Ty Citerman, Sara Serpa and Judith Berkson Breathe New Life Into Old Jewish Protest Songs

Guitarist Ty Citerman has been using haunting old Jewish themes as a springboard for many different styles, from jagged art-rock to more improvisational situations, for the better part of a quarter century. The latest installment in his Bop Kabbalah+Voices project is The Yiddish Song Cycle Live with singers Sara Serpa and Judith Berkson, recorded live in the studio for a June 2021 webcast and streaming at Bandcamp. As challenging as much of this is, it’s yet another reminder why more arists should make live records. Gordon Grdina‘s harder-edged, most Balkan-tinged electric guitar work is a good point of comparison.

The two women set the stage with the first number, trading lines of an English translation of a prayer by 19th century Russian protest songwriter Avrom Reyzen. From there they work back and forth, building otherworldly, Eastern European close harmonies over Citerman’s spare, lingering phrases.

“Demand bread!” Berkson orders before Citerman enters gingerly and the two singers blend voices in the second song, Geyt Brider Geyt! (Go Brothers, Go!), coalescing into a stern, somber march before expanding with bubbly, staccato vocalese over Citerman’s similarly incisive, sparse, clean-toned riffage. The simmering crescendo afterward is a rewarding payoff.

“Down with you, you executioner, get off the throne, no one believes in you anymore,” Berkson insists in Mit Eyn Hant Hostu Undz Gegebn Di Konstitutsieh (With One Hand You Gave Us the Constitution). Words as appropriate now as they were against the Russian Tsar in 1905! Citerman slowly shifts from troubled ambience to enigmatic, looping phrases behind his bandmates’ creepy chants, to a similarly smoldering coda.

“Stop clinking your chains and let it be a little quiet,” Serpa suggests to introduce Ver Tut Stroyen Movern, Palatsn? (Who Builds Walls, Palaces?) This time the vocals are more tightly interwoven and the guitar is as minimalist as it gets here, underscoring the contrast between Berkson’s assertive delivery and Serpa’s more silken restraint.

“Freedom is moving forward,” Serpa intones with a precise mystery in the fragmented intro to the final number, Es Rirt Zikh, a setting of a 1886 poem by Morris Winchevsky, Citerman scrambling around behind the singers. Berkson takes a stately, sober approach to the original Yiddish lyrics as Serpa sings austere, uneasy harmonies overhead and Citerman loops a skeletal, catchy riff. The vocalists diverge with an increasing wariness as Citerman clusters and sheds a few starry sparks. The little joke at the end is too good to give away.

Neither Citerman nor Berkson have New York shows coming up, but Serpa is leading an intriguing quartet with Ingrid Laubrock on sax, Angelica Sanchez on piano and Erik Friedlander on cello at Seeds at the southern edge of Ft. Greene on April 6 at 8 PM. The space is actually the intimate front porch of a private home; cover is $10.

An Incisive New Album and a Deep Brooklyn Show by Jazz Violinist Sara Caswell

As one of the elite violinists in jazz, Sara Caswell had no shortage of gigs until the 2020 lockdown. The good news is that she’s reemerged with a bracingly kinetic new album of her own, The Way to You, streaming at Spotify. Her next gig, on April 6 at 8 PM at the Owl, is an auspicious duo performance with similarly lyrical pianist Julian Shore.

Caswell opens the record with Nadje Noordhuis’ South Shore, a wistful, soaring violin melody over a tightly dancing rhythm, bassist Ike Sturm bubbling over drummer Jared Schonig’s flickers, guitarist Jesse Lewis supplying a lingering backdrop with his volume knob in tandem with vibraphonist Chris Dingman. The guitar/violin duel midway through is especially tasty, setting up a pointillistic Dingman solo and a resolute cirrus-sky solo from the bandleader on the way out.

Caswell redeems a cliched indie guitar riff that’s been recycled a million times in track two, Stillness,  choosing her spots to pierce the opacity with her silken trills and stark melodic phrasing. Sturm holds the center as a loopy, uneasy sonic pool develops, then Schonig leads the group back to clarity.

Caswell and Lewis reinvent Egberto Gismonti’s 7 Anéis with a stunningly successful acoustic Romany jazz flair, then she pulls the group further out with a triumphant, incisive solo. The album’s title track is a steady, guarded theme, Caswell’s floating lines over Lewis’ spare resonance. Schonig’s cymbal mist and then Lewis’ graceful variations on a sparkly downward riff. Caswell reaches to her most crystalline and then misty textures to wind it out.

