No Wasted Notes From Guitarist Amanda Monaco and Her Killer Organ Jazz Quartet

Beyond the obvious Jim Hall/Jimmy Smith collaborations, there haven’t been a lot of jazz guitarists leading organ bands. Guitarist Amanda Monaco is a welcome exception – it’s a role she excels at, although hers is hardly your typical B3 group. She’s leading a trio with Justin Carrol on organ and Jeff Davis on drums on Dec 20 at 8 PM at Cornelia St. Cafe; cover is $10 plus the usual $10 minimum. As a bonus, edgy, lyrical tenor saxophonist Roxy Coss leads her quintet afterward at 9:30.

Monaco pulled together a killer, refreshingly unorthodox lineup for her latest album, Glitter, streaming at Posi-Tone Records. Gary Versace plays organ, joined by Matt Wilson on drums and Lauren Sevian on baritone sax. Diehard organ types might feel that Versace is underutilized here, but ultimately this is all about the frontline: the way Monaco fills the role of a horn in tandem with the baritone is as interesting as it is innovative.

Monaco’s effervescent wit is in full effect right from the first droll around-the-horn echo effects of the album’s opening track, Dry Clean Only. Nicking the changes of Sonny Rollins’ The Bridge, the group motors along throught tight, purposeful growl from Sevian, similarly spaced clusters from Versace and some delicious off-beat cymbal work from Wilson.

Monaco learned Tommy Flanagan’s jaunty “let’s go” theme Freight Trane from the Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane album; the way the group hangs back, refusing to hit a straight-up shuffle in the beginning is tantalizingly fun. Gremlin From the Kremlin – a shout-out to Monaco’s husband written before the disastrous events of November 8, 2016 – comes across as a gruffly edgy, bitingly chromatic strut, part klezmer and part noir bolero: Versace manages to find his creepiest tremolo setting before Monaco sets a vector for an uneasy stroll.

Monaco and Sevian go way back together, so Girly Day takes its inspiration from their years of brunching and comparing notes on the trials of being female musicians in a male-dominated genre. It’s catchy but unsettled, with some neatly diverging harmonies and a priceless what-now solo from Wilson.

Inspired by Holly Golightly’s method for pulling herself out of the doldrums in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Mean Reds is a gutbucket strut, part Chuck Berry, part Jimmy McGriff go-go and part T-Bone Walker. Step Counter has a slightly staggered clave beat, low-key Giant Steps changes and similarly amiable guitar-sax conversations. Fred Lacey’s Theme For Ernie, popularized by Trane, serves as a moody launching pad for poignant solos by Sevian and Monaco.

Meant to evoke what must have been a hell of a hangover, Mimosa Blues is the album’s darkest number, Versace climbing around tirelessly through his most menacing, Messianic voicings, Monaco echoing that surrealism. The album winds up with the title track, a catchy, anthemic look back at Monaco and Sevian’s days in the early zeros getting ready for big-band gigs  If Dave Brubeck had been an organist, he might have written something like it. Throughout these tracks, it’s refreshing to the extreme to hear a guitarist so purposeful and individualistic, who never feels the need to fall back on tired postbop comping mechanisms.

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The Marvin Sewell Group Plays an Intense Lincoln Center Show

Last night at the Lincoln Center Atrium, the Marvin Sewell Group played an edgily dynamic set, characteristically blending jazz and blues with the occasional, steadily funky interlude in a mix of guitarist Sewell’s originals and a couple of vividly reworked standards. They opened with Polar Shift, Sewell’s spikily looping African-tinged solo guitar riffage developing to a catchy but uneasily airy circular theme, Joe Barbato’s accordion in tandem with Sam Newsome’s soprano sax over the counterintuitively rhythmic sway of acoustic bassist Calvin Jones and drummer Satoshi Takeishi.

