Soaring, Vivid Chamber Pop and Pastorales from Rose & the Nightingale

Jody Redhage can frequently be found playing cello with many of New York’s more adventurous chamber ensembles when she’s not on the road with Esperanza Spalding. Redhage also happens to be a compelling and eclectic singer, and a first-rate tunesmith who’s as fluent with catchy pop/rock hooks as she is with elegant chamber pieces. Her 2011 solo album, Of Minutiae and Memory, built a lush atmosphere from overdubs and loops of cello and vocals. Her latest original project is Rose & the Nightingale, the name taken from a Rumi poem on which one of the tracks on the group’s debut album, Spirit of the Garden, is based. As the title implies, the atmosphere here is bright and vernal, a celebration of nature and the outdoors. It’s lively and entertaining, and the three-part vocal harmonies are imaginative and often breathtaking. Redhage is joined by Leala Cyr on vocals and trumpet, Sara Caswell on violin and Laila Biali on piano and vocals, with Ben Wittman on percussion and Redhage’s trombonist husband Alan Ferber guesting on a couple of tracks

The album’s first full-length cut, It’s So Beautiful, takes its inspiration from the water garden at London’s Barbican Center, blending trip-hop and chamber pop with a wickedly catchy chorus and a sinuous Caswell solo. Sky, Mountain, Stream turns a Ella Cvancara poem into a baroque-tinged pastorale with a lushly gorgeous rondo for the vocals. A tersely suspenseful cello intro opens up Butterfly – a setting of a poem by French poet Miquel Decor -which goes soaring and animated with bubbly piano over Redhage’s bassline.

Say I Am You sets the Rumi poem referenced in the album title to a Balkan-tinged choral melody. Where the Fish Are This Big is a brightly catchy, late-Beatlesque piano anthem, Caswell on mandolin, Evan Karp’s lyric inspired by the fish pond at San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers where the ensemble made their live debut last year.

I Write You a Love Poem, with a Maria Brady-Smith lyric, contrasts Redhage’s dancing cello riff against Biali’s brightly spacious, lyrical piano, Caswell’s solo adding a tinge of angst. The group goes back to Abbey Road for Rosa Maria, then vividly evokes a Vermont snowstorm via a Wyn Cooper poem with the slowly crescendoing Dissolve. Biali’s glistening, modally-tinged, bluesy solo is one of the album’s most enjoyable moments.

The Orchid Room, with lyrics by Silvi Alcivar, returns to a dancing, allusive trip-hop groove with another richly catchy but pensive chorus, pondering the transience of all living things. The album winds up with the dreamy lullaby Snow Peace Calms, with another Cvancara lyric, and then a muted, somewhat elegaic take of Mario Laginha’s Despedida (Farewell). The album also has four brief group improvisations, one for each of the seasons, more minimalistically atmospheric than Vivaldiesque. Like the Jason Seed Stringtet‘s album recently covered here, this album ought to resonate just as much with a rock audience as with the classical and avant garde crowds.

Catherine Russell’s Latest Album Does the Time Warp Her Way

Catherine Russell’s latest cd Inside This Heart of Mine is the great album the Moonlighters didn’t release this year. A purist, inspired mix of swing blues and shuffles from the 1920s to the present day, it cements Russell’s reputation as a connoisseur of brilliant obscurities, and a reinventer of some which aren’t so obscure. Her band is phenomenal: Matt Munisteri on guitar and banjo, Mark Shane on piano, Lee Hudson on bass, Brian Grice on drums, with Jon-Erik Kellso on trumpet, Dan Block on tenor sax and clarinet and John Allred on trombone, among others. The oldtime sound here reminds just how edgy, and fun, and actually ahead of its time much of the material here was: the band play it with joyous intensity and bite. This isn’t exactly safe, easy listening.

The title track, a Fats Waller tune, is recast as a slow, darkly torchy swing blues, trumpet and trombone consoling each other. All the Cats Join In transforms Peggy Lee’s seemingly innocuous 1946 jaunt to the ice cream parlor to something far more adventurous, taking it back in time another twenty years to when the place was probably a speakeasy. Block’s sax is so psyched to be there that he misses his exit and stays all the way through the the turnaround. Another Waller tune, We the People, gets a celebratory dixieland-inflected treatment.