The group remake Kenny Barron’s Voyage as a light-footed, bracing, syncopated swing tune, Lewis and Dingman sparring their way up to a smoldering guitar solo. Warren’s Way, built around Caswell’s stark, bittersweet lines is up next, Sturm and Lewis dipping to a muted pulse before Caswell bursts through the clouds.

She and Lewis build increasingly smoldering, altered blues over a loose-limbed stride in Last Call, the album’s edgiest number. Violin and vibes match precise riffage over a long drive to exit velocity in Spinning. Caswell switches to the Norwegian hardanger d’amore fiddle – with a woodier, viola-like tone – to reinvent Jobim’s O Que Tinha de Ser and close the album on an achingly searching note.

A Colorful, Expressive, Minutely Jeweled New Album From Pianist Kariné Poghosyan

Pianist Kariné Poghosyan has received plenty of ink on this page, both for her spectacular technical prowess as well as her sensitivity to content. Her latest album, simply titled Folk Themes and streaming at youtube, is a characteristically eclectic and insightful playlist.

She opens with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s six-part Valse Suite. It’s almost comical to look back to 2019, a time when the African-British composer’s incredibly forward-looking, individualistic work had been largely consigned to the organ demimonde. Let’s hope future generations associate him with the Romantic tradition – Dvorak is a good comparison – rather than the odious CRT fad which ironically may be the reason behind his well-deserved if unlikely resurrection.

Poghosyan begins with a spacious and playful approach to the opening A minor movement  with her usual stunning, crystalline articulacy and a wide dynamic range. Did a later composer steal the Andante in Ab for the jazz ballad These Foolish Things? From Poghosyan’s blend of wistfulness and sheer force, that seems possible.

There’s Rachmaninovian gravitas and surprise in the third quasi-waltz in G minor, while the fourth in D minor gets a rewardingly pouncing interpretation befitting its occasional Near Eastern allusions and blend of sternness and vivacity. No. 5 in Eb is more reflective and Chopinesque; the final piece, in C minor gets restrained savagery in the chordal chromatics and an even greater, fond restraint in the pensive moments. It’s about time these little gems made their way back into the canon: we’re lucky we have Poghosyan reveling in their detail.

Next on the bill are four Grieg Lyric Pieces. To the Spring follows a matter-of-factly triumphant tangent, while March of the Gnomes reveals how much unabashed fun the creepy little guys can have, at least from Poghosyan’s perspective. She mines The Minuet “Vanished Days” for equal parts drama and cheery reflection, then gives the Wedding Day at Troldhaugen a welcome, fleet-footed, verdant atmosphere: these circumstances are anything but pompous.

Poghosyan has always advocated for composers from her Armenian heritage, and includes a couple of alternately stark and lively, chromatically bristling miniatures from Komitas Vardapet’s Six Dances for Piano. She saves the fireworks for last with four big crowd-pleasers by Liszt. The counterintuitive goofiness and carefree, dancing flourishes in the Hungarian Rhapsody No.12 are a revelation but no big surprise considering Poghosyan’s meticulous, line-by-line interpretive skill.

There’s also a lingering delight in her leaps and bounds through Rhapsody No.6: the descending cascades about four minutes in are sublime. And she finds the inner swing in a brisk, animatedly conversational take of Rhapsody No.7. She closes the record with the Rhapsodie Espagnole, ranging between a wide-eyed soberness and fiery, clustered phrasing. It’s been a fun ride keeping up with Poghosyan and her penchant for inhabiting everything she sinks her fast fingers into.

Mark Pacoe Commands the Power of the Organ at St. Patrick’s Cathedral

Among the many reasons for guarded optimism that this city is slowly healing from the traumas inflicted over the past three years is the sudden resurgence of concert traditions that were put on ice in March of 2020. One that was badly missed was the semi-regular series of organ and choral concerts in the magnificent, reverb-heavy sonics at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Mark Pacoe, who was one of the few and the brave to still be playing for audiences as late as the winter of 2020, delivered an eclectically welcome program there on the mighty Kilgen organ on Sunday afternoon

He opened with the Prelude from 20th century composer Paul Creston’s Suite for Organ, a steady, bright, unabashedly Romantic processional with a catchy, anthemic pedal melody amid a torrential swirl, to a matter-of-fact all-stops-out conclusion.

