Camila Meza Brings Her Disarmingly Direct Voice, Guitar and Unflinching Political Sensibility to the West Village

Camila Meza’s lustrous, wondrous, disarmingly clear vocals mirror the way she plays guitar. For that reason, she’s highly sought after. She’s the not-so-secret weapon in trombonist Ryan Keberle’s group, and also plays a central role in Fabian Almazan’s large ensemble. She’s as vivid a lyricist in English as in her native Spanish; when she sings vocalese, she’s more likely to harmonize with a guitar line than to imitate a postbop horn solo.

That often shatteirngly direct sensibility serves her songwriting well. Her work has a fearless political relevance, inspired by decades of populist songwrirting from throughout Latin America. Her most recent album Traces is streaming at Sunnyside Records. She’s playing a characteristically politically-fueled show with pianist Aaron Goldberg on May 10 at 8 PM at Greenwich House Music School; cover is $15/$10 stud.

The album opens with Para Volar, a bright, gently churning melody underneath her Spanish-language lyrics, an allusively triumphant shout-out to freedom and escape, a common theme in the Chilean-born Meza’s music. Her guitar bubbles and leaps over the lithe rhythm section of bassist Matt Penman and drummer Kendrick Scott, pianist Shai Maestro kicking into his driving low register as Meza’s solo peaks out. She revisits that optimism a little later in the album’s kinetic title track, where she turns up her guitar and cuts loose, more gritty and lowdown.

Jody Redhage’s spare cello and Maestro’s sparkly Rhodes mingle with Meza’s gentle fingerpicking in Away, a wistful, hypnotic duet with Sachal Vasandani. Meza’s precise, clipped vocals leave no doubt as to the deadly consequences in Djavan’s bitter eco-disaster narrative Amazon Farewell, Maestro adding a richly incisive, darkly rippling solo.

Mar Elastico is an enigmatically hazy, summery reminiscence of Meza’s childhood adventures with her sisters, Maestro’s Rhodes front and center; Scott’s distant-tornado cymbals behind Meza’s delicate jangle is one of the album’s high points. She switches to acoustic for a spare solo take of the Victor Jara classic Luchin. an allusively harrowing tale of resilience amidst crushing childhood poverty. 

The uneasy piano-guitar harmonies in Steven Sondheim’s Greenfinch and Linnet Bird give the selfconsciously fussy ballad a welcome gravitas. Meza returns to the expectantly circling, distant yet optimistic intensity of the early part of the album in Emerald: the mantra is “There’s no need to hide now.”

The album’s most elusive yet arguably strongest track is the lush, sweeping Mangata, a metaphorically-charged refugee’s escape anthem, Meza’s stark, emphatic chords against Maestro’s neoromantic glimmer. The album ends with the self-effacingly modest Little Person – the spare, rather trad closing theme from the Philip Seymour Hoffman film Synecdoche New York-  projecting the hope of “finding another little person,” as Meza puts it. What Meza has found here in the US is a fertile crucible for her many talents, all of which are still in their formative stages. Catch her on the way up.

A Darkly Majestic, Sweepingly Cinematic, Often Haunting Trio Album from Pianist Guy Mintus

Pianist Guy Mintus’ music has depth, and gravitas, and glimmer, and an often cinematic sweep. Israeli pianists tend to embrace both western classical music as well as the edgy minor keys and chromatics common to Jewish and  Middle Eastern music, and Mintus is no exception. His sound is very distinctive: there’s no real comparison, although from time to time he evokes the nocturnal majesty of Shai Maestro, the phantasmagorical side of Frank Kimbrough and the counterintuitively dark explorations of Danny Fox. Mintus’s new album, A Home In Between, with his long-running trio, bassist Tamir Shmerling and drummer Philippe Lemm – bits and pieces of which are online at Mintus’ music page and at Soundcloud – is due out tomorrow. The trio are playing the album release show on June 20 at 7:30 PM at the big room at the Rockwood. Cover is $12.

