Category Archives: Reviews

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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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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Meet Me in the Middle

MagicOf2_CDcover_hiresTommy Flanagan and Jaki Byard
The Magic of 2 (Resonance Records)
A Review

Pianists Tommy Flanagan and Jaki Byard lived at different frequencies along the spectrum of jazz music. Flanagan, who was dubbed a “jazz poet” by critic Whitney Balliett, typically relied on fluidity, touch, and continuity. For many fans, he is best remembered as Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanist, though he led his own trios and played on such iconic
recordings as John Coltrane’s Giant Steps and Sonny Rollins Saxophone Colossus. Byard’s style tended to the spiky and episodic, mixing an
encyclopedic collection of genres, and his best-known associations were with the fearless Charles Mingus and Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

Putting the two on the same bill could be an instructive and entertaining study in contrasts. Putting them on stage together in a jazz club could be just plain odd. But that is exactly what Todd Barkan, manager and programmer of San Francisco’s legendary Keystone Korner, did in February 1982. Monster jazz musicians that they were, Flanagan and Byard made it work.

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