Arturo Stabile
Notes on Canvas
Origen Records
A rich Latin jazz Pictures at an Exhibition, Notes on Canvas transports us into a synesthetic realization of some of percussionist/composer Stabile's favorite works of art. Other musicians include Paquito D'Rivera on clarinet, David Sanchez and George Garzone on tenor sax, drummers Danfis Prieto and Francisco Mela, bassist Esperanza Spalding, pianist Aruan Ortiz, and Victor Mendoza on marimba, with Stable's congas, bongos, and other sounds offering calibrated, quirky, but never simply show-offy hues and brush strokes. The Cuban-born New Yorker renders Wilfred Lam's La Jungla (The Jungle), Picasso's Guernica, Monet's Impression/Sunrise, Frida Kahlo's Self Portrait, Da Vinci's Gioconda, Van Gogh's Self Portrait, La Ventana Magica (The Magical Window) by Stabile's father, Arturo Sr., Kandinsky's Composition No. 8, and Dali's Clock Explosion.
La Jungla is rhythmically lush with Sanchez's tenor sax carrying the main branch-swaying theme. Guernica is a sad fractured being featuring Garzone's mournful, bewildered tenor. Impression/Sunrise has Ortiz on a quiet chordal trek with Peter Slavov's agile bass and Stable's Cuban-box twitches giving the number a crazed-woodpecker tension. Kahlo is celebrated with the gentle gliding vocals of Esperanza Spaulding intertwined with Fernando Huergo's silky octave-leaping bass. In Gioconda, Da Vinci meets a Miles Davis kind of muted riff from Barry Ries's moody trumpet. Van Gogh's given a textured treatment undergirded by Francisco Mela's drums and Stable's restless congas. Stable Sr. is serenaded by D'Rivera's elegant clarinet--at once free and utterly precise--and Rene Izquierdo's delicate guitar. Composition #8 is stealthy and linear, and in Clock Explosion, time, under the spell of Stable's congas, is indeed combustible.
Upcoming for Stabile is a quartet album off the repertoire of pianist Frank Emilio Flynn, and trio and duet combos of Stabile's work. Give this imaginative album a listen and I think you'll join me in eagerly anticipating those projects.
Ryan Cohan
One Sky
Motema Music
The heart of this album is a suite of tone poems: "Into Being Parts I and II," "Wonder & Response," "Awe," and "Hope." Cohan is a superb composer and arranger, and a wonderfully bold, confident punch and jabber of a pianist, but with a quiet side that relishes the vulnerable ballad and the impressionistic riff. He is joined by a fabulous ensemble: Bob Sheppard on saxes and flute, Geof Bradfield on saxes and bass clarinet, Tito Carrillo on trumpet and flugelhorn, James Cammack and Lorin Cohen on bass, Kobie Watkins on drums, Ruben Alvarez on shekere, and Jean-Christophe Leroy on congas.
The suite is sweet--expansive, quirky, and spinny in a childlike way. I especially enjoyed "Wonder & Response," which has the lovely ambling feel of a quiet walk in fields near enough to be comfortable and far enough to keep the ambler alert to the everyday natural marvels he's been missing.
The sly "Double Agent" couples Sheppard's breathy burbling flute inspirations with Cohan's cool chordal maneuverings and scalar scampers. "Easy for You to Say" is an articulate musing on inarticulateness that will be instantly recognizable to any wooer who's tripped over his tongue or, in its introductory feel, to any pianist who's worshipped Bud Powell. (It might have nothing to do with wooing and Cohan might hate Powell. I'm risking a guess or two and hope you'll listen and risk some guesses of your own.) "Six Fortunes" is imbued with mystery by Cohan's pedaled pensees, Leroy's creeping congas, and a horn chart that never quite tonally resolves. "Checkmate" jogs through its urbane paces like the score to a sophisticated cop thriller. And "Lush Life," the only cover here, is delivered with a salute to Strayhorn and a reverence for Ravel.
Call me superficial, but my only quibble with this fine album is that someone--I'm presuming it's Cohan--has a bad case of hum-itis. Sometimes that's so integral to a musician's melodic momentum that there's nothing one can do. But it is distracting--at its worst, like having Ray Romano doing a little unplanned backup vocal--so if Cohan can strip it from his studio work especially, he should.
-Alexander C. Kafka