Insomnia rose from Sewell’s allusions to otherworldly early 20s open-tuned guitar blues to a creepy vamp that crept along with a loose-limbed skeleton bounce from Takeishi, Newsome alternating between warmer colors and spiraling menace. A warmly lyrical, waltzing take of Charles Lloyd’s Song for My Lady featured Newsome in both balmy and dancing modes against Barbato’s judicious piano chords and misty wee-hours phrasing. They picked up the pace just a little with a jauntily scampering take of Monk’s Brake’s Sake, Sewell with a steady, Jim Hall-like focus, Barbato and then Newsome adding a rustic, ragtime edge.

The darkest, most intense moments of the night came during another Sewell waltz, Worker’s Dance, his biting acoustic phrasing punctuating Newsome and Barbato’s cumulo-nimbus ambience. A tribute to Sewell’s late pal, Philadelphia guitarist Jeffrey Johnson, was the night’s most adrenalizing number As Sewell recounted, Johnson was the kind of player who’d push his bandmates to take their game to the next level, so it wasn’t long before the tune became a springboard for Sewell’s rapidfire yet restrained, sinewy legato Stratocaster solos. They wrapped up the show on a high note with Big Joe, a shout-out to ten-string blues guitar legend Big Joe Williams, Sewell building a biting, roughhewn intensity on acoustic before a long climb upward where Newsome finally cut loose with a series of aching, postbop bursts and yelps. The series of free concerts at the atrium continues through the year, including a show by upbeat, shapeshifting Brazilian-inspired C&W/funk band Nation Beat on July 10 at 7:30 PM; early arrival is advised.

Characteristically Edgy, Intense Oud and Guitar from Gordon Grdina

Vancouver-based guitarist/oudist Gordon Grdina has a deliciously edgy, smartly constructed, tuneful album, No Difference, out recently from Songlines. He’s joined by his longtime drummer Kenton Loewen along with Mark Helias on bass and Tony Malaby on tenor sax.

There are two duo pieces for oud and bass here, both recorded in concert at Shapeshifter Lab this past summer. The first, Hope in Being opens with an incisive, broodingly modal oud taqsim which coalesces into a remarkably catchy, swaying theme that Helias doubles with a similar stately precision and dynamic interaction with Grdina’s spirals and fades. The other, sardonically titled Fast Times, works a spare, spacious but slashing call-and-response, again with a Middle Eastern-flavored modal intensity.

The first of the guitar tracks, Limbo, is an enigmatic distantly ominous guitar/bass duo. Grdina builds to a Frisellian grey-sky theme,  punching up the bass response and reverb for a rhythmic, exploratory solo over Helias’ judicious, dynamically rich climbs, eerily resonant chords and dancing motives, mingling with Grdina’s blurry, disquieted chordal ambience. The Throes makes a great segue as it brings up the levels, Grdina’s long, reverbtoned, misterioso intro building to a matter-of-fact swing with bolero and Romany allusions, Malaby’s nebulous alto at first a calming contrast to the biting, incisive drive of the guitar but then joining the melee.

Leisure Park, a trio piece, quickly expands on a snarling, emphatic descending progression. Grdina’s growling, sputtering guitar solo evokes Jim Hall spun through the prism of Marc Ribot, maybe; Helias picks up his bow and fires off one of his own in a similarly biting vein.

The guitar/bass duo Nayeli Joon, a sparkling but moody waltz dedicated to Grdina’s daughter, blends a British folk edge into Grdina’s carefully articulated, almost baroque arpeggiation, Helias taking full advantage of the chance to shift the song into the shadows and then back. Cluster sets a brooding, rather severe theme and improvisation for oud and bass over echoey, increasingly agitated deep-space washes of bowed guitar.

Fierce Point begins as the most free piece here, Loewen driving the morass upward, Grdina chopping furiously at his strings, Malaby and Helias blippy and surreal as Grdina wanders through this wilderness all alone, his creepy oud-flavored lines morphing into a wry early 70s-style metal-jazz vamp. The final number, Visceral Voices, shuffles genially with the most trad postbop flavor here, Grdina spicing it with the occasional menacing, reverberating, lingering riff against Malaby’s nonchalantly burred lines and Helias’ hard-hitting attack. Another triumph of intense, straightforward tunesmithing and agile, inspired interplay from one of this era’s most distinctive voices on the guitar.

