Author Archives: Mel Minter

Carnaval Hits the Streets (and news about a fun[d]-raiser)

Frank and Pilar Leto.
Dancer Amy Joy Iwasaki.
Frank Leto with Naomi Elizabeth Montoya.

 

For musician/composer Frank Leto and his lovely wife, dancer/choreographer Pilar Leto,
Carnaval has been a pivotal annual event for well over 30 years. They met, in fact, when Pilar auditioned for one of Frank’s Carnaval productions in San Francisco in 1979, and every year since then, wherever they were living—from California to Hawaii to New Mexico—they’ve
produced a Carnaval dance and music presentation.

This year, they return to the National Hispanic Cultural Center, which has hosted the popular annual extravaganza for almost 10 years, and many things in the event will be similar. Frank’s band, PANdemonium, and Pilar’s troupe, the Odara Dance Ensemble, will again feature original music and dance that celebrate the traditions of Brazil, Cuba, Trinidad, and Louisiana, and there will be a cast of about 50, astonishing costumes, stilt walkers, dazzling lighting effects, and all the rest.

But there will also be one big difference: instead of presenting a song and dance revue
interspersed with entertaining commentary, the 2014 production will premiere Carnaval: Streets of Love, an original musical created by the Letos and writer Kate Smith, who have their eyes on a final destination somewhere on or just off Broadway.

Continue reading →

Vintage Jazz and Blues with Riverside Jass Trio (and a Plug for Our Sponsor)

I’m beginning to think there’s a musician hiding under every rock in Albuquerque. The place is lousy with them—and good ones, too. The Riverside Jass Trio comprises an orthopedist, a
professor, and an architect. They’ve got a new CD and are planning a party to celebrate its
release. I sure hope their patients, students, and clients, respectively, are happy with their
professional services because music fans are disappointed that these guys aren’t playing music full-time.

InDesign Page 1 & 4.indd Riverside Jass Trio, That’s a Plenty (Café Jazzed Music Productions)
A Review

Richard “Doc” Rock (trombone, banjo, vocals, and orthopedics), Wayne Shrubsall (banjo,
vocals, and a Ph.D. in American studies), and Mark Weaver (tuba and architectural
structures) have each made his mark in a
musical setting completely different from his band mates.

Continue reading →

Three Saxophones: Two Reviews and One Preview

 

John Lurie, back then, by Hanna Hedren.

John Lurie demands reconsideration with the John Lurie National
Orchestra’s release of The Invention of Animals.
MG_6255-1r r jones

 

 

Ben Flocks makes his recording debut with an old-school sensibility.

Glenn Kostur in concert pays tribute to the late Cedar Walton with a little help from his friends.

Glenn Kostur.

Continue reading →

hONEyhoUSe in Concert (Updated)

hONEyhoUSe—Savannah Thomas, Mandy Buchanan, Hillary Smith, and Yvonne Perea—in concert at the Outpost in 2013.

hONEyhoUSe—Savannah Thomas, Mandy Buchanan, Hillary Smith, and Yvonne Perea—in concert at the Outpost in 2013.

When it comes to women’s voices singing three-part harmony, I am completely defenseless. The music bypasses all critical faculties and goes straight for the heart. When the harmonizing is done with the peerless joy, skill, and emotional investment that hONEyhoUSe bring to the table, well, don’t bother handing me a tissue. Just pass the whole box.

Singer/songwriters Mandy Buchanan, Yvonne Perea, and Hillary Smith come from three
different musical backgrounds—country, blues/folk, and soul, respectively. They bring three
distinctive timbres to the microphone, and they each have had success on their own. When they come together in hONEyhoUSe, though, it’s a classic “the sum is greater than the parts”
situation, and the music they make is all but guaranteed to lift you up, turn you around, and set you back down with a big old smile on your face.

This Saturday at the Outpost—with their faithful sidekicks Savannah Thomas on percussion and Maud Beenhouwer on bass—they’ll be sharing some of the new material that’s on their
forthcoming album, Sweep, scheduled for release this spring, as well as some favorites from their first two, award-winning albums. If it’s anything like their last concert at the Outpost, it will be a night to remember. The concert will be video’ed by Rolling R Productions for future video presentations, so get your glad rags on and be prepared to party.

Continue reading →

Guitarist Joshua Breakstone: Storyteller

Breakstone CoverJoshua Breakstone
With the Wind and the Rain (Capri Records)
A Review

Fans of old-school jazz guitar will welcome the arrival of the latest recording from Joshua Breakstone, who doesn’t just play jazz, but celebrates it in his playing. On his latest
venture, With the Wind and the Rain,
Breakstone and his longtime mates—bassist Lisle Atkinson and drummer Eliot Zigmund—invite cellist Mike Richmond to join in on four of the nine tracks.

Breakstone loves the sound of the cello, which, he tells me, found its way into the jazz lexicon in the ’50s and ’60s, when a number of premier jazz bassists began featuring the instrument on recordings. As he says in his liner notes, the possibilities of the cello-augmented trio really
flowered once he began hearing the quartet as a string section with percussion, rather than as a trio with added cello. The strings play as a section on the head of three of the four tracks with cello, and as Breakstone said in phone conversation, this sort of arrangement “makes you
attend to the music much more closely, and really brings out accents of the whole sound of the strings.”

Continue reading →