Date: September 18, 2012
Venue: Douglass Street Music Collective (Brooklyn, NY)
Concert review by Matt Cole
Recently, I reviewed Jaywalkin’, the new CD by NoReduce. As I had a very positive reaction to the CD, I was excited to have a chance to see, hear, and review the opening show of their U.S. Mini-tour this past September, at Brooklyn’s Douglass Street Music Collective.
Date: September 27, 2012
Venue: Paper Box (Brooklyn)
Concert review and photo by Dawoud Kringle
On an unseasonably warm night in late September, I trekked to one of those desolate areas of Brooklyn where small autonomous zones of artists and musicians are carving out a piece of the world they can call their own. It was at a new music venue in a warehouse district that I attended a performance of TrioTarana, led by Ravish Momin. He was joined by Rick Parker on trombone, and Areni Agbabian on vocals.
Photo by courtesy of Ravish Momin
Dates & Venues: September 10, 2012 @ Nublu and September 12, 2012 @ Bell House
Concert reviews by Matt Cole
After announcing their breakup in 2011, the multi-lingual, multi-genre band Brazilian Girls has reunited and is working on new material and playing some shows, to the delight of their rather devoted fan base. In early September, they played a pair of weeknight surprise shows in New York City: on Monday the 10th, they tore it up at Alphabet City’s Nublu (where they first came together 9 years ago), and on Wednesday the 12th, they rocked the house at Bell House in Gowanus, Brooklyn.
For a band that is often described as “(insert at least 2 adjectives) pop,” Brazilian Girls’ music is quite sophisticated and complex. They are among the best at integrating loops, computers, and live performance; rather than playing along with the loops, they bring them in an out like an extra instrument. This was apparent at both shows, as many of the (non-new) songs were stretched out from their album versions, with keyboardist Didi Gutman doing a masterful job of weaving loops in and out of the rest of the mix, and drummer Aaron Johnston laying down essential beats with, not over or under, the loops. Bassist Jesse Murphy manages the neat trick of playing bass lines that are both solidly propulsive and interestingly fluid at the same time. Singer Sabina Sciubba‘s wonderful jazzy voice, fluent in five languages, completes the sonic picture; and her quirky outfits and intelligent, tongue-in-cheek demeanor add to, rather than distract from, the band’s vibe. Though from disparate backgrounds, musical and otherwise, these four make up a unified whole which is greater than its already talented parts. As the enthusiastic crowds demonstrated at both shows, it’s very difficult not to dance (or to not dance?) when Brazilian Girls is playing.
Dafnis Prieto on drums
Date: 14 and 15 August 2012
Venue: The Jazz Standard (NY)
Review by Matt Cole and photos by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi
Date: Thursday, 2 August 2012
Venue: Le Poisson Rouge (NY)
Review by Matt Cole and photos by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi
On Thursday, 2 August 2012, Bill Frisell and his talented band played an evening of John Lennon’s music before a packed, seated house at La Poisson Rouge. The band consisted of Jenny Scheinman on violin, Greg Leisz on pedal steel, Tony Scherr on bass, and Kenny Wollesen on drums. The band played selections from Frisell’s 2011 album, All We Are Saying, a collection of John Lennon’s songs played by the same band we were hearing live.
The music began with Frisell alone, then the rest of the band coming in one-by-one, in a dreamy jam that coalesced into “Across the Universe.” After an almost Beatlesesque treatment of the melody (helped along by Kenny Wollesen’s excellent and tasteful drumming in this idiom, which continued throughout the night), the band went back into free and dreamy territory. This pattern would continue for most of the night, with most songs starting free, and then alternating between Beatles-like sounds and free but not dissonant improve sections. A few times, no doubt aided by the sounds of Leisz’ pedal steel, the band entered the edges of country-rock territory, one example being on Lennon’s ode to his son, “Beautiful Boy,” another in “In My Life” towards the end of the set (the psychedelic ending of which, curiously, also reminded me a little of the intro to Rush’s epic “Xanadu”).
