"How to Listen to Jazz" by Ted Gioia - The Wall Street Journal Review

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

I Hear a Rhapsody

Want to listen to ‘the most joyous sound invented during the entire course of twentieth-century music? Put on some New Orleans jazz.

HOW TO LISTEN TO JAZZ

By Ted Gioia

Basic, 253 pages, $24.99

A Review By

JOHN CHECK

May 19, 2016, The Wall Street Journal

“What’s the best way to listen to a Charlie Parker solo? Ted Gioia suggests singing along. In his satisfying new book, “How to Listen to Jazz,” Mr. Gioia recommends trying to “internalize” Parker’s style, which stood out for its virtuosity and angularity, by memorizing and singing even a small passage of one of his recordings. Such mimicry is precisely the course of study that was undertaken by the saxophonist himself when he was growing up in Kansas City and used to listen to recordings of Lester Young’s solos again and again, striving to copy them note for note. This virtual apprenticeship, as Mr. Gioia put it in a previous book, marked a “turning point in Parker’s musical development.”

A radiantly accomplished writer, a busy blogger and a pianist who has recorded several albums, Mr. Gioia conveys his passion for the music with vivid description and shrewd judgments, concentrating principally on the recordings made by jazz musicians rather than on details of their personal lives. (He writes about those in his “History of Jazz,” now in its second edition.) “Listening,” he holds, “is the foundation; everything else builds out of this starting point.”

Mr. Gioia traces the evolution of jazz styles and illuminates what is characteristic of each. New Orleans jazz, for instance, is marked by a “spontaneous counterpoint” of trumpet, trombone and clarinet against a three- or four-piece rhythm section. Issuing from this combination is “the most joyous sound invented during the entire course of twentieth-century music.” At first New Orleans jazz was a “team sport,” with each instrumentalist playing a more or less set role: a Joe “King” Oliver taking the melody on cornet; a Johnny Dodds supplying an embellishing line on clarinet; a Kid Ory pumping out an obbligato on trombone. Louis Armstrong changed all this. After he emerged in the early 1920s, jazz accorded greater emphasis to feats of individual daring.

Arising in the late 1920s, Chicago jazz, by contrast, is more “streamlined” and “relaxed.” A saxophone may replace the trombone in the lineup, and the drummer will sometimes play a shuffle rhythm, with each beat of the bar divided into long and short parts, a perfect inducement to dancing. Bix Beiderbecke, the golden-toned cornetist, was the leading figure in Chicago jazz, though saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer, too, merits mention. He influenced Lester Young just as Young influenced Parker.

Charlie Parker was, of course, the fountainhead of bebop (or modern) jazz, “a style that took no prisoners and made extreme demands on the performers as well as the audience.” If the paths of jazz and popular music intersected during the swing era (1935-45), they began to diverge during the bebop era. Jazz became increasingly a cognoscenti interest.

“How to Listen to Jazz” includes profiles of nine innovators who made lasting contributions to the music. These range from Armstrong (who “had the biggest impact of anyone”) to Billie Holiday (whose virtuosity was less flashy and “more qualitative and psychological”) to Duke Ellington (a pianist whose true instrument was his orchestra) to Ornette Coleman (who was spectacularly ill-served by critics and champions alike). Each profile concludes with a summary of select recordings showing the artist at peak power.

One of the best features of the book is a set of “music maps,” as Mr. Gioia calls them, that serve as a guide to individual recordings. The structure of Jelly Roll Morton’s “Sidewalk Blues” (1926) is shown to consist of nine isolable parts of varying length, each designated by letter name, along with a short description of what is taking place internally. Because of the pacing and juxtaposition of the parts, “Sidewalk Blues” produces a “dramatic moment of disjunction” near its midpoint that nevertheless sounds both “natural and aesthetically satisfying.” So good are these music maps that it is too bad there aren’t more of them.

The pleasure of “How to Listen to Jazz” is diluted slightly by the author’s tendency to denigrate specialized knowledge. “The deepest aspect of jazz music has absolutely nothing to do with music theory,” he writes. “Zero. Zilch.” But certain insights about structure and even meaning are obtainable only through the observation of specifically musical phenomena; for him to brush aside the associated vocabulary as “jargon” does a disservice to the complexity of the art.

