Fred Ho & the Saxophone Liberation Front

Snake-Eaters
Mutable Music/Big Red Media 002

Fred Ho & Quincy Saul

The Music of Cal Massey (A Tribute)

Mutable Music/Big Red Media 004

By Ken Waxman

Revolutionary Marxist, convinced polemist and canny social critic, baritone saxophonist Fred Ho is all this and more. Critically, as these exceptional CDs prove, Ho’s high-quality composing, band-leading and improvising are memorable long past the point of agit-prop.

He’s particularly skillful in forging into music expressions of his beliefs that include the need for oppressed people’s liberation and the intrinsic beauty of indigenous African-American and Oriental-sourced sounds. Snake Eaters, a matchless demonstration of Ho’s talents uses only the reed textures available from a saxophone quartet. Via a larger sonic canvas available with 12 players, The Music of Cal Massey is even more spectacular, as Ho interprets compositions by Massey, another politically sophisticated improviser.

On the first CD, Ho’s Saxophone Liberation Front (SLF) – Hafez Modirzadeh: soprano; Bobby Zankel: alto; Salim Washington: tenor; and Ho – work in a manner midway between the ROVA quartet’s aleatory conception and the studied funkiness of the World Saxophone Quartet. Although the SLF’s sophisticated interpretive techniques are aptly demonstrated on a couple of Thelonious Monk covers plus a jokey “Misty” played as if was a soundtrack from Rob Zombie, the key components are two suites: “Yellow Power, Yellow Soul Suite” and “Beyond Columbus and Capitalism”.

Building on traditional Far Eastern melodies, parts of the first suite are surprisingly tender, especially Modirzadeh’s soprano saxophone lines. Most tunes however mix reed vamps and screeches with Oriental-sounding motifs to demonstrate Ho’s Black Music-Yellow Music cohesion. “Hero Among Heroes” is the major statement here. Fittingly there appears to be echoes of Amerindian sounds added to the Oriental and Europeanized narratives as the sequence balances the soprano saxophone’s angled oboe-like tone with quivering intensity from Washington’s and Ho’s hefty bottom tones.

Alternately mocking and celebratory, the four-part “Beyond Columbus and Capitalism” was composed by Ho in 1992, to point out that the Columbus quincentennial was no celebration for indigenous and anti-imperialist forces. Stand-out sequences include the exquisite stair-step saxophone harmonies on “Civilization or Syphillisation”, which follow a display of staccato vibrations and split tones with timbres ranging from the subterranean to altissimo. Another, “The New World Odor (The Huge Farts of Red-meat Eating Imperialists Foul the Earth)” features tongue-slapping mostly from Ho, aurally demonstrating what the title promises. Unsurprisingly, the concluding “Ghost Dance on the Grave of Capitalism” has the most joyous melody, as the four make this dance macabre sound like an invitation to the dance floor.

Zankel and Washington also appear on Present The Music of Cal Massey (A Tribute), joined by 10 others plus conductor Whitney George. Massey (1928-1972), best-known for his association with Archie Shepp and John Coltrane, was a Philadelphia-based trumpeter and Black Nationalist, who recorded sparingly. Ho has long championed Massey’s repertoire, with Massey’s politics striking a responsive chord with him. Clarinettist Quincy Saul helped produce the disc.

In the jazz repertory spirit, Ho sets out to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Massey’s major statement, “The Black Liberation Movement Suite” a nine-part work, composed in the 1970s. Although in 2013, honoring Eldridge Cleaver as a hero of Black Liberation alongside Coltrane, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Huey Newton and Marcus Garvey strikes a jarring sociological chord, it doesn’t alter the excellence of the music.

