Bambi Wolf, Crystal Clear (indie)
A Review
Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Bambi Wolf reaches for the light on her moody new solo
album, 
Crystal Clear, whose songs center on a personal struggle for freedom from dark memories and haunting self-doubt. With the exception of vocalist Leah Burkhardt on one track and bodhrán player Benjamin Jackson on another, the entire album was “written, composed, arranged, performed, recorded, mixed, and produced” entirely by Wolf,
according to the liner notes. She draws on classical, rock, and folk elements to craft a richly layered sound that verges on the
orchestral at times. (See end of review for Sunday’s CD release party info.)
Category Archives: Reviews
Home Grown, Pt. 6: Sage and Jared’s Happy Gland Band (Updated)
Things are heating up here as the weather cools down. My non-music-related clients are in a fever to spend their budgets before year-end so that they don’t have their budgets cut in the coming year. So after months with my business afloat in the doldrums, I’ve suddenly picked up a serious trade wind and am making good speed with full sails.
Meanwhile, the musicians, songwriters, and promoters in the Santa Fe/Albuquerque
corridor have gone gonzo with new projects. A half-dozen or so new album releases are forthcoming, the concert series are in
overdrive, and there’s a not-to-be-missed one-off performance that I’ll be writing about in the coming week.
Here’s a review of the first of the fall crop. A CD release party is scheduled: see the details at the bottom.
Flooded Away, Sage and Jared’s Happy Gland Band (indie)
The premiere release from Sage and Jared’s Happy Gland Band, Flooded Away may be the most charmingly peculiar—or maybe that’s peculiarly charming—album I’ve heard since Jared
Putnam’s Brontosaurus on Pluto nearly three years ago. It’s certainly the most seriously silly and whimsical.
A Sustained Synesthesia
Myra Melford, Life Carries Me This Way (Firehouse 12 Records)
Pianist Myra Melford came through town
recently, appearing at the Outpost as a
member of drummer Allison Miller’s group Boom Tic Boom. When she sat down at the piano, I wondered if all the piano teachers in the room were cringing, because her seat was set so low that she had to reach up to get her hands on the keyboard. Glenn Gould is the only other pianist I’ve seen who sits so low, but neither his nor Melford’s expressive abilities seem to be compromised by the
unorthodox elevation.
I spoke briefly with her after the show, and shaking her hand, I was reminded just how diminutive she is. Her hands are quite small by
pianist standards, but that doesn’t seem to get in her way, either. She brings a ton of
inspiration and information to the piano, and she has enough of a reach to get to some very interesting and unexpected places in your ear.
She confessed to being nervous about her new album, Life Carries Me This Way, because first, the subject matter is close to her heart, and second, it’s her first solo recording. It’s remarkable that so mature, inquisitive, thoughtful, and well-established an artist as Melford—a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow and Doris Duke Performing Artist Award winner—has never ventured into the studio alone. I’m glad she did, and she’s got nothing to be nervous about.
Brian Haas: The Simple Made Profound
A couple of Sundays ago, I attended a concert in The Roost series here in Albuquerque, and
afterward, I did something that music journalists rarely do: I bought the CD. I could have gotten a review copy from the publicist, but I didn’t want to wait that long. I wanted to listen to it in the car on the way home. Lucky for me, the price was right.
The artist was pianist/composer Brian Haas, who is touring the country in support of his upcoming release, Frames, a collection of 11 compositions for piano and drums. The tour will take him around the country playing the music with several different drummers over the next few months. Here in New Mexico, he played with Dave Wayne, a stalwart on the progressive music scene. They improvised freely on and between the album’s tunes, and they had a blast doing it. We in the audience had a blast, too.
Frames, Brian Haas and Matt Chamberlain (The Royal Potato Family/Kinnara Records)
Frames, the third release from pianist/composer Brian Haas under his own name, presents 11 brief but thoroughly engaging through-composed pieces for piano and drums. Written by Haas, they’re performed by him and Grammy-winning drummer Matt Chamberlain, with
assistance from Peter Tomshany (guitar), producer Costas Stasinopoulos (synths/
programming), and Chris Combs (synths). Best-known as a founding member of the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Haas pulls from a wide range of influences stretching from Prokofiev to James P. Johnson, from Philip Glass to Flying Lotus, to paint a picture of an imagined life in a succession of sonic images stretching from birth to death and beyond.
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.
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.