Tag Archives: mel minter

The Return of the Shocking

Pray for Brain

Pray for Brain opens the sixth annual edition of The Roost.

OK, it’s not really shocking (I couldn’t resist echoing the previous post’s title), but it is definitely out of the ordinary: The Roost, Albuquerque’s creative music series, founded, curated, and
produced by Mark Weaver.

Weaver, who hangs out in the lower registers, notably on the tuba and didgeridoo, has an
omnivorous appetite for musical genres. He plays regularly in a trad jazz trio and an edgy,
unclassifiable banjo/tuba duo, as well as a wide variety of irregular aggregations that explore the far reaches of improvisational possibilities. He feels strongly that all varieties of out-of-the-ordinary music deserve a place to call home, and so he founded The Roost, which has
presented several weeks of creative sounds at summer’s end for the last five years. Continue reading →

The Return of the Shaman

Clockwise from left: Ernesto Simpson, Childo Tomas, Leandro Saint-Hill, Omar Sosa

Clockwise from left: Ernesto Simpson, Childo Tomas, Leandro Saint-Hill, Omar Sosa.

The New Mexico Jazz Festival brings Cuban pianist/composer Omar Sosa to the Outpost on July 23 and 24 with his New AfroCuban Quartet, with Leandro Saint-Hill (saxophones, flute), Childo Tomas (bass), Ernesto Simpson (drums). For me, Sosa is one of the clearest and most profound voices on the planet—a shaman who is capable of connecting us with a deeper reality—and I was thrilled to be able to interview him.

At the end of May, I reached him by phone at his home in Barcelona at 10:00 p.m. his time and found him in the process of “dealing with my kids.” He issued rapid-fire instructions in Spanish off-line before turning his attention to our call.

The following conversation is very lightly edited. Sosa speaks excellent English—thankfully,
because my Spanish is rusty in the extreme—with a Cuban accent. I have tried to transcribe his words accurately, and I apologize for any errors that my untuned-to-Spanish ears might have introduced.

Sosa speaks with the same urgency, warmth, humor, generosity, and passion with which he plays the piano. Our easy-going half-hour chat touched on his musical approach and intentions, some personal history, his artistic philosophy, and a forthcoming album. Continue reading →

hONEyhoUSe Keeps It Tender (Updated)

shutterstock_93623734 edithONEyhoUSe, Sweep (independent)
A Review

Just as plants turn instinctively to the light, so hONEyhoUSe turns to the healing properties of faith, hope, love, sisterhood, and self-
affirmation. They’re healiotropic. Healing is their mission. Their third release, the
beautifully packaged Sweep, delivers the
musical balm that Honeyheads crave.

Mandy Buchanan, Yvonne Perea, and Hillary Smith—with the support of Savannah Thomas on percussion and Maude Beenhouwer on bass—return to the intimate and acoustic setting of their first album, Sun, moving away from the full band setting of their second album, Medicine Lodge. I was not fully prepared for the quieter setting, having recently seen them at the Albuquerque Museum’s outdoor amphitheater, backed by a full band and blasting through a powerful sound system on a lovely summer night. They sounded great, and big enough to fill any arena, indoors or out. But that performance colored my expectations, and it took me two or three listens before I could let Sweep come to me on its own terms. Continue reading →

Pianist Tom McDermott Brings a Fresh Repertoire of Syncopated Euphoria

Photo by Rick Olivier.

Since passing through these parts last summer, Tom McDermott has traversed the northern half of the Americas, playing concerts in exotic locales from Alaska to Costa Rica, but it was an encounter with a hero from his youth in the relatively unexotic Twin Cities that left a lasting
impression on the New Orleans pianist and helped reshape his repertoire.

“I went and visited my childhood idol, maybe my first childhood idol after my mom, pianistically speaking,” says McDermott, who has enjoyed much-deserved wider exposure since his
appearances on the hit HBO series Treme. “That was Max Morath. He was Mister Ragtime. His career started in the fifties, and it went strong till the nineties. Now he’s retired.”

Little did Morath, born in Colorado Springs in 1926, know it, but he helped shape McDermott’s approach to playing ragtime and, for that matter, everything else he’s tackled along the way. This Saturday, at the Outpost, McDermott will offer a smorgasbord of syncopation via his
distinctively charming and astonishingly double-jointed pianism. Continue reading →

Fun, Seriously

Oran Etkin, Gathering Light (Motema Records)FINALcvr
A Review

The music on Gathering Light (Motema Records), the latest release from Oran Etkin (bass clarinet, clarinet, tenor sax), has an
engagingly childlike quality, which is to say that it reflects a seriously fun approach to play and is unburdened by intellectual
pretensions. From the opening bass clarinet notes on track one, the music is infused with a playful spirit, even in its more profound and searching moments, and is delivered with a soulful commitment.

Continue reading →