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June 2022: Constellations
ChimyTina Constellations
La Reserve
2022
ChimyTina is a collision moniker for the duo of bassist Dan "Chimy" Chmeilinski and vocalist
Martina DaSilva
vocalsConstellations is the duo's first full-length, non-seasonal offering, comprised of two Dasilva originals ("Twin Flames" and "My Universe") and 10 standards (if one can consider lounge versions of "Cold, Cold Heart" and "Trouble In Mind" "standards"). The duo is thoughtfully augmented by brass and strings on "Smile" and "Nice Work If You Can Get It," in each case challenging Dasilva and Chmielinski to up their game. The album highlight closes the disc with a shattering aplomb; the performance of
Billy Strayhorn
piano1915 - 1967
Key Selection: "Lush Life."
John Minnock Simplicity
Dot Time Records
2022
As quietly as one throwing elbows can be, John Minnock entered the recording fray with his debut, Right Around The Corner (Self Produced, 2018). Introversion is not in Minnock's vocabulary or character as his presentation and performance are refreshingly assertive and commanding. With this debut, Minnock began a fruitful collaboration with saxophonist
Dave Liebman
saxophoneb.1946
Minnock continues his mixing of original compositions with deliberately selected standards, using "Angel Eyes" as the tonal and emotive center. It also introduces a trend of songs with extended instrumental introductions featuring Liebman that include darkly introspective readings of "Maiden Voyage" and "You Don't Know What Love Is." Minnock's voice has muscular confidence capable of both biting regret and tender affection which he infuses original compositions "Simplicity," a sexy "He Was Brazilian" and the collection's surprise stand-out, a blues-tinged "Cape's End," which becomes an extension of Herring Cove, continuing Minnock's emerging creative story. Minnock is passionately committed to his equal loves of music and the LGBTQ community, both celebrated robustly on this release.
Key Selection: "Angel Eyes."
Ester Wiesnerova Blue Journal
Self Produced
2022
Eastern Europe is a culturally diverse region possessing an ancient, often conflicted, history. Tucked into the central part, pressing against Ukraine to the east is what has been known as The Slovak Republic since the "Velvet Revolution" (and fall of Russian Communism) in 1989. A victim of the vicinity, The Slovak Republic has been a part of every consequential historical event in the region, remaining home to an array of divergent cultural influences. In spite of such an anxious history, Slovakia is home to a proud, determined, and creative people. From this heritage singer/composer Ester Wiesnerova emerges with her provocative and ambitious debut, Blue Journal. Wiesnerova combines a pleasing and inventive product packaging with a very clear and intelligible artistic direction, manifesting itself quietly and with great gravity.
Wiesnerova's central influence is that of Joni Mitchell, which is expressed more in her composed lyric phrasing than her delivery. This is best revealed in the stunning "Burrito" which is introduced with multiple speaking voices emanating from the left and right stereo channels, before dissolving into a light samba rhythm by way of Bratislava, addressing lovers on either side of a wall, separated by politics. Her orchestration is spare and well applied. Singing with lightly-accented English (save for "Citlivi" where she sings in her native language against a delicately applied swing that follows a lengthy and atonal introduction), Wiesnerova evinces a wholesomely pure alto that is not intent on starting fires, but rather, it provides a bracing and sharply clear tonality that is both assured, informed and vulnerable. This is a debut? Well, watch out then.
Key Selection: "Buritto."
Sylvia Brooks Signature
Rhombus Records
2022
"Authority" is a word that comes to mind when hearing
Sylvia Brooks
vocalsOn Signature Brooks provides seven original compositions that vary from smart to very smart, each surrounded with arrangements by West Coast pianists
Tom Ranier
piano
Jeff Colella
piano
Christian Jacob
piano
Leonard Cohen
vocals1934 - 2016
Key Selection: "Catch 22."
Angela Davis Suite For Max
ABC Music
2022
Australian alto saxophonist
Angela Davis
saxophoneb.1985
Stephen Magnusson
guitar
Sam Anning
bass
Patrick Danao
arranger
Bill Frisell
guitar, electricb.1951
Jakob Bro
guitarb.1978
Davis translates this Frisell/Bro influence into an integrated, five-part suite concerned with melodic beauty presented in spatially organic abundance. The music is quiet and thoughtful as the suite unfolds into a tonal whole devoid of overt displays of technical ability. Rather, the emphasis is on note-against-note, with "Movement 3" being the balance point of the suite. Here Davis envisions a playful, yet fully realized piece that stands very well on its own. Magnusson's interplay with Davis produces a rare genre-breaking moment that sounds like something new and fresh.
