barbarito Diez via Gonzalo Rubalcaba. I realized rather a lot.
They adopted São Paolo pianist-singer Anette Camargo’s tribute to Tânia Maria’s hits from the Seventies and ’80s. Brazilian witnesses, intimate with the repertoire, reserved judgment. To my monolingual ears, Ms. Camargo is a dynamic performer, a two-handed piano participant who can go percussive or rubato, with a lot bebop and Cuban vocabulary at her disposal. Her supple, highly effective voice spans a number of registers. The drummer was too loud, however she interacted fantastically with the resourceful percussionist Danilo Moura. For some purpose, I felt severe Dorothy Donegan vibrations.
On the earlier night, tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana introduced her touring quartet, together with interactive pianist Lex Korten and drummer Kush Abadey, who performed with great sensitivity, nuance, pulse and instinct. Maestro Aldana’s beautiful tone traversed all of the registers as she patiently developed her themes — the vibe, roughly (forgive the pithiness), was Jarrett’s ’70s European quartet meets twenty first century Wayne Shorter.
That Aldana went on pretty late, to a sparse viewers, was unlucky. The home had been full for an intense solo live performance by São Paolo pianist Heloisa Fernandez, performing eight elegant, intense originals that evoked a taste I’ll summarize as Villa Lobos meets Jarrett meets Mehldau. The patrons remained in place for an entertaining set by Quinteto Circulation, fronted by singer-bassist Aline Fagan, who successfully interpreted primarily American requirements and some Brazilian numbers with a decent band together with Marcelo Figueiredo on piano, guitar and bass and Neil Armstrong Jr. on guitar.
For the penultimate night, Maestro Carvalho instigated the first-ever piano duo live performance by Eliane Elias and her early mentor, Amilton Godoy, an iconic determine in MPB for his contributions to the Zimbo Trio from 1963 to 2002, and a pioneer in Brazilian piano expression. It was a tour de pressure, traversing George Shearing’s “Conception,” Bud Powell’s “Bouncing with Bud,” Chick Corea’s “Armando’s Rhumba,” a number of Godoy compositions, and Brazilian classics whose melodies I acknowledged however whose titles I didn’t, which Godoy carried out after they had been new, regularly with Elis Regina on varied collaborations between 1964 to 1966. The live performance was recorded and filmed, and will probably be a worthy addition to Elias’ distinguished canon of duos with Herbie Hancock and, extra not too long ago, Chucho Valdés and Chick Corea.
On the ultimate night, Elias returned with a quartet (bassist Marc Johnson, drummer Mauricio Zotarelli, and a very good guitarist) to sing a program of Brazilian requirements, signifying on the lyrics with expansive solos that transpired to her signature left hand comping, refracting the percolating samba pulse of Cesar Camargo Mariano with the pressing swing really feel of submit Bud Powell American piano lineage. In a stunning piece of theater in direction of the tip that evoked the early days of bossa nova, she reworked the nook stage-left right into a São Paolo front room, convening the band behind her for a number of intimate items, with the ever-supportive Zotarelli on a single snare drum. A bit later, she invited Randy Brecker onstage to play pithy duos on Fat Waller’s “Don’t Let It Trouble You” and a Brazilian commonplace.
Brecker, now 78, who’d arrived in Manaus after a 24-hour journey day, performed a gap set of his good-old-good-ones with the Carvalhos-conducted large band, which nailed Vince Mendoza’s well-known charts of “Some Skunk Funk” and “Straphanger,” in addition to “First Tune of the Set,” “Tijuca” and “Shanghigh”. Launching off intense samba-funk beats from the world-class trapset-percussion group of Airton Silva and Knison Ribiero, Brecker discovered recent issues to play, increasing the flugelhorn’s vary with nonchalant savoir faire (assume Miles Davis rhythm-dancing executed with Invoice Dixon prolonged strategies), elevating his fist to acknowledge sturdy solos by alto saxophonist Ênio Prieto and the wonderful guitarist Aldenor Honorato. Visitor tenor saxophonists Salles (“Skunk Funk”) and Rodrigo Ursala (“Straphanger”) admirably channeled Michael Brecker, which is saying one thing.
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