The album opens with an ambitious diptych of sorts, Our Journey Together, a bittersweet, neoomantic waltz spiced with the occasional striking, menacing chromatic. As the theme diverges, Mintus takes a couple of breathtakingly precise cascades, then everything falls apart. The band pulls it together again slowly, up to a long, broodingly triumphant coda lit up with uneasy Lennie Tristano close harmonies and a big drum hailstorm.

Lemm anchors Mibifnim, a disquietingly altered bolero, as a shuffle drag while Shmerling adds elegantly fugal counterpoint, Mintus quoting Rachmaninoff and spinning wryly leapfrogging flourishes around the moody melody. Background shifts dissociatively between stride, Chopin and hard bop before Lemm cracks the whip and takes everybody swinging up to a big, rumbling drum solo.

Shmerling plays the role of percussionist, then takes a morosely microtonal solo to open the Levantine dirge Zeybekiko for the Brave, echoing both the Golan Heights and the Greek isles, Mintus’ incisive passing tones reaching a red-sunset crescendo over the walls of Jerusalem.

A spare trouble-in-deep-space conversation between bass and piano opens In the Moment, which goes in a more playful, funky direction reminiscent of Fox. Smile is a journey rather than a destination, opening with a very artfully implied, latin-tinged menace, then slowly brightens, up to a cheerily circling piano riff and neoromantic variations, wryly interpolating the old standard.

Desert Song begins as a hushed, plaintive, slow ballad against Lemm’s shadowy cymbals, glittering with chromatics, Mintus then building a distantly troubled anthem in the same vein as the album’s opening track. A dip where the band pulls apart gingerly contrasts with Mintus’ big, spiraling crescendo: sounds like they finally made it to the oasis.

Mintus’ allusively Middle Eastern solo improvisation introduces Coban Sirto, a whirlingly carnivalesque Balkan dance fueled by Lemm’s rat-a-tat on the toms, Mintus’ twistedly swaying circus riffs and Shmerling’s leaping, bounding insistence. The final cut is My Ideal, Mintus solo, slicing and dicing with Errol Garner-ish flair and a playful spaciousness. The best piano trio album of 2017 by a mile, so far.

Avishai Cohen Brings His Pensive, Mysterious Middle Eastern Jazz to Highline Ballroom

Avishai Cohen is on a roll. The Israeli jazz bassist specializes in moody, often haunting compositions which draw equally on Middle Eastern and western classical music as well as jazz. Like another brilliant Israeli jazz bassist, Omer Avital, Cohen has gone deeper into the Middle East lately, although Cohen takes less of the spotlight than Avital typically does, and tends to be more compositionally than improvisationally-inclined. His most recent album, Almah is a blend of Middle Eastern and contemporary classical music and features both oboe and a string quartet. Like Cohen’s two previous efforts, Duende and Aurora, the lineup also includes brilliant third-stream pianist Nitai Hershkovits, who’s joining Cohen along with drummer Daniel Dor for a trio show at Highline Ballroom on June 22 at 8 PM; tix are $30.

Over Cohen’s past three albums, you can see a trajectory unfold and a distinctive, individualistic style continue to evolve. Cohen’s intimate, straightforward, emotionally direct songs without words often take on a Spanish tinge throughout Aurora, which is basically a trio album featuring Shai Maestro on piano with occasional oud from Amos Hoffman and vocalese from Karen Malka. There are plenty of tricky time signatures, generous amounts of rubato, and dynamics galore. Duende, a duo album with Hershkovits, is more rhythmic, swings more and relies more on blues-based tradition rather than the apprehensive chromatics of Aurora – other than the gorgeous theme-and-variations that comprise the former’s opening tracks. Almah has a starkly orchestrated overture, a little minimalist indie classical, austerely rhythmic Arabic melodies, an uneasy lullaby, a couple of bracingly acerbic, chromatically-fueled waltzes, and a bitingly rhythmic, rather ferocious piano feature for Hershkovits that might be its strongest track.

Since Cohen is playing this show with the trio, you can most likely expect lots of stuff from the two older albums and maybe material from even earlier. Settle in, wait for the lights to go down and let the suspense begin.