Jazz for Obama 2012: Unforgettable

Jazz for Obama 2012 last night at Symphony Space was like one of those Kennedy Center New Year’s Eve concerts, a hall of fame lineup, except that this one vociferously represented the 99%. Only a special occasion like this could bring together such an all-star cast from five generation of jazz: Roy Haynes, McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, Kenny Barron, Jim Hall, Geri Allen, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride and Jeff “Tain” Watts, to name less than half of the cast. Inspired by the prospect of playing for free for the sake of benefiting the re-election campaign of a President who, as one of the organizers put it, “comes across as the only adult in the room,” they delivered what might be the most transcendent concert of the year. There’s an interview with organizer/pianist Aaron Goldberg up at artinfo that provides a lot of useful background.

Yet as ecstatic as the music was, there was a persistent unease. Timeless tenor sax sage Jimmy Heath kicked off the show alongside Barrron, Carter and the purist Greg Hutchinson on drums, with a soulful take of There Will Never Be Another You followed by Autumn in New York. Evocative and wistful as that one was, Heath ended it with a moody series of tritones, perfectly capsulizing the pre-election tension that hostess Dee Dee Bridgewater brought up again and again, imagining the spectre of Mitt Romney in the Oval Office. Guitarist Hall, who was particularly energized to be part of the festivities, joined Carter in a warmly conversational duo of All the Things You Are and then a biting blues. After a bright Barron/Carter ballad, tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane joined Allen, McBride and drummer Ralph Peterson for a wrenchingly epic take of one of Barack Obama’s favorite songs, John Coltrane’s Wise One. Its searing ache and ominous modalities were inescapable even as the quartet finally took it swinging with a redemptive thunderstorm from Peterson and his cymbals. As  Bridgewater put it, “That was a moment!”

Tyner and tenorist Joe Lovano followed, maintaining the full-throttle intensity with Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit, the pianist’s menacing low lefthand sostenuto vortices contrasting with the sax’s sharp, bluesy directness. After that, their take of Search for Peace held steady, majestic and unselfconsciously righteous. The first set closed with a playful bass/vocal duet on It’s Your Thing by Bridgewater and McBride.

The second part of the show opened with Becca Stevens and Gretchen Parlato teaming up for a couple of Brazilian-tinged pop songs. Mehldau was joined by McBride for a rapturous, casually contemplative take on Monk’s Think of One – and where was Tain? Oh yeah, there he was, jumping in and adding his signature irrepressible wit.

Claudia Acuna then led a family band of Arturo O’Farrill on piano, his sons Zack on drums and Adam on trumpet, Craig Haynes on congas and Alex Hernandez on bass through a blazing, insistent, Puerto Rican-spiced Moondance that simply would not be denied. After that, bass legend Henry Grimes wasted no time in thoroughly Grimesing Freedom Jazz Dance. Completely still but masterful with his fleet fingers, he took Allen and Watts on an expansive, surreal, brisk outer-space AACM-age stroll on the wings of microtones, slides, and a handful of wicked rasps. And Allen and Watts were game! She waited for her moment and then joined in with an off-center, minimalist lunar glimmer while Watts added distant Plutonian whispers. The concert ended on a high-spirited note with Goldberg taking over the keys for a boisterousl warped version of Epistrophy, along with McBride, Lovano and ageless drum legend Roy Haynes bedeviling his mates throughout an endless series of false starts, and endings, and good-natured japes: the tune hardly got past the waltzing introductory hook, McBride patiently looping it as Haynes shamelessly energized the crowd. It would have been impossible to end the show on a better note, equal parts exhilaration and dread.

Some of you may have reservations about another Obama administration, but consider the alternative: a corporate raider who’s made millions putting his fellow citizens out of work, who cavalierly looks forward to nuclear war with Iran and has such contempt for the American public that he doesn’t even bother to cover his lies. We are in a depression, no doubt: we will be in an even worse one if Romney might win, perish the thought. For those of you who aren’t out of work and can afford an investment in the future, there’s still time to help our President’s reelection campaign at WWW.JAZZFOROBAMA2012.COM.