The ruefully swinging Troubled Waters, based on the 1934 Ellington recording with Ivie Anderson in front of the band, is a suicide song, but Russell only alludes to it: she doesn’t go over the top, leaving the real mournfulness to Kellso’s muted trumpet. By contrast, Maxine Sullivan’s As Long As I Live is jaunty and understatedly sultry, with genial piano from Shane. The apprehensive ballad November, by producer Paul Kahn, is characteristically dark and understated, pacing along slowly on the beat of Munisteri’s guitar, with lowlit ambience from Rachelle Garniez’ accordion and Sara Caswell’s violin.

Just Because You Can, written by Garniez – one of this era’s most individual songwriters- is a pacifist anthem. Russell gives it surprising snarl and bite, if not the kind of disquieting ambiguity that Garniez would undoubtedly bring to it, Caswell’s violin handing off to Munisteri’s devilish banjo. The rest of the album includes a lazy, innuendo-laden Long, Strong and Consecutive (another Ellington band number); a vividly wary version of Arthur Prysock’s Close Your Eyes; a hilarious take of Wynonie Harris’ 1954 drinking song Quiet Whiskey; a strikingly rustical, even bitter banjo-and-tuba cover of Willie Dixon’s Spoonful; and a couple of upbeat, 1920s style numbers to close it. The fun the band has playing all of this stuff translates viscerally to the listener. Simply one of the best albums of 2010. It’s out now on World Village Music.

CD Review: Jon Gordon – Evolution

The jazz saxophonist’s latest album is aptly titled. He’s evolving in all directions, whether in jazz, classical or further toward the avant as the course of his career has recently swung. It wouldn’t be an insult to say that this is the kind of cd that could wean someone off of smooth jazz – it’s melodic, atmospheric and contemplatively subtle. When it’s edgy, it is in a quiet way. This isn’t particularly intense music but it’s very smart. The New York Times positively loves this guy – make of that what you will.

Jon Gordon got hooked on the idea of a large ensemble playing with Alan Ferber’s nonet over the last couple of years, and he’s put that experience to good use here. The cd kicks off with a stark, austere prelude featuring Sara Caswell and Andie Springer on violin, Jody Redhage on cello and Gordon himself on piano – an idea which will recur later on the truthfully titled Contemplation, sans Gordon, which is actually the darkest single cut here. There are also a couple of portraits of Gordon’s kids here, both featuring Bill Charlap’s  characteristically lyrical piano. Shane is illustrated as somewhat moody via a tone poem, Charlap playing inquisitively in a duo setting against Gordon’s wary soprano sax; by contrast, One for Liam is sprightly and full of life, shades of early Spyro Gyra before they went to Lite FM and got stuck there.

The rest of the album is rich with lush arrangements, the title track ambitiously building off a staggered beat to an attractive, breezy theme that smartly pairs off Sean Wayland’s piano with Gordon’s carefree alto. Currents moves from exploratory and then expansive on the wings of Nate Radley’s guitar which sets the stage for bright solo excursions by bassist Matt Clohesy, Gordon (on soprano again) and then vocalese from Kristin Berardi. Bloom benefits from a gorgeous string arrangement and intro that builds to a big crescendo with the horns going full steam, then back down into a verdant Wayland solo and a sweeping outro. The most memorable track here, Veil opens with characteristic directness yet with an undercurrent of suspense (Messiaen comes to mind) with balmy alto, warm Wayland piano and strings. The album winds up with the clever Individuation, an exercise in circumnavigation rather than interplay where the individual voices flutter above the ambient wash of the strings, kicked off with an unabashedly joyous Gordon alto solo. Sneak this into the mix at your parents’ house, if music isn’t their thing, and they’ll never notice. Sneak it into the mix at a friend’s place and halfway through watch the ears perk up: what are we listening to, anyway?