As complex as contemporary notated compositions, Massey did a lot more than compose an Afro-centric suite for jazz-oriented big band. Royal Hartigan’s African percussion color the proceedings throughout, and first-rate contributions are made by Zankel’s irregularly bisected reed trills, trombonist Frank Kuumba Lacy’s kinetic lines which combine gutbucket grit with a JJ Johnson-like staccato attack, and Jackie Coleman’s muted trumpet work; but the strings players aren’t there for mere prettiness. For instance on “(Hey God-damn-it) Things Have Got to Change”, pinched, double-stopping from violist Melanie Dyer helps describe the agitated narrative alongside reed riffs. The tune’s finale melds swinging horn riffs with musicians chanting the lyrics in a style that’s half-agitprop and half-ring-shout. Coleman’s plunger tones are put to good use tracks such as “The Damned Don’t Cry”, contrasted with swaying sheets of sound from the reed section with counterweight in the form of Wes Brown’s bass pumps. Like all of Ho’s works, this CD blends selected traditionalism with musical modernism and advanced political consciousness. When the band showcases the final “Back to Africa”, for instance, clichéd Dark Continent-like percussion displays aren’t upfront. Instead pianist Art Hirahara’s muscular key patterning helps Lacy’s undulating grace notes construct a broken-octave exposition completed by Count Basie band-like riffs and Latin music suggestions. As these narratives echo extended works such as Charles Mingus’ “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady”, and through that masterpiece Duke Ellington’s suites, Massey’s – and by extension Ho’s – affinity for the jazz tradition is cemented.

As much as Ho dislikes the word “jazz”, which he insists is a racial slur, ghettoizing the art form, these CDs show how he’s made important contributions to the genre.

Tracks: Snake-Eaters: Darker than Blue; Yellow Power, Yellow Soul Suite: Fishing Song of the East China Sea; Tanko Bushi; Baeng Nori; Hero Among Heroes; Jeet Kune Do: The Way of the Intercepting Fist (for Bruce Lee); Reflections (upon “Reflections”!); Misty-ification (aka Mystification); Beyond Columbus and Capitalism: My God, My Gold: The European Invasion; Civilization or Syphillisation?; The New World Odor (The Huge Farts of Red-meat Eating Imperialists Foul the Earth!); Ghost Dance on the Grave of Capitalism; Reflections (Redux-Prefigurative); Dear Reader*

Personnel: Snake-Eaters: Hafez Modirzadeh: soprano saxophone; Bobby Zankel: alto saxophone; Salim Washington: tenor saxophone; Fred Ho: baritone saxophone; Haleh Abghari: vocals*[tracks 9-12: Ho; Chris Jonas: soprano saxophone; Sam Furnace: alto saxophone; David Bindman: tenor saxophone]

Tracks: Cal Massey: The Black Liberation Movement Suite: Prayer; (Hey God-damn-it) Things Have Got to Change; Man at Peace in Algiers (for Eldridge Cleaver); The Black Saint (for Malcolm X); The Peaceful Warrior (for Martin Luther King, Jr.); The Damned Don’t Cry (for Huey P. Newton); Reminiscing About Dear John (for John Coltrane); Babylon; Back to Africa (for Marcus Garvey); Quiet Dawn; Goodbye Sweet Pops (for Louis Armstrong); The Cry of My People

Personnel: Cal Massey: Jackie Coleman, Nabate Isles, Jameson Chandler: trumpets; Frank Kuumba Lacy, Aaron Johnson: trombones; Bobby Zankel: alto saxophone; Salim Washington: tenor saxophone, other woodwinds; Ben Barson: baritone saxophone; Art Hirahara: piano; Melanie Dyer: viola; Dorothy Lawson: cello; Wes Brown: bass; royal hartigan: drums, African percussion; Whitney George: conductor

--For The New York City Jazz Record February 2013

February 7, 2013

David Bindman Ensemble

Sunset Park Polyphony
No Label No #

A significant statement from saxophonist David Bindman, Sunset Park Polyphony musically reflects both parts of its title. A New Yorker with a master’s degree in World Music, Bindman has spent much of his career blending the time sense of non-Western music with the harmonies and improvisationary freedom of Jazz. At the same time the two-CD set aims to reflect not only the sounds of Sunset Park, his polyglot neighborhood in Brooklyn, but also in the disc-length “Landings Suite”, translate into sound the experiences of a young person who experiencing injustice decides to work for the common good.

While Bindman, who composed the 12 selection, and the other musicians here are able to personify many of the dimensions and perceptions suggested by these ideas, the polyphonic sounds on the disc stand up on their own as music. Knowing which sociological concept birthed a musical idea or which particular African or Indian music time sequence is being used doesn’t really affect the listener one way or another.

