Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Arts

Audio Files

By JOHN FLEMING and PHILIP BOOTH
Published August 28, 2005

MACKEY: BANANA/DUMP TRUCK (ALBANY) Steven Mackey obviously wants to be Jimi Hendrix. The only problem is that Mackey is a music professor at Princeton and consorts with the likes of Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco and New World symphonies, and cello virtuoso Fred Sherry. So if Mackey is in no position to follow in the footsteps of Hendrix, he's doing the next best thing: bringing the electric guitar to classical music.

Five years ago, Mackey premiered Tuck and Roll with Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony in Miami. It was the first fully notated concerto for electric guitar, and it was surprisingly restrained, more complex art music than kick-butt rock. But no matter, history was made. Mackey was still playing the instrument of Hendrix, Duane Allman and Eric Clapton as soloist with a symphony orchestra.

Now Albany Records has released a CD of some of Mackey's earlier electric guitar works, composed in 1994-95. Deal is the most interesting, with an improvised guitar part, played by Mackey, with Ray Dillard on drums and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose conducting. Mackey digs into some rock-style riffs, and Dillard's artful drumming holds it all together. Also included are a barking dog (especially nice when paired with a trumpet solo), a ringing phone and other ambient noise.

With its whimsical touches amid an intricate orchestral wash, Deal is vaguely reminiscent of some of the avant-garde efforts by Beach Boy Brian Wilson when he was collaborating with oddball Hollywood songwriter Van Dyke Parks. For insight from Mackey on his compositional approach to this work and others, see www.stevenmackey.com and the link "Wild Hairs & Miscellaneous Propaganda" and download the essay "Music as an Action Sport."

The rest of Banana/Dump Truck is less engaging. Mackey composed Fusion Tune (an homage to fusion bands like Oregon) and San Francisco as duos for him and cellist Sherry, and there's a relaxed, offhand quality to both short works, a jazzy blend of improvised and notated music. The title piece, the only track without electric guitar, showcases Sherry in a composition inspired by a childhood game played by Mackey and his brother (a game also responsible for the disc's lame cover). Cello and orchestra trade off sections and never really play together, as if occupying parallel musical universes. Sherry is a true master, and the orchestra writing is often lovely in a shimmering, impressionistic sort of way, but at more than half an hour, Banana/Dump Truck feels too long. B

- JOHN FLEMING, Times performing arts critic

DREW GRESS, 7 BLACK BUTTERFLIES (PREMONITION RECORDS) Gress, a busy New York bassist best known for his work with the likes of Dave Douglas, Don Byron and Fred Hersch, for his third solo album taps saxophonist Tim Berne's open-minded Acoustic Hard Cell trio - with pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Tom Rainey - along with trumpeter Ralph Alessi. Rhinoceros, one of several distinctly atmospheric pieces, is decidedly schizophrenic, shifting from leisurely low-key stroll to zig-zagging thememaking to a blast of free improvisation before returning to the original tempo. The leader's beefy, sturdy bass playing is front and center on the 59-second feature piece Bas Relief and during his unaccompanied segment at the start of the freewheeling Low Strung/High Strung. But can this quintet swing? Sure, in its own sweet way. Check out the rambunctious groove of Blue On One Side, which boasts references to Thelonious Monk's Epistrophy as well as fertile solos by Taborn, Berne and Alessi. B+

- PHILIP BOOTH, Times correspondent

ENRICO PIERANUNZI, CHARLIE HADEN AND PAUL MOTIAN, SPECIAL ENCOUNTER (CAMJAZZ) Enrico Pieranunzi, the Italian pianist lauded for his 2003 exploration of Fellini movie themes, rejoins that disc's celebrated rhythm section - bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Paul Motian - for 11 beautifully played, carefully measured pieces, dominated by ballads. Pieranunzi, a gifted post-bop player heavily influenced by Bill Evans, delivers on a live-in-the-studio set of tunes that shimmer and swell, from opening chestnut My Old Flame to the pianist's closing original composition Mo-Ti. Haden turns in lovely, folk-song solos, and Motian's work on brushes is uniformly supportive, crisp and concise. Call it supremely elegant chill-out music. A-

- P.B.

DOUG WAMBLE, BLUE STATE (MARSALIS MUSIC/ROUNDER) Try stuffing the music of singer and guitarist Doug Wamble into a well-defined niche, and it simply won't work. The sophisticated cadences and intuitive designs of his vocals on the politically conscious If I Live to See the Day suggest Kurt Elling, while he brings out all the gospel blues inflections of Peter Gabriel's Washing of the Water and achieves a similar vibe on the haunting traditional Rockin' Jerusalem, bolstered by label owner and disc producer Branford Marsalis' quiet-to-raucous tenor sax solo. Wamble, a former University of North Florida jazz student, goes to church again with a slo-mo take on Stevie Wonder's Have a Talk With God, spiked with the Tennessee native's burnished slide playing. Throughout, he spins out bluesy, touch-sensitive fretboard work on his hollow-body acoustic guitar. A-

- P.B.

[Last modified August 25, 2005, 14:58:03]