Key Selection: "Movement 3."
Susan Hodgdon So In Love With Cole
Self Produced.
2022
Cabaret singer
Susan Hodgdon
vocals
Kristina Koller
vocalsb.1994
Cole Porter
composer / conductor1891 - 1964
Hodgdon displays multiple shades of the singer's craft. Certain and brisk is her interpretation of "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To," while her "Get Out Of Town" receives a sprawling, sultry treatment (a comparison with Koller's performance is enlightening). The outstanding ballad performance is "From This Moment On." On the uber-standard "Night And Day," Hodgdon goes full-blown medium-tempo cabaret, buoyed by
Sean Conly
bass
Steven Frieder
saxophoneKey Selection: "Get Out Of Town."
The Rolling Stones Live At The El Macambo 1977
Universal
2022
It was a curious thing. Inconspicuously tucked into side three of the band's third commercially-released live recording Love You Live (Rolling Stones/Atlantic, 1977) was a small-venue performance of four early Rolling Stones covers at Toronto's El Macambo Tavern. These songs represented a refreshing and bright interlude in an otherwise muddy and marginal release. This was a trying period for the band, with
Keith Richards
guitar, electricb.1943
Mick Taylor
guitarThese performances are best heard as a period snapshot of the band in transition: from Taylor to Wood, rock to disco, precocious youth to "elegantly wasted." The concert programming plays like a tour intended to support a recent release, here Black And Blue, which contributed, "Hand of Fate," "Fool To Cry," "Crazy Mama," "Hot Stuff," and "Melody." Ostensibly, because of the small venue, the band did not employ a horn section. All of the performances were tight, lacking the mud and muck of Love You Live. "Honky Tonk Women" proved again a uniquely qualified show-opener ("Brown Sugar" had been the popular go-to previously). Ron Wood brought a skill set closer to that of
Keith Richards
guitar, electricb.1943
"
data-original-title="" title="">Brian Jones and Taylor. Where Richards controlled Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main St., with Black And Blue, Jagger began his dominance of the band's sound through his masterpiece, Some Girls (Rolling Stones/Atlantic, 1978). This is the band uncertainly approaching its zenith. Key Selection: "Cracking Up."
Zlata Chochieva Chiaroscuro
!Naive Classiques
2022
Imaginative content has changed the profile of solo piano recording. From the beginning of time through the end of the last century, pianists like Murray Perahia, Andras Schiff, and Krystian Zimerman have churned out complete repertoires, performed and recorded in punctilious chronological order with expertly curated liner notes. These are great history lessons, providing ample background about the music, while providing hours of didactic listening. The 2000s brought an embarrassment of wealth in the persons of Lang Lang, Hélène Grimaud, Leif Ove Andsnes, Alexandre Tharaud, and Víkingur ?lafsson, all very capable of programming thoughtful and provocative recitals (from the same or from different composers) intended to spark thought, relaxation, and, in the best case scenario, further investigation. Notable are ?lafsson's evolutionary and revolutionary J.S. Bach -Works & Reworks (Deutsche Grammophon, 2019) and Alexandre Tharaud's expansive French review Versailles (Erato, 2019). ?lafsson recorded a mash-up of Debussy and Rameau (Debussy * Rameau (Deutsche Grammophon, 2020) that provided an educational juxtaposition of the Baroque and the Late Romantic (or Impressionistic, if one prefers) and a precedent from which Russian pianist Zlata Chochieva draws.
Chochieva assembles a similar recording pitting Mozart against Scriabin in an intellectually heady combination. The release title Chiaroscuro is a smart one with Chochieva reasoning that, "one of the ideas of theosophy is that light and darkness, while in one sense are polar opposites, are also unified; they cannot exist without each other. There is a saying by Robert Fludd: 'Darkness adopted illumination in order to make itself visible.'" That is a blade that cuts both ways. There is a shifting (relativistic?) perspective created with these Mozart variations in close proximity to Scriabin's miniatures. Light, shadow, and their respective sources change position depending on the notes (or lack thereof) surrounding them and how the pieces follow one another on the disc. Chochieva provides the listener with an architecture from which to hear what these two disparate composers have—and don't have—in common.