It’s not surprising that there’s such a developed social conscience on this set however. Bindman, for instance, who plays tenor and soprano saxophones here, has a long association in the Brooklyn Saxophone Quartet with baritone saxophonist Fred Ho, American improvised music’s most politically radical musician. Furthermore bassist Wes Brown and drummer royal hartigan are also long-time associates of Ho, besides sharing an interest in ethnic musics with the saxophonist. Pianist Art Hirahara brings an intense sensibility to Ho’s projects and does so on this session too, outputting modal chords and echoing patterns without losing sight of the Jazz background. Meantime the Bindman Ensemble’s newest members, who in painterly fashion add more kinetic and melodic harmonies to the composer’s horn writing, are trumpeter Frank London, co-leader of The Hasidic New Wave, who also works in other Jazz and Klezmer projects, and trombonist Reut Regev, who has worked in Latin band as well as with Anthony Braxton’s Ensemble.

Probably the most programmatic of the selections on the first CD is the title track, whose atmospheric improvisations evolve alongside Karnatic beats. At points hartigan sounds as if he’s playing a tabla or khanjira while adding added cymbal claps. Meanwhile Brown’s thumping bass line and Bindman’s intense tenor saxophone shading are well within the tradition of Charles Mingus’ suite writing. Hirahara’s staccato key clipping and rolling glissandi keeps the piece animated, with London’s and Regev’s muted plunger work providing the proper vamps to wrap up the multicolored strands.

The “Landings Suite” which takes up the entire second CD is even more notable in its melding of Third World rhythms and First World improvisation. Given 44 minutes and eight variations in which to express himself, Bindman’s inner Gil Evans appears. Many of the arrangements create connective harmonies resulting from the wash of sonic colors that arises from counterpoint among three horns and three rhythm instruments. Concurrently the pieces use absolute textures or the suggestions of Karnatic and African sound-cycles to give added heft to their solos. Happily though, they avoid any attempt at musical anthropology.

A solo from the pianist owes more to Harold Mabern or any prototypical freebopper than an emulation of a string instrumentalist from the sub continent; while the drummer’s beats relate as much to the advances in Jazz percussion over the century as to the rhythms produced by traditional drummers in Ghana or Togo. Bass and drum call-and-response duets, expressed on tracks like “Invisible Dance” for instance, mate string arpeggios and percussion clatter with tandem, cacophonous brass triplets and irregular vibrations from the saxophone. Elsewhere, “The Transient” adds a Latinesque beat which vibrates energetically alongside Brown’s thumping strings and introduces a high-intensity exposition from Regev that includes sliding glissandi and quick tonguing. There’s even faint fralicher phrasing in London’s solo on “Singing Bird Melody”.

Eventually the suite reaches a climax with the balanced narrative on “Recurring Dream”. Described as relating to two different dreams, the composition introduces a tinge of Reggae to the exposition for the first time, while Bindman’s and Hirahara’s high-frequency contributions are light enough to float above the now-focused beats. Before the tune is summed up with clanking cymbals and press rolls from hartigan, London’s hand-muted brays have defined themselves at different elevations from the other horns’ tones for a satisfying conclusion.

As an earnest CD from a mature artist Sunset Park Polyphony impresses with its professionalism and invention. But Bindman should have more faith in his music to not burden it with extensive ethnic sound explanations or an unnecessary programmatic emphasis.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD1: 1. Shape One 2. Long Line Home 3. Sunset Park Polyphony 4. Robeson House Echoes CD2: Landing Suite: 1. The Transient 2. Singing Bird Melody 3. Icarus Flies Towards the Sun and Returns 4. Invisible Dance 5. Singing Bird Reprise 6. Recurring Dream 7. Unspoken 8. RH Reprise

Personnel: Frank London (trumpet and flugelhorn); Reut Regev (trombone); David Bindman (tenor and soprano saxophones); Art Hirahara (piano); Wes Brown (bass) and royal hartigan (drums)

June 25, 2012

AUGUSTO MANCINELLI QUARTET

Resonances
Splasc (H) CDH 905.2

ROYAL HARTIGAN
Blood Drum Spirit
Innova 580:2CD

Constant gigging in many circumstances rather than burying oneself in academe has always been touted as the best way to advance improvised music. Recent examples of dissatisfied Young Lions turning to teaching to turn out newer generations of neo-cons bear this out.

Yet if your university activity involves the initial purpose for higher education -- searching, researching and studying -- subsequent creations can benefit from the