Next on the bill was a 2021 piece, Jason Roberts‘ Prelude & Fugue on the iconic Umm Kulthumm anthem Eta Omri, Pacoe quickly rising from an enigmatic introduction to a pouncing chase sequence punctuated by disquieting lulls. It’s not particularly Middle Eastern-tinged, but it’s an increasingly harried showstopper, quite possibly a reflection on our times.

Ian Farrington‘s variations on Amazing Grace, from 2017, were somewhat quieter but similarly animated, with frequent, jaunty blues riffage. Pacoe closed on a redemptively familiar note with the final two movements from Jean Langlais’ Suite Française. Pacoe played the Voix Céleste with a restless, relentless airiness, enhanced by a pace that seemed on the brisk side. That continued in the finale as he punched in with a redemptive, precise, gusty power.

The next free organ concert at St. Pat’s is on April 16 at 3:15 PM (these shows start right on time) with Ken Corneille playing his own songs plus works by 18th century French composer Médéric Corneille, and contemporary American composer and improviser McNeil Robinson

Novus NY Deliver an Auspicious Performance of New and 20th Century Classical Works

Back in the spring of 2017, there was a fantastic series of concerts of new classical music staged by Trinity Church at their smaller and older sister edifice, St. Paul’s Chapel a couple of blocks to the north. This blog covered several of those performances. Why would events from so far in the past be newsworthy now?

Considering that we lost three years of our lives in the time since, everything in the mirror seems closer than it is. But in keeping with what seems to be a very auspicious trend, there’s a similar and arguably even more ambitious festival going on at the chapel, with lunchtime shows continuing through May 4. At 1 PM, there’s jazz on Mondays, organ music on Tuesdays, Bach choral and instrumental works on Wednesdays and contemporary classical on Thursdays. This past Thursday, a subset of Novus NY treated a tiny audience to a diverse, sometimes spellbinding program that bodes well for what’s in store for the rest of the spring.

Flutist and ensemble leader Melissa Baker explained to the crowd that this year’s theme is empathy, something that the powers that be in this city did their best to crush beginning in March of 2020. It wasn’t clear how this was reflected in the music on the bill, which ranged from wary and harrowing to thoughtfully drifting.

The ensemble opened with the world premiere of Brad Balliett‘s Quintet For Piano and Winds. Gershwinesque swing with dissociative microtones from the lower reeds – the composer himself on bassoon, Benjamin Fingland on clarinet and Stuart Breczinski on oboe – quickly gave way to a tense muddle and then a rise from spacious floating motives to some jaunty pageantry where Baker and horn player Laura Weiner could flurry a little. There was a welcome payoff at the end of a long, anthemically swaying crescendo where pianist Daniel Schlosberg relished the chance to pounce on some icy, glittering, microtonally-tuned upper-register chords and nonchalantly breathtaking downward cascades. From there he continued with an disquieting, emphatic attack, the winds wafting a distant unease.

The quintet marched through persistently troubled trills to a lull punctuated by icepick piano accents and then a rather stern drive out that left no easy answers. What a breathtaking piece of music! As enjoyable as the rest of the program was, it was anticlimactic.

But there were plenty of rewarding moments. Two more contiguous partitas provided opportunities for the group to flex very diverse skillsets. In a small handful of Valerie Coleman‘s Portraits of Langston suite, for flute, clarinet and piano, Baker and Fingland playing dynamically shifting blues-inflected phrases over Schlosberg’s assertive chords and accents. The slow tectonic shifts and gentle Scheherezade whirls of Joan Tower’s Island Prelude made a moody contrast, at least until the wind-and-horn quartet kicked in with a series of animated flights and pulses.

And Louise Farrenc’s expansive, warmly Beethovenesque Sextet in C minor, Op. 40, with Schlosberg’s invitingly consonant melody rippling through nocturnal swells and the winds’ countermelodies, wound up the concert with a cocooning elegance.

Epic, Vivid Spanish-Tinged Big Band Jazz and a Joe’s Pub Show From Emilio Solla

Pianist Emilio Solla writes picturesque, symphonic, state-of-the-art big band jazz that draws on both tango and Spanish Caribbean traditions but transcends both. For those who might be interested in how this chorizo is made, Solla and flamenco-jazz saxophonist/singer Antonio Lizana are launching their upcoming tour with their new quartet at Joe’s Pub on March 25 at 9. Cover is on the steep side, $30 for a bill which four years ago might have been better staged at the late and badly missed Jazz Standard. Good luck dodging the waitstaff, who may or may not be enforcing a minimum at tables.

