Author Archives: Mel Minter

The Roost: Consort Un-Caged

Perfectly Un-Matched

If you had been asked to put together two musicians for a freewheeling exploration of time, texture, and space, flutist Dana Reilly and drummer Rick DiZenzo would probably not have been the two who leapt to mind. The classically trained Reilly, a Denver native with a taste for
J. S. Bach and Frank Martin, had been steeped in the tradition of rigorous etudes and the
autocracy of sheet music. DiZenzo, a Jersey boy who prefers Frank Zappa, had pounded his drum kit into submission at CBGB’s, an iconic New York rock club.

CuC Roost Promo Photo

They both, however, harbored a secret desire to play their own music without regard to current trends. So when their paths crossed in a flute ensemble over three years ago, they made a break for it and formed Consort Un-Caged. Sunday night, as part of The Roost series, curated by Mark Weaver, they’ll present Altered Time, a collection of—to quote their promo material—“original compositions that refuse to be categorized, boxed-in . . . or caged.”

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The Roost: BaBa (and Buster)

Hybrid Music (and a Film, Too)

Mutt and Jeff. Stan and Ollie. Ralph and Norton. Banjo and tuba. Odd pairings all, but all of them work.

No, really.Swirly BaBa

Don’t believe me? Then head to The Roost, Albuquerque’s creative music series, this Sunday and catch BaBa—Steven Robert Allen (banjo, voice) and Mark Weaver (tuba, foot percussion, and curator of The Roost). They’ll be presenting old tunes with new twists, and new tunes with old twists in the first set, and premiere a live, original soundtrack to accompany Buster Keaton’s comic short film The Goat in the second set.

(I’ll even spring for your ticket if you’re the first person to post a response correctly explaining where the duo’s name comes from.)

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New Mexico Jazz Festival: Tom McDermott

Getting Better All the Time

Photo by Rick Olivier.

Photo by Rick Olivier.

In 1996, while in New Orleans for jazz fest, I picked up a copy of Offbeat magazine and
discovered a well-written article about one of my favorite piano players from that city, the late James Booker. I thought I had all the legally available recordings, but the article mentioned two German LPs that I had never heard of. Even better, they were solo performances, so there would be no half-assed sidemen gumming up the works.

I did what any self-respecting obsessionist would do: I looked up the writer in the phone book and placed the call. (My wife still can’t believe I did that, and I still can’t figure out why she feels that way.) When he answered, I thanked him for the article and inquired if he would be willing, since the LPs were not available in the States, to record them for me if I supplied the cassette tapes.

Yes, he said, he would, and that’s how I met Tom McDermott, who will close the 2013 New Mexico Jazz Festival this Sunday at the Outpost.

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New Mexico Jazz Festival: Lionel Loueke Trio

Lionel Loueke Plugs In

Award-winning guitarist Lionel Loueke, a native of Benin, dazzled the jazz world by blending his African roots with the modern jazz vocabulary on his signature acoustic, nylon-string guitar. His gentle virtuosity has graced the work of such jazz heavyweights as Terence Blanchard, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter, and informed several well-received recordings of his own.

Photo by Brantley Gutierrez.

Photo by Brantley Gutierrez.

For his latest album, Heritage (Blue Note Records), however, Loueke has ditched the nylon strings in favor of steel and added an electric guitar to his bag. Though displaying the same lyricism as the nylon, acoustic Loueke, the steel-strung and electrified Louekes take a more percussive attack and, if possible, groove even harder. Heritage also finds the guitarist actively stretching his concept of what a guitar can do, and he amplifies this expansion with judicious use of pedal effects on the electric instrument.

Working with a new trio that features Michael Olatuja on bass and John Davis on drums, Loueke brings his electric project to the New Mexico Jazz Festival, first for two nights at the Outpost in Albuquerque, then moving up to Santa Fe to open for trumpeter Terence Blanchard, whom he will also join onstage.

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Marginally Obsessed

Still-Runnin-Cover-JPEG-300x274Matt Munisteri, Still Runnin’ Round in the Wilderness, The Lost Music of Willard
Robison, Volume 1 (Old Cow Music)

I’m often astonished by how much I don’t know, and sometimes grateful for my
ignorance because the potential for wonder and surprise is ever present.

Recently, I had a dose of surprise and wonder that concealed a second dose, and it all
started with Patti Littlefield. When the
schedule for the 2013 New Mexico Jazz
Festival was published, that flame-haired chanteuse, who doubles as a staff member at the Outpost, alerted me to the upcoming appearance of vocalist Catherine Russell, of whom I’d never heard.

Patti Littlefield, who started this.

“You gotta check her out,” Patti advised.

So I did, because Patti knows the goods when she hears them, and I was rewarded by encountering a stunning new-to-me artist to
explore. I arranged to interview her for a preview article on her jazz fest appearance, and I attended her concert in Old Town Plaza last weekend, where she and her band knocked the socks off of one and all. Now, Russell gets regular play in our house.

But there was another surprise waiting for me when I started to chat with her guitarist and musical director, the articulate, funny, earnest, and gently ironic Matt Munisteri, who saw fit to hand me his latest CD, Still Runnin’ Round in the Wilderness, The Lost Music of Willard Robison, Volume 1.

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