Author Archives: Mel Minter

New Mexico Jazz Festival: Catherine Russell

The New Mexico Jazz Festival begins this week, offering 16 days of concerts, photos, film, and more in both Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll focus on a few of the featured artists that will be rearranging time and space for your listening pleasure and the good of your soul. Go to New Mexico Jazz Festival for complete information on all the events.

Catherine Russell Makes the Past Present

Cat digs in.

Cat digs in.

Vocalist Catherine Russell
provides an unanswerable
counterargument to those who would claim that there’s no point in recording yet another
version of vintage-songs-that’ve-been-done-by-many: “These are great songs, and I want to sing them, too.”

You go, girl.

Because she chooses songs that speak to her, and finds a personal way to phrase each and every one of them, Russell reinvigorates material that, in the vocal cords of a lesser singer, might be mere antiques or tired reproductions. Her latest album, Strictly Romancin’ (World Village Records), features songs from the likes of Duke Ellington, Hoagy Carmichael, and Mary Lou Williams, and she and her bandmates comfortably inhabit these tunes, making them feel as present as now.

Russell brings her smooth, supple, resonant alto and fresh phrasing to a free concert this
Saturday in Albuquerque’s Old Town Plaza as part of the New Mexico Jazz Festival, where she’ll be joined by guitarist and musical director Matt Munisteri, pianist Mark Shane, bassist Lee
Hudson, and drummer Mark McLean. (Guitarist Dan Dowling and bassist John Griffin will open the afternoon’s festivities.)

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Home Grown, Pt. 3

Just back from vacation in Portland, Oregon, where our godson, Noah Kite, graduated college. (Noah and Corey Distler cofounded the group zinnie for short. Check their music out, and
expect earworms.) For those of you in New Mexico, I can assure you that rain still exists, as do daytime temperatures in the 60s and 70s. The Pacific Ocean put on a splendid son et lumière for us, too. Thanks to the Kites for a memorable visit.

Now, back to the listening couch. Here’s part three of a continuing series on New Mexico artists: a review of bassist Jon Gagan’s Transit 3: migration.

Transit 3 Cover SqTransit 3: migration, Jon Gagan (Spiral
Subwave Records International)
Bassist/keyboardist/composer Jon Gagan is no hostage to genre. Though an eminently
accomplished jazz bassist—he’s backed such luminaries as Mose Allison, Milt “Bags”
Jackson, Nat Adderley, and Eddie Harris—he started off playing garage rock, and he’s equally comfortable in funk and world music settings. He made his name as bassist, arranger, and musical director for Ottmar Liebert, the “nouveau flamenco” guitarist who’s sold gazillions of records.

Gagan’s own compositions reflect that broad experience and his desire to create instrumental music that ignores “the genre thing,” as he told me in an interview a few years ago. Gagan wants to appeal to “a different sort of person, who’s not necessarily just interested in, let’s say, instrumental prowess or jazz skill—but just likes the sound of music.”

The impeccably produced Transit 3: migration, like its predecessors, Transit and Transit 2,
accomplishes that objective, blending jazz, world beat, funk, and wordless pop to tell “the story of mankind’s escape from a depleted Earth.”

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Home Grown, Pt. 2

Dan_Dowling_CDcoverLately, new releases from New Mexico artists have been piling up around here, so here’s part two of what will likely be a three-part series.

The Trailing Edge, Dan Dowling (independent)
Orioles first baseman Chris Davis may have the
prettiest swing in baseball right now. What makes it so pretty is its highly effective economy. Nothing’s moving that doesn’t need to be. What is moving is doing so in a fluid, highly coordinated sequence of events that appears effortless. There’s no flash at all—until the ball leaves the bat head and buries itself deep into the bleachers.

You see where this is going, no?

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Rare and Special: Chuy Martinez and Oti Ruiz in Concert

Chuy Martinez. Photo by Mel Minter.

Chuy Martinez. Photo by Mel Minter.

Chuy Martinez (guitar, vocals) and Oti Ruiz (harp, violin, requinto, vocals) came to music via very different paths that intersected very sweetly. Martinez learned to play guitar while working as a migrant farmworker in California, a job he started at age 12, when he fled from an abusive foster home. Joining the the United Farm Workers Union at 16, he worked rallies in many states as an organizer and musician. Ruiz, orphaned at 11 and growing up with his grandmother in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, started playing at age 13. He studied at the Music Conservatory in Xalapa and went on to tour the world with internationally renowned groups.

Oti Ruiz. Photo by Mel Minter.

Oti Ruiz. Photo by Mel Minter.

In 2001, fate or luck or the angels, call it what you will, brought them together in
Albuquerque at trying times in their lives. Playing Latin American music together brought solace and direction, and bore fruit: within a year of meeting, they produced their lovely first CD, Pa’ Uste’, a passionately
delivered collection of popular and folkloric music from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Their artistic collaboration has continued ever since. Unfortunately, their day jobs prevent them from playing out very often. Martinez is Old Town manager/curator for Albuquerque’s Cultural Services Department/Community Events and is well-known as the host of Lo Maduro de la Cultura, a popular public-access TV show on the arts. Ruiz teaches at Coronado Elementary and is music director of La Rondalla de
Albuquerque. That makes their concert at the Outpost this Friday, May 10, where they’ll be joined by John Mancha (guitarrón, accordion), a rare and special event.

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