The Return of Jean-Paul Bourelly

Guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly, a big man who lives large, has long had an outsized presence in my musical life. I first heard him on a couple of great Black Saint dates by Muhal Richard Abrams, followed by a few fabulous Cassandra Wilson recordings for JMT. Then I heard Boom Bop, his 2001 record featuring Archie Shepp, Henry Threadgill and two Senegalese percussionists. I was hooked. But he’s lived in Berlin for decades, rarely visiting the U.S. and developing his music beyond the faint spotlight of the jazz industry.

I’ve gotten to know Bourelly through his partner, Branwen Okpako, a filmmaker and professor at Hampshire College. Over a couple of dinners at our house, Bourelly and I hatched the idea of doing a concert together. Our 5th season of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares was already booked, but I was so excited by the prospect of hearing him live, we decided to add an 11th show. Judging by the turnout for his concert with drummer William Hooker at the Parlor Room on Friday, January 6, many shared my excitement.

Bourelly is beginning the process of re-introducing himself to America. He’s going to be living in the States, looking to work and network. For this impromptu concert, he enlisted Hooker, a colleague from Bourelly’s time in New York in the 1980s. Although they hadn’t played together in 30 years, Bourelly knew that “William would bring the spirit.” Hearing a tight working band can be exhilarating, but seeing two veteran musicians who had not set eyes on each other in decades come together and make a coherent statement was equally awe inspiring.

Hooker is a survivor of New York’s unforgiving jazz business, bringing his mojo to countless situations since the mid-seventies. His powerful drumming is augmented by a regal presence and recitation delivered with thespian polish. On Friday, he read from a small spiral notebook, but at one point, while Bourelly played a soft blues, Hooker coursed through the packed house intoning a repeated prayer: “Let light and love and power restore the plan on earth.” It was a peak moment.

The music was improvised, unrehearsed, the road map devoid of many details. The notes Bourelly left behind provided the barest of instruction: “guitar solo”, “walking”, “drum solo”, “end with rhythm.” What the program lacked in direction, it more than made up for in drive and emotion. The music was drenched in the blues, with references to Jimi Hendrix and shades of Carlos Santana. I found Bourelly’s unison singing with his guitar lines, a technique George Benson used to use, especially effective.

Bourelly told the assembled that to him, much of the music being made in recent times has been too nice. He said that in these dark times, nice is not what is needed. Part of his impetus for moving back to the United States was to help create an aesthetic of resistance to the coming regime. The music needs him on the scene.

He has a March concert scheduled at The World Stage in Los Angeles with Stone Raiders, his trio with Darryl Jones and Will Calhoun. His plan is to set up shop in the DC area, so we hope that as he gets his American footing, opportunities to hear the great guitarist will multiply.

Marc Ribot Fills Bezanson Recital Hall with Joy

What a thrill to finally meet Marc Ribot, a lynchpin of New York’s creative music scene since the 1980s. One of my primary curatorial strategies is to identify important musicians who I want to hear who rarely get to western Massachusetts. The great guitarist met all criteria.

Ribot remembered playing a club in Springfield with Brother Jack McDuff in the late 1970s and visiting the Iron Horse in Northampton 30 years ago. That’s been it. Ribot’s work with the Lounge Lizards, John Zorn, Tom Waits and his own work leading a dizzying variety of projects, has cemented his reputation as a critical figure in music. The 185 people who filled Bezanson Recital Hall is another testimony to his reach.

The timing for his December 8 Solos & Duos Series concert could not have been better. Ribot was artist in residence at The Stone for the week ending December 4. Each night, before collaborating with Milford Graves, Dave Douglas, Henry Grimes and others, he played a set alone. His solo chops were in good shape, he told me, and the days off meant he was not burned out.

Over 70 minutes, he treated the crowd to a spellbinding, musical kaleidoscope. After the show, we gathered in the lobby calling out melodies we heard during the concert. “Somewhere” and “Singin’ the Blues” were full-blown and unfolded over time; many others were snippets that passed as quickly as they arrived: “Happy Birthday”, a Christmas theme, a couple of Albert Ayler tunes, a Monk quote. Ribot also devoted considerable time to a composition by Frantz Casseus, the Haitian-American guitarist and composer who was an early mentor. It was the most gorgeous section of the evening. In a moving and personal article, (http://bombmagazine.org/article/2540/) Ribot wrote that before Casseus died in 1993, Ribot and his family promised to look after his work.

