Author Archives: Mel Minter

Drummer Billy Cobham Fuses Precision and Power

When drummer Billy Cobham hits a drum head with a stick, that sucker stays hit. Combining explosive aggression with a subtle rhythmic sensibility accented with a Spanish tinge, Cobham blasted his way to prominence as a founding member of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, the
prototypical fusion band of the early 1970s.

Photo by Faina Cobham.

But it was his own recording, Spectrum, that unexpectedly launched his career as a leader in 1973. Intended as a showcase to help him find work as a sideman, the album, which fused funk, jazz, and rock, established Cobham as a virtuoso force to be reckoned with, both as a leader and a composer.

On the 40th anniversary of that recording, the Billy Cobham Spectrum 40 international tour is revisiting those compositions, which are now informed by a career that spans more than 50 years and, it seems, about as many musical genres. From George Duke to the Grateful Dead, Nigeria’s Okuta Percussion to Cuba’s Asere, Ron Carter to Jack Bruce, Kenny Barron to Peter Gabriel, Cobham has played with an astonishingly wide range of artists and absorbed literally a world of musical influences in the course of his creative journey.

This Saturday, the New Mexico Jazz Workshop presents the tireless drummer at the Kimo
Theater. He’ll be bringing longtime compadres Dean Brown (guitar), Gary Husband (piano), and Ric Fierabracci (bass) with him to explore new arrangements of the classic Spectrum
compositions.

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Shafted, but in a Good Way

Artwork by M.Jones.

Artwork by M.Jones.

It’s been years since the last big blues bash in Madrid at the old ballpark—those all-day, three-chord celebrations of blue notes that corralled every blues man and woman for miles around. It was good times for kids and adults alike, but spending hours in the dusty field under a hot sun could take its toll.

The New Mexico Jazz Workshop has found a way to revive those good times but under what should be more comfortable conditions. This weekend, they’ll launch the latest edition of the Madrid Blues Fest at the Mine Shaft Amphitheater, a tented venue with a small stage and cover for several hundred blues fans. The facility is right next to the longest bar in New Mexico,
located in the Mine Shaft Tavern (est. 1899), which also has one of the better green chile cheese burgers in the state, tasty hand-cut fries, and a longstanding dedication to good music.

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Singer/Songwriter Mary Gauthier Chooses Redemption

Singer/songwriter Mary Gauthier doesn’t pull any punches. Life certainly didn’t pull any for her. An adoptee haunted by what she couldn’t know of her family history and alienated from her conservative Catholic community by her sexual orientation, Gauthier ran away from her
Thibodaux, Louisiana, home at age 15, straight into the arms of alcohol and drug addiction, pinballing from rehab center to jail to the kindness of strangers.

Photo by Rodney Burseil.

Photo by Rodney Burseil.

With the help of friends, she got through several years of college; went to culinary school in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and opened a successful restaurant, Dixie Kitchen, serving up
Cajun delights to Beantowners for 11 years. She finally got clean and sober at age 35 after 20 years of struggle and found a healing grace in songwriting.

You don’t get straight without cultivating a harrowing honesty and an honest compassion, and both are hallmarks of Gauthier’s songs. She routinely descends into the chthonic desperation of the lost, the damned, the displaced, and the self-destructive, only to retrieve a spark of hope that she blows into the radiant possibility of redemption.

Gauthier will fan that flame this weekend at two fundraising concerts for Peace Talks Radio, in Santa Fe on Friday, sharing the bill with Iraqi oud master and Albuquerque resident Rahim
Alhaj, and in a solo performance on Saturday in Albuquerque. If her latest album, Live at Blue Rock, is any indication, you’d be well advised to bring tissues.

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Home Grown, Pt. 5

Trombonist Christian Pincock covered a lot of bases during his years in Albuquerque, gigging with an off-center wedding band, performing freely improvised solo work while linked to a
gaggle of electronic devices, playing mainstream jazz in ensembles big and small, and sharing the stage with the likes of Bobby Shew, Toshiko Akiyoshi, and Alan Pasqua.

Pincock relocated to Seattle within the last year, but not before recording an impressive album of original material with a cohort of primo musicians living in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

CDbaby artwork(2)Plentiful Excitement, Christian Pincock (independent)
The poor trombone doesn’t get out in front too much these days. It too often gets cast in the role of comic relief, bleating baleful
wah-wah-wahs and providing running ironic commentary on what the saxophone,
trumpet, or clarinet is doing.

In the hands of a technically proficient,
emotionally mature, and truthful player, the trombone is more than capable of holding center stage with its warmth, expressiveness, and human timbre—as Christian Pincock demonstrates on his latest recording, Plentiful Excitement. The album features Pincock on valve ’bone, Robert Muller on piano, Mark Weaver on tuba, and Rick Compton on drums.

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Home Grown, Pt. 4 (updated)

It’s been hard finding time to listen closely to recordings for reviewing purposes because the race in the American League East is getting all consuming as we enter the final weeks of the season. Yes, I’m a baseball fan, and I spend way too many hours each spring, summer, and
early fall watching, listening, and reading about America’s pastime—or what used to be
America’s pastime, before that avatar of American violence and empire, football, mesmerized the masses.

If you, too, are a baseball fan, I can recommend a book I’m reading now, Jane Leavy’s The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, which my friend Fred Herman lent me. Leavy knows how to write a sentence, and even better, how to string them together. She has the soul of a poet trapped in a sportswriter’s body.

As a Baltimore native, I bleed Oriole orange, and the Skankees make me want to spit.
Nevertheless, this is a book for any baseball fan, and its portrait of Mantle captures in the
background a snapshot of a time long gone that tells us something of ourselves.

Finally, though, despite baseball, I’ve made it to the stereo bench to get a listen to Jazz Brasileiro’s premiere release.

Jazz Brasileiro, Jazz Brasileiro (independent)
Debo Orlofsky (vocals, percussion) and Tony Cesarano (guitar) are members of Saudade, a
quintet that specializes in the contemporary and classic music of Brazil and Cape Verde. The group has a genuine feel for the music, and the live performances that I’ve seen have
emphasized the music’s exuberant, uptempo qualities, what you might call its Carnaval
enthusiasms, almost to the exclusion of the music’s gentler side.

Jazz BrasileiroJazz Brasileiro corrects that
imbalance—and maybe
overcorrects it a bit, as
uptempo numbers are few and far between—with warm, sensitive renditions of 11
familiar tunes from Antonio Carlos Jobim, Luiz Bonfá,
Vinicius de Moraes, and
others. In the duo, Orlofsky and Cesarano bring a
different energy, approaching the material with a softness and suavité that I missed in Saudade.

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