Key Selection: Mozart: "10 variations in g major on 'unser dummer p?bel meint' by c. w. gluck k455: Variation X." Scriabin: "Prelude no.1 in B major. Andante":
Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini Vivaldi Bach
Naive Classiques
2022
Fresh, robust, and sumptuous, simple in the genius of his sum-of-parts production, Rinaldo Alessandrini's pairing of Vivaldi's Concertos, Op. 3, "L'estro Armonico" with Bach's keyboard arrangements of six of the same is purely inspired. Alessandrini's band, Concerto Italiano, specializes in crisp, historically-informed performances focusing on Monteverdi, Vivaldi, and Bach, sewing up two of the three in this thoughtfully imagined and rendered recording. This simple programming device alone would make Alessandrini's offering superior to the staid Vivaldi presentations of Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music (L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1986) and, more recently, Rachel Podger with Brecon Baroque (Channel Classics, 2015); but the combination of precision-driven conducting and the superb sonics of label Naive engineers breaks this recording into a class by itself.
The Bach arrangements are each presented following the Vivaldi performances with Alessandrini handling the harpsichord duties on those four pieces (RV 230/BWV 972; RV 265/BWV 976; RV 310/BWV 978; RV 580/BWV 1065); while Lorenzo Ghielmi plays organ on the remaining two (RV 522/BWV 593; RV 565/BWB 596). The close listening proximity enhances both the educational and musical experiences. Regarding the former, it is surprising as well as refreshing to hear Vivaldi's Baroque approach juxtaposed with Bach's high brand of the same. As music and its composition and performance become ever so atomized by a culture with an Adderal-riddled attention span, it is nice to have such well-presented music to remind us of the charms of thoughtful consideration in the arts, in general, and music, specifically.
Key Selection: "RV 230/BWV 972."
No?l Akchoté Charles Koechlin—Précis Des Règles Du Contrepoint (1926) (Music Theory For Steel Guitar)
Bandcamp
2022
French guitarist No?l Akchoté continues his march through every piece of sheet music printed with a collection of counterpoint exercises composed by French composer and teacher Charles Koechlin (1867 -1950). Politically radical, creatively and culturally omnivorous, Koechlin was prominent as an educator and author, having taught counterpoint and fugue with Gabriel Fauré while a student and then acting as a teacher to Francis Poulenc, Henri Sauguet, and Cole Porter. What this translates to though No?l Akchoté is a very precise and pointillistic tonal exposition of contrapuntal thought and kinetic energy in performance. There is not a single dropped Thelonious Monk note to be found. Akchoté takes full advantage of the bell-like, ringing quality of his Martin HD-28.
Akchoté executes the exercises with exacting care, not unlike Bach modulating his way through the same. The pieces are simply composed and inherently tuneful is as expressed in the minor-major expressions of "Deux Notes Contre Une à Deux Parties (Mineurs)" and "Quatre Notes Contre Une à Deux Parties (Majeurs)." Akchoté has done a significant service covering this music. One can find his entire discography here.
Key Selection: "Fleuri Dans Une Partie, à Quatre Parties (Majeurs)."
Tags
Bailey's Bundles
Martina DaSilva
C. Michael Bailey
Lydia Liebman Promotions
United States
New York
New York City
La Reserve
Dan "Chimy" Chmeilinski
Martina "Tina" DaSilva
Billy Strayhorn
Dot Time Records
John Minnock
Dave Liebman
Rhombus Records
Sylvia Brooks
Tom Ranier
Jeff Colella
Christian jacob
Leonard Cohen
Abc Music
Angela Davis
Stephen Magnusson
Sam Anning
Patrick Danao
Self Produced
Susan Hodgdon
Kristina Koller
Cole Porter
Sean Conly
Steven Frieder
Universal
Keith Richards
Ron Wood
Mick Taylor
Brian Jones
Na?ve
Naive Classiques
bandcamp
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