There was a music stand in front of Ribot, but he spun his concert with his head down and eyes closed. The only time he referred to a score was during a couple of abstract John Zorn game pieces. Seated around 10 blue balloons, Ribot popped them on cue, as the audience perked up and smiled.

Ribot not only employed balloons, which he rubbed as well as punctured, he used pencils, knives, slides and a radical de-tuning of his 1937 Gibson HG-00 to produce worlds of other-worldly sounds. The blues he played through this altered instrument were oddly familiar but seemed made of other matter. Sections of the concert referenced flamenco music, European classical styles, various blues feels, even Indian techniques. But it was none of that. It was a synthesis of all of it, by an amazing polyglot with imagination. Just as the guitarist has to relax his fingers to be fleet, the mind also has to be free of stress to allow ideas to flow in real time. Ribot demonstrated this with beauty and grace.

Ribot saved a cherry to put on top of a transcendent evening of music. After returning to the stage to acknowledge a standing ovation, he called his long time friend Marty Ehrlich to join him for an encore. The alto saxophone master and Hampshire College professor easily fell into an improvised conversation, and then Ribot began to frame “Body and Soul.” For the next five minutes, these two veterans pulled the song’s contours precariously, landing the tune on its feet each time, in ways only seasoned artists can.

A Slam Dunk by Anthony Davis, Assist to Jason Robinson

Throughout my career organizing concerts, I have been blessed to be able present musicians whose work I admire. Sometimes they are people with whom I have a relationship; other times they are folks I am anxious to meet. But it is rare for me to produce a concert featuring a friend and a hero.

That opportunity came on Sunday, November 13 when the UMass Fine Arts Center’s Solos & Duos Series hosted the Anthony Davis/Jason Robinson Duo at Bezanson Recital Hall.

When he first moved to the Pioneer Valley eight years ago to begin his teaching career at Amherst College, saxophonist Jason Robinson looked me up. Our mutual friend, trombonist Michael Dessen, had recommended we connect. Connect we did. Over the years, Jason has performed at my Magic Triangle Jazz Series with his nine-piece Janus Ensemble, performed solo at a Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares Annual Meeting, engaged his students with visiting artists for workshops, and helped save the Magic Triangle Series (at least for this year) by hosting a concert at Amherst College. We have shared many meals and conversations. He is not only a friend, but an ally.

Anthony Davis, who mentored Robinson in graduate school at University of California, San Diego, is someone whose music has had a major impact on my development as a listener. As I began to dig deep into jazz, I luckily stumbled across Davis’ early records like Song For the Old World (India Navigation, 1978), Of Blues and Dreams (Sackville, 1978), Hidden Voices (India Navigation, 1979) and Epistēmē (Grammavision, 1981.) With little experience and no context, I wrestled with these sounds, so different than the Ellington and Mingus I was digesting at the time. When the music hit me, when its secrets unlocked, I was a changed listener.

Sunday’s 70-minute recital was sublime, filled with gorgeous and varied tone, sturdy compositional structure, ample space for virtuosity and real musical conversation. Building on a rapport that began in San Diego and blossomed on their 2010 Clean Feed recording, Cerulean Landscape, Davis and Robinson each contributed tunes and shared the spotlight.

Robinson began on curved soprano, unfurling round, mellifluous tones not usually associated with the instrument. His tone on alto flute, which he used on “Translucence”, was also robust and full-bodied. During the rest of the evening, Robinson played tenor saxophone, exploring multiple registers, extended techniques and a variety of moods. His breath control, his note articulation, his ideas, the perfect way his split notes split, were commanding yet unforced.

Over the years, Anthony Davis has retained the influence of two of his touchstones: Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. I heard references to those masters in Davis’ rich chord voicings, the question mark at the end of a phrase, his elegant touch and blues feeling. These elements, audible from the beginning of his career, make Davis’ sound his own. One of the pieces the duo covered was the pianist’s “Graef”, which appears on Of Blues and Dreams. The rubato introduction left me wondering if it was the same composition I had spent so much time with. Then the simple, insistent bass line emerged, co-mingled with the probing, inquisitive melody I remembered.

I was surprised how few of my music-literate friends knew about Anthony Davis. It’s true he has devoted much of his time to composing and academia. He has written eight operas, including X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X (Grammavision, 1992). His most recent, FIVE, chronicles the witch hunt known as the Central Park Five, and includes an appearance by our hate-mongering president-to-be. But other than occasional appearances with Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet, Davis has hardly appeared on a jazz record in decades. Still, he is an important figure in modern music, and in my bubbled world, someone everyone should know. I’m glad my neighbors got a chance to hear a master perform.