Solla’s most recent album with his Tango Jazz Orchestra is Puertas: Music from International Waters, streaming at Bandcamp. He dedicates each track to a different city around the world; the result is as cosmopolitan and majestic as you could possibly want. The loose connecting thread is patterns of global immigration and its challenges. Beyond inspired solos, Solla’s compositions have a dynamism and element of surprise beyond most of the other composers in his demimonde.

The opening number, Sol La, Al Sol has subtle tango allusions in the big splashes of color from the orchestra, setting up a bright, assertive Tim Armacost tenor sax solo. The bustle grows to a blaze before trombonist Mike Fahie takes a judicious, spacious solo of his own. The band have fun with Solla’s punchy countermelodies on the way out. Lots going on here.

Guest Arturo O’Farrill takes over on piano as the epic second track, Llegara, Llegara, Llegara begins. The orchestra answers him and then rises with an early-morning suspense as he cascades. Julien Labro’s accordion weaves in and out, over a determined charge down the runway fueled by bassist Pablo Aslan and drummer Ferenc Nemeth. Tenor saxophonist John Ellis takes charge of the lull that follows, choosing his spots over a long, increasingly lush crescendo. The twin piano coda with O’Farrill and Solla trading off is decadently delicious.

In Chacafrik, dedicated to the Angolan city of Benguela, the orchestra shift from a cheery, retro brassiness to a rumble and then sleekness before hitting a circling qawalli groove, Todd Bashore’s alto sax at the center.

Terry Goss’ wistful baritone sax adds a wistful undercurrent as La Novena, a dedication to Solla’s hometown Buenos Aires, gets underway; it’s an otoño porteño, Labro’s bandoneon solo signaling a sober, steady rise at the end. The trumpets – Alex Norris, Jim Seeley, Brad Mason and Jonathan Powell – figure lyrically and sparely in Four for Miles, a pulsing tango-jazz mini-epic with a tantalizingly brief lattice by the first and last on that list at the end.

Edmar Castañeda’s harp introduces Allegron in tandem with Solla’s piano over tricky, punchy Venezuelan rhythms. Once again, Solla brings in towering grandeur in between the moments where Castañeda isn’t threatening to break several strings, Ellis adding a triumphantly balletesque solo on soprano.

Solla draws his inspiration for Andan Luces from Cadiz, a baroque-tinged counterpoint from the high reeds ceding to a pensively incisive solo from Aslan and cheerier flights from the bandleader’s piano. Stormy low brass anchors contrasting highs to kick off the final number, Buenos Aires Blues. Trombonist Noah Bless bobs and weaves over Solla’s kinetic syncopation, with Norris, Goss and Labro riding the waves in turn.

The album also benefits from the collective talents of soprano saxophonist Alejandro Aviles, trombonist Eric Miller and bass trombonist James Rodgers.

Subtle Poignancy and Sophistication on Jazz Chanteuse Simone Kopmajer’s Latest Album

Singer Simone Kopmajer‘s latest album With Love – streaming at Spotify – is often lush, and symphonic, and sweepingly beautiful. Imbued with equal parts jazz and classic torch song, it’s akin to a vintage June Christy record with less of a mentholated cool and more breaks in the clouds. Kopmajer’s a little bit Jenifer Jackson, a little bit Paula Carino, another brilliantly nuanced singer from a completely different idiom.

Kopmajer, her band and string section waste no time in setting a mood, going full steam on the mist in the opening number, The Look of Love, rising from stark to lush over the spare piano accents from pianist John Di Martino and the tiptoe groove from bassist Boris Kozlov and drummer Reinhardt Winkler. The orchestral sweep of violinists Sara Caswell and Tomoko Akaboshi, violist Benni von Gutzeit and cellist Mairi Dorman-Phaneuf elevate the song to new levels of expectant suspense, no disrespect to the Dionne Warwick original.

Kopmajer and tenor saxophonist Harry Allen float suavely over pianist John Di Martino’s spacious, sagacious chords in How Wonderful You Are. Next, they reinvent Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Until It´s Time For You to Go as a wistful nocturne for voice and restrained, gospel-tinged piano

I Can´t Make You Love Me is a subtle blend of trip-hop and jazz, with a low-key, soul-inspired sultriness. The first of the originals here, Opposites Attract, is a fond throwback to peak swing-era Ella Fitzgerald. The album’s piece de resistance is the alternately stark and lavish version of the BeeGees’ How Can You Mend a Broken Heart: Kopmajer’s restrained cadences unleash the song’s innermost angst.