That said, Mr. Gioia minimizes theory in order to maximize artistic personality, a topic about which he writes clearly and well. “Lesser musicians,” he notes, “. . . sometimes sound as if it’s the song that is playing them, rather than they who are playing the song.” By contrast, “with the master artist you never have any doubt who is in charge.” Drawing on his experience as a jazz pianist, Mr. Gioia mentions that if he met musicians before a performance, he “could frequently predict how they would improvise. “Their personality,” he concludes, “. . . got transferred into how they approached their solos.”

A point made in the last chapter is easy to overlook: The greats of jazz past were in their day working musicians, and what is preserved on record is a slight fraction of all the music they made. As someone with an admitted craving for new sounds, Mr. Gioia implores his readers to make the effort to listen to as much live music as possible. Jazz musicians of today are, “in many ways, better trained than their predecessors, especially in terms of assimilating techniques in a systematic and codified manner.” To this end, he includes an appendix listing 150 jazz masters at the beginning or middle of their careers. Regardless of the shape assumed by jazz to come, “you,” he writes, “will not be bored.””

[Mr. Check is an associate professor of music at the University of Central Missouri.]

Rewinding with Max, Alberto and Frits

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Rewind is a co-release from Via Veneto Jazz and Jando Music. Italian saxophonist Max Ionata is among the leading players in the contemporary jazz scene and released his thirteenth album Rewind; his fourth recording produced by Via Veneto Jazz. With Rewind Max Ionata marks a turning point and repositions himself at the head of an entirely different ensemble: a Hammond trio. The group features an exceptional array of talents, comprised of master musicians of international stature with whom he established a remarkable synergy during numerous concerts in the past few years; namely the organist Alberto Gurrisi and the premier Dutch drummer Frits Landesbergen - also considered one of the best vibraphonists in Europe. This album truly represents a rewind - a transition veering from his traditional path - where Ionata starts anew with an abundance of creativity and bold stylistic innovations. An energetic swerve following an intense artistic career during which Max Ionata performed both as leader and as a special guest at international jazz festivals and clubs, collaborating with the greatest musicians in the world. The album contains two jazz standards, one song composed by Frits Landesbergen and arranged by Max Ionata, and six original by Ionata.

Of the nine songs in the album, six are autobiographical: "Drum" is a tribute to the great Italian trumpeter Marco Tamburini, with whom Max shared key moments in his musical career; "Bob's Mood" is inspired by Bob Mintzer and his unique style of composing; "Mr G.T." (with Amedeo Ariano at the drums and Frits Landesbergen on the vibraphone) is dedicated to his friend and colleague Gege' Telesforo, who inspired Max with his unique way of experiencing the stage and with his passion for funk. "North Sea" is a ballad, played on the soprano sax, enthused by the coastal landscapes; "Sunflower" stems from the effect of the intense colors of Van Gogh's sunflowers. Antonio Carlos Jobim's pulsing and rhythmic "Chovendo Na Roseira" and George Coleman's "Amsterdam After Dark" are a few featured covers. "At Vic's" is written by Frits Landebergen and dedicated to one of the greatest musicians in jazz, Victor Feldman.

http://www.forcedexposure.com/Artists/IONATA.MAX.html

The editorial staff tries hard [sometimes, perhaps too hard?] to find catchy titles for its blog postings.

This one gets it name from Rewind  (VVJ 109) the title of a soon-to-be-released CD by one of our favorite Italian Jazz saxophonists - Max Ionata -  on which he is joined by Frits Landesbergen the Dutch drummer and vibraphonist and Hammond Organist Alberto Gurrisi. This is his fourth recording produced by Jando Music | Via Veneto Jazz.

As is the case with his previous recordings, with Max, the swing is the thing.

Max uses a number of sophisticated devices to keep the set fresh for the listener including a variety of tempos, song structures and rhythmic devices such as playing the initial choruses in 2/4 before switching to 4/4 to really propel things forward on the solos they take on At Vic's.

Nobody “teaches” you this stuff. You’ve got to have “big ears,” listen closely and know how to apply what you are picking up on.

Max is a monster tenor player: technique to spare; a big, bossy, blustery tenor tone; a sense of swing reminiscent of the great “big horn” players of the past.

Ionata is so hard to classify, that once I stopped trying, I recognized him for who he is - a true original on the instrument with his own voice and his own style of improvisation. You’ve heard it all before and yet you haven’t. He is unique and he impresses with each and every song rendering and improvised solo.

If Max is reminiscent of anyone with his hard-charging, finger-poppin’, and full-bodied sound, the late Dexter Gordon’s name comes to mind. But Max puts things together using modern harmonies in a completely different manner than Dex. He has very much become his own man on his instrument. Respectful of the tradition, but still charging ahead to put his own stamp on it.

I had written about Frits - a dynamite Jazz vibraphonist, drummer and percussionist - previously when I posted a review of his Dynavibes Mons CD [MR 874-794] to the blog. Joining Frits on that recording are Larry Fuller, piano, Lynn Seaton, bass and Jeff Hamilton on drums.

Born in Voorschoten in 1961, Frits, whose father is an amateur guitarist and bassist, became interested in jazz around the age of 12 and, at 14, decided to become a professional musician. He studied at Amsterdam Conservatory, graduated in 1985, having studied tympani, classical snare drum, vibraphone and marimba, and began working extensively in Holland both as a drummer and vibraphonist. He also developed his skills as a composer and arranger.

Says Frits. "I enjoy having the possibility to work both as a drummer and as a vibraphonist because in the one case you are primarily an accompanist, giving support to the soloists and helping to keep things swinging and in the other case you are a soloist and have the opportunity to express your musical ideas and personality."

His musical associates over the years have included Rita Keys, Pirn Jacobs, the Rosenberg Trio, Madeline Bell and Louis van Dijk. He has also performed with Georgie Fame, Milt Jackson, Toots Thielemans, Eddie Daniels, Scott Hamilton, Barney Kessel, Joe Pass and Buddy de Franco, among others, and has appeared with the London Symphony Orchestra, the WDR Big Band and the Metropole Orchestra.

His performance with Milt Jackson was for a television show, and Frits recalls: "It was very exciting to be able to play and talk with Milt for three days in a row. That's a memory I'll treasure."

Rewind was presented “live” with an Italian tour that kicks off on May 10 in Rome, at the BeBop Jazz Club, and will then play dates in several cities including Pescara (Friday, May 13 at the Conservatory Auditorium “Luisa D’Annunzio”) and Milan, Sunday May 15 at the Blue Note.

Here are excerpts from the Via Vento Jazz/Jano Music press release:

“With  “rewind”  Max Ionata marks a turning point and repositions himself at the head of an entirely different ensemble: a Hammond Organ trio. The group features an exceptional array of talents, comprised of master musicians of international stature with whom he established a remarkable synergy during the numerous concerts in the past few years; namely the organist Alberto Gurrisi and the premier Dutch drummer Frits Landesbergen - also considered one of the best vibraphonists in Europe.

This album truly represents a “rewind” - a transition veering from his traditional path - where Ionata starts anew with an abundance of creativity and bold stylistic innovations.  An energetic change-of-direction following the intense early years of an artistic career during which Max Ionata performed both as leader and as special guest at the world’s most important jazz festivals and clubs, collaborating with the greatest musicians in the world.

 

The album contains two jazz standards, one song composed by Frits Landesbergen and arranged by Max Ionata, and six original songs Ionata composed at the piano in August 2015, at his house in Abruzzo. Max has reached a time during which he is intensifying his musical research, starting with his great passion for American jazz, particularly modern hard bop, and unveiling new layers of that musical genius and intuitive melodic sense that distinguishes his music.”  

Order information about the new CD can be located by going here. It is also available as an audio CD from www.amazon.com

Other websites that contain information about the principals involved in Rewind are http://www.maxionata.com/ www.jandomusic.com and www.viavenetojazz.it

The following video features the group on Frits At Vic’s as arranged by Max Ionata.

Cees Slinger (1929 - 2007) Jazz Pianist - Band leader - Composer - Arranger

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

During his lifetime [1929-2007], Cees [pronounced “Case”] Slinger was considered to be among  the most important of European-based modern jazz pianists.

His sometimes unconventional, but always melodic, hard-swinging style of playing and his ability to adapt himself to the soloists he accompanied gave him wide acclaim, both in his native country Holland and internationally. As a result, during his long career, Cees has played with innumerable American and European jazz greats.

Cees got his start with the Diamond Five a hard bop combo he founded which featured Cees Small [trumpet/valve trombone], Harry Verbeke [tenor sax], Jacques Schols [bass] and John Engels [drums]. Their base throughout most of the 1950’s was the Scheherazade nightclub in Amsterdam which they also owned.

Over the years, Cees accompanied many of the Jazz greats including Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie.

In 1976 and 1985, Cees made two extensive European tours with the legendary drummer Philly Joe Jones the second one including tenorist Clifford Jordan and resulting in the album Sling Shot! (Timeless). In 1987 another European tour followed, this time with the Mingus Dynasty band.  

From 1979-1989 Cees was teaching piano and conducting ensemble classes at the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music. In 1996 he received the prestigious Bird Award at the North Sea Jazz festival

Among the many recordings Cees has made are: Ben Webster: At Work in Europe,Dexter Gordon Live at the Amsterdam Paradiso and 'Live at the North Sea Jazz Festival with his own Cees Slinger Octet, a group which played a series of very successful concerts in California. All of his recordings are available on CD and you can locate more information about them and about Cees by visiting a website that his wife Hilde maintains at www.ceesslinger.nl.

During the closing years of his life, Cees’ activities included being musical director for singer Silvia Droste, writing for and leading the Cees Slinger Octet and being pianist/arranger for 'Bart's Bones', a 4-trombone group led by Bart van Lier.

Here’s what drummer Eric Ineke has to say about him in his autobiography, The Ultimate Sideman:

CEES SLINGER

Another legend of the Dutch Jazzscene was pianist Cees Slinger. It took some time before we got to play more frequently with each other, but fortunately it happened in the last ten years of his life when he asked me for a gig that was supposed to be a quintet with trumpet and tenor sax (The Buddies in Soul), but the trumpet player could not make it, so it became two tenors instead. The gig was great so the 'The Two Tenor Case' was born, which eventually became 'The Three Tenor Case' with bass player Frans van Geest.

Like the name said, the group involved three of the best tenor players in Holland: Sjoerd Dijkhuizen, Simon Rigter and the teacher of them both, Ferdinand Povel. So you can speak of two generations of tenor players. But before the band became a 'Three Tenor Case (adding Ferdinand) we recorded a live CD together with Slide Hampton for Blue Jack records on a cold winter night in December 2002 in the shortlived Jazzclub Pannonica in The Hague.

It was the pre-opening night and during the rehearsals and sound check in the afternoon, the heating system was still not working and the workers were still decorating the club. It was like trying to play in a refrigerator! They were ready just in time and that same night the heating system was working and the club was packed and the band was swinging.

As a pianist, Cees was not a so-called virtuoso but a wonderful accompanist in his own right who knew millions of songs by heart. Singers like Greetje Kauffeld loved to work with him. He came out of Nat Cole and later in his life he was influenced a lot by the great Cedar Walton. They eventually became close friends.

I admired Cees since the days when he was the leader of the Diamond Five, a famous hard-bop quintet in the fifties and sixties. As a matter of fact, I grew up with them by listening to the radio and even bought their records. When I was still in my teens and attended high school, I wrote for the school magazine about jazz and did an article, with a friend of mine, about the Diamond Five. We called them up to do some interviews and we were invited to their homes.

This way I first met my future teacher, the great John Engels who happened to be the drummer of that group, but that's another story. When Cees revived the Diamond Five in the seventies I had a chance to sub for John on a couple of gigs. Later on in the nineties he started to call me more and more. We did a lot of trio gigs together and I found out what a great trio player he was with an excellent choice of tunes that were always very nicely arranged for trio.

In trio setting he was loose and free, swinging and totally himself; he played very creative, always responding to my playing. I told him that just before he unexpectedly passed away. He smiled and was very happy with what I said. Even in his seventies he kept his childlike enthusiasm and openness for the music; he was always somebody you could count on and he just kept on till he dropped.

Cees will always be missed because he was such a supportive musician, especially for the younger generation. Fortunately his wife Hilde keeps the flame burning by supporting the Jazz community and you can always spot her when there is some good Jazz going on. She gives CD's and tapes out of Cees' well organized archive to any young musician who is interested. And interesting it is, because Gees worked with everybody in the business, Dexter, Griff, Zoot, George Coleman, Jimmy Heath, Slide Hampton and so on.”

Some of the fine, “young” musicians that Eric refers to join Cees’ Octet in the following audio-track of Sweet and Lovely recorded at the North Sea Jazz Festival in 1995 including Niels Tausk on trumpet, Ilja Reijngoud, trombone, Carolyn Breuer on alto sax and Herman Schoonderwalt on baritone saxophone. Ferdinand Povel is on tenor sax and James Long on bass and Joost Patocka help round out the rhtyhm section with Cees.

"How to Listen to Jazz" by Ted Gioia - The Economist Review

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

How to Listen to Jazz.

By Ted Gioia.

Basic Books; 272 pages;

$24.99 and £16.99

The following review of Ted Gioia’s new book How to Listen to Jazz appeared The Economist, April 23rd - 29th, 2016 edition and the editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it would share it with you while it worked on its own review of Ted’s latest effort on behalf of Jazz.

How to distinguish good jazz from bad.

“JAZZ is not a popular art-form. To its many detractors, it amounts to little more than pretentious noodling, based as it is largely on improvisation. To others, it is simply mystifying. How can an entire genre be made up of playing, again and again, variants of show tunes that were mostly composed in the 1930's and 1940's?

Ted Gioia understands why people find jazz so esoteric. The problem, as he sees it, is that no one has ever bothered to explain what "good" or "bad" jazz really is. Critics hold strong opinions on whether Charlie Parker or John Coltrane is the better saxophonist, but rarely do they explain "what they [are] listening for". Mr Gioia's job is to teach jazz-lovers how to assess the music and persuade sceptics to give jazz a go.

Mr Gioia has produced a fascinating book. He takes the reader through the most important ingredients of jazz, explaining, for instance, how "swing" is more than syncopated, finger-tapping rhythm. A bass-player and drummer who sound comfortable in each other's company is one sure sign of swing. (Listen to Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison, playing with Coltrane, for instance.) Unlike amateur outfits that feel the need to overplay, the best groups can swing without playing many notes. In Keith Jarrett's trio, the pianist goes for long stretches without even using his left hand, but the listener barely notices until it reappears, upon which it makes the music sound even richer.

Most useful to the uninitiated, the book provides tips on what good improvisation really means. Bad players tend to rely heavily on a small number of rhythmic and harmonic patterns in their phrases-licks containing a certain number of notes, for instance, or a tendency to begin or end their phrases at a certain place in the bar. Listen to such an improviser for more than a minute or so, and "even novice listeners will perceive an inescapable monotony," says Mr Gioia. The best players, including Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis (pictured), never fall into such traps, however.

In his enthusiasm, Mr Gioia's analysis of improvisation sometimes veers into abstraction. Take his discussion of what he calls "intentionality", which he says is another crucial element of good soloing. He defines this as "a musical phrase that reveals the total commitment of the improviser" -hardly an illuminating description. Yet read the book within easy access of a music-streaming service or YouTube, and Mr Gioia's commentary suddenly feels much more useful. A middling trumpeter (say, one in a student band) appears to struggle against the music, and will finish a phrase upon running out of breath. Davis's phrases on the trumpet, by contrast, have a clear beginning, middle and end. No note is wasted and the accompanists seem to work around him. (For an excellent example of this, see his opening solo in "Spanish Key", recorded in 1969.)

Mr Gioia also delves into musical theory, in a way that will help both jazz neophytes and experts understand what they are listening to. The best jazz musicians do not worry much about producing clearly defined notes (the do-re-mi system that structures Western classical music). Instead they look to make particular sounds -bending notes and creating unusual timbres-which is a consequence of the heavy African influence on jazz. The emphasis on sound over notes is especially pronounced in Coltrane's late work.

Alongside the tips for listening, Mr Gioia's book gives a helpful overview of how jazz has evolved since its beginnings in turn-of-the-century New Orleans. Buddy Bolden, a cornet-player in the Big Easy of whose music there are no recordings, is credited by many with inventing "jass". Like the rest of the book, the majority of this discussion focuses on long-dead musicians (many of whom met untimely ends thanks to debilitating drug habits). As if to compensate for the book's backward-looking bias, at the end the author lists 150 contemporary jazzists "who deserve your attention".

How to Listen to Jazz is not a long book, but it emphasises a beautiful point about the genre, a point that applies to no other sort of music. When you see a live performance, you may be watching a 60-year-old musician playing a loo-year-old piece; but what is produced on stage has never been, and will never be, played again. Jazz is undoubtedly struggling, but as an introduction to why its remaining fans are so devoted, Mr Gioia could not have done a better job. Through him, jazz might even find new devotees.”

Hector Martignon's Banda Grande - "The Big Band Theory" (Zoho ZM 201605)

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

On this ambitious third release after two GRAMMY nominated ZOHO CDs Refugee (2007) and Second Chance (2012), Colombian-born but Harlem, NY domiciled pianist Hector Martignon introduces his "Banda Grande" in daring, visionary arrangements quoting Classical composers (Bach, Mozart) over iconic Jazz and Brazilian songwriters (Bill Evans, Hermeto Pascoal) to six colorful, virtuosic Martignon originals.

The structure of Hector’s Banda Grande goes well beyond the usual, brass, reeds and rhythm: well beyond both in terms of the number of instruments that make up the traditional big band framework - in this case 5 trumpets, 5 trombones and 6 saxes [instead of the usual 4/4/5 set-up] - and well beyond in terms of instruments that are only rarely heard in conjunction with a Jazz big band such as vibraphone [Terry Gibbs, notwithstanding], accordion, Colombian harp and Colombian flute. Oh and did I mention the inclusion of a string quartet!

In the following insert notes to the CD, Hector references the use of musical colors in the arrangements that help bring big band compositions to life. What with all of the additional sonorities made available to him by the increased number of horns and the unusual instrumentation, suffice to say that what he “paints” [orchestrates] has textures that really “Pop!”

Hector’s grand band makes music that is just that - Grand. The music reflects a wide range of influences that come together to create themes that are as interesting as they are complex. Hector’s music is given additional heft and dimension by the skillful soloists who improvise on it. And not only are the soloists competent, they are creative in that they move your ears in new directions. On a number of occasions, I found myself reflecting on the “sound of surprise” that came from a soloist playing phrases, licks and lines that I had not heard before.

Hector’s band is based in New York, and given the quality of the musicianship that predominates in The Big Apple, that may account for why his music is so skillfully rendered.

But the other big reason is Hector skills as a composer-arranger and as a band leader. He is a major talent whose music will give you many hours of intellectual and emotional satisfaction. You can find out more about him and order information for his CD’s at www.hectormartignon.wordpress.com. The label website is www.zohomusic.com.

Here’s how he explains it in the insert notes to The Big Band Theory (Zoho ZM 201605).

Should you be insane enough to want to start a Big Band.... do it in New York! A difficult stage to climb up to and scream; cold and cruel at times but then burning hot and loving, the Big Apple gives you all you need and more... the finest musicians with great attitude, plenty of venues, great audiences, good and affordable studios. In return, you give back what you try to be best at... your music.

It was at that veteran of all venerable old Manhattan venues, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the Lower East Side, where my flirts with the Big Band format became a love affair, with all its challenges and intricacies. Starting off as an experimental workshop, with personnel, compositions and arrangements varying every week, some suitable for the dance needs of the crowd and some suitable for a full concert, Hector Martignon's Bandagrande slowly but surely came of age.

Any composer dreams to write for a large ensemble, be it a large choir, a Symphonic Orchestra or its Jazz version, the Big Band which offers similar resources of color and dynamics, even though smaller in numbers. With close to twenty individual instruments (and their doubles) the arranger takes over from the composer and gradually starts creating like a painter, thinking in terms of color, balances, shade, light and, well... a concept borrowed from music by the visual arts... composition.

Given such a range of possibilities, it was only natural to encompass as wide as possible a spectrum of music styles and idioms, from the Baroque sinfonia concertante, visiting the inquiring language of the sixties' and seventies' Jazz, to the Brazilian eccentricities of a Hermeto Pascoal, adding, of course, my own honest attempts at composing and arranging.

Because of budgetary and space issues we were forced to divide the recording into four sessions, each of which left (almost) untouched: 1. rhythm section plus some soloists, 2. horns, 3. strings and 4. some solo overdubs.

Before it became one more extension of a "Disneylandic" Times Square and its mass tourism, there were few neighborhoods as diverse, exciting and gastronomically enticing as Hell's Kitchen (West Side Manhattan, between 39th and 57th Streets; recently re-baptized Clinton Hills for real estate sales purposes). Hell's Kitchen Sarabande tries to re-capture the strangely alluring decay of the 90s in an atemporal albeit magically floating 3/2 Sarabande metric.

Staying within a geographic-biographic context, 99 Macdougal Street gives you a glimpse of the year I survived in the famed Village street that could be compared with New Orleans' Bourbon Street, if with less music and more smells. I wrote the tune when I was playing with Ray Barretto's New World Spirit.

Although belonging to the staple Bossa repertoire, Estate is a masterpiece by the great Bruno Martino, one of the engines behind the Italian musical Boom of the sixties.

During my studies in Germany, I used to love the "Weihnachtsmarkt", the Christmas Markets in the main squares or near most train stations, musically underscored by the Posaunenchor, small groups of 4-6 trombones playing Christmas songs and chorales, the inspiration behind Trombone Chorale. My song reminisces the hectic human rivers boarding and leaving the trains, with the incongruent Christmas music playing in the background.

Staying in the theme, Erbarme Dich is another "standard" of European sacred music, this time one of the most haunting Arias (No. 47) out of the St. Matthew Passion by J.S. Bach. I kept Bach's original string orchestration almost intact while adding the full Big Band sonority in the instrumental sections, alternating with the beautiful Alto rendition by Brenda Feliciano. The original solo violin melodic counterpoint is masterfully performed by trumpet virtuoso Joe Burgstaller with plenty of freedom and acrobatic improvisation, recorded "live" with the Rhythm section.

One of my favorite compositions by one of my favorite Jazz pianists is Interplay, an incredibly elegant though playful Blues that only a Bill Evans could compose.

Nostalgias del Future is the first movement of a "Concerto for Harp and Orchestra" I wrote for my fellow Colombian and harp virtuoso Edmar Castaneda. The main body develops in a 18/8 variation of the Venezuelan/Colombian rhythm Joropo (usually in 6/8). Besides Edmar other typical Joropo instruments like the Quatro (a small 4 stringed-guitar) are masterfully performed by Venezuelan maestro Jorge Glem, the capachos (small maracas) by my countryman Samuel Torres (right channel) and Venezuelan Roberto Quintero (left channel) who also plays the recently adopted cajon.

Maestra was the first piece I wrote and performed for this format, with the Bogota Big Band back in 2010. It gave me an extra motivation to start this project. In this rendition I added Martin Vejarano on the indigenous Gaita (a sort of flute with reeds) the maracon (a huge maraca played simultaneously by the "gaitero") and the big tambora (an improvising bass drum), to re-create a magically beautiful real-life Cumbia, far removed from the reviled commercial Cumbia of such bad reputation! The tune is dedicated to all the teachers of this world, particularly those in rural areas of third world countries.

In some of our big concerts, a Mozart string quartet opens the program, only to be gradually overpowered by a cacophony delivered by the horn section of the Big Band, marching in from all sides of the hall. Mozart Interrupted / Sorrindo reflects this situation, relinquishing the stage to a composition by Brazilian genius Hermeto Pascoal, Sorrindo (Smiling). I respectfully added a (non-existent) solo section, interluding the solos with a horn "background" made up from other Pascoal classics.

The Fruit Vendor's Last Dream is dedicated to the fruit vendor who immolated himself on January 4, 2011. He protested against the corruption and abuse of power exercised by the authorities in Tunisia, what eventually gave rise to the "Arab Spring". Whatever became of that movement in the whole region, that act of self-sacrifice will always be remembered as the triumph of dignity over arbitrariness.

John Benitez' bass solo is just unbelievable, as is his spontaneous "wow!" which I kept at the end of the piece, in this case also the end of this album. I hope you will enjoy…”

--Hector Martignon

The following video with give you a small sampling of Martignon Music in the form of his take on Interplay, “Bill Evans’... elegantly playful Blues.”