Gottfried Gfrerer propels Hank Williams’ Cold, Cold Heart with low-key acoustic and National steel guitar behind Kopmajer’s purist countrypolitan interpretation. Then she reaches toward Blossom Dearie territory as Allen wafts in and out in a low-key, swinging take of I´m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter.

Stevie Wonder’s For Once in My Life gets reinvented as elegant chamber pop, with swelling, baroque-tinged violins. Kopmajer’s second original is Take It All In, with Di Martino on both organ and piano: it could be a more retro take on a Steely Dan ballad.

She duets with Sheila Jordan on a playful swing through Everything Happens to Me: the nonagenarian jazz legend is indomitable and has updated the song for the digital age! The take of the Aaron Neville hit Tell It Like It Is turns out to be an unexpectedly undulating jazz waltz with a dynamically shifting Allen solo at the center.

Kopmajer and Di Martino then turn in an intimate jazz ballad version of Nashville pop pioneer Cindy Walker’s You Don´t Know Me. There’s another song here, but its expiration date was up a long time ago. Kopmajer’s next gig is on March 10 at 8:30 PM at the Oval in Salzburg in her native Austria; cover is €32. And Allen is leading a trio with Andy Brown on guitar and Mike Karn on bass at Mezzrow on March 10-11, with sets at 7:30 and 9 PM; cover is $25 cash at the door.

Fun fact: Kopmajer says she has sold thirty thousand cd’s in Thailand. If she did that here, she’d have a #1 album.

Starry, Cinematic Magic and Quasar Pulses on Vibraphonist Chris Dingman’s Latest Solo Album

Where so many artists were locked out and creatively dispossessed during the 2020 plandemic, vibraphonist Chris Dingman got busy. He put out one of the most epic and immersively beautiful albums of that year, Peace, his first-ever solo release, which he played and recorded for his dying father. His latest album Journeys Vol. 2 – streaming at Bandcamp – is also a solo record. As with the first volume, it’s all about transcendence. The loss of his dad – who, for the record, was not killed by the Covid shot – is a factor. The enduring horror of the 2020 lockdowns is also something he tackles with compassion and depth here. Dingman’s next gig is on March 9 at 9 PM at Bar Lunatico, where he’s leading a trio with Keith Witty on bass and the reliably brilliant Allan Mednard on drums.

The first track on the album is Ride, a gently cantering song without words that Dingman rescues from practically indie rock territory to a more warmly consonant framework. And that’s where Dingman finds the magic, a reflecting pool and then a smartly constructed series of variations that will leave you nodding, “yessssss” and validating his choice of starting point.

Track two is Dream, Ever Dream, a practically seventeen-minute odyssey where he builds uneasy, spare melody over circling lower-register riffage. As this soundscape unwinds, Dingman works minute rhythmic shifts, raising the hypnotic factor many times over: the steadiness and articulacy of his slowly expanding cell-like figures is impressive to say the least. Maybe to be fair to the listener, Dingman finds a way to resolve the tension and then works it up again from there. But he can’t resist the lure of setting up another delicate polyrhythmic ice sculpture, which he again warms into a long, triumphant coda.

He builds a slow, cinematic theme in Transit, distant rumbling curlicues of a train underneath the slowly passing frames: the soundscapes of noir Americana band Suss are a good comparison. There’s an even more hypnotic rhythmic triangulation in Enter, coalescing and then expanding outward, frames coming rewardingly into focus before being obscured again.

Dingman winds up the record with Return, building from the most mesmerizing loops here to a long, lush series of waves and then a more kinetic series of variations on the opening theme. Whether you call this ambient music or jazz, you can get lost in it. Dingman will probably pick up the pace a lot at the Bed-Stuy gig.

A word about the liner notes: without a doubt, it’s historically important to remember the Lenape people, a sophisticated civilization who were genocided by the Dutch invaders in the 1600s in what is now New York. But almost four centuries later, this isn’t Lenape land. It’s ours. The messaging about how the turf beneath our feet belongs to a dead civilization and not to us is a UN Agenda 2030 scam to eliminate private property, to get us to live in 10X10 cubicles in Trump cities and eating zee bugs. The Lenape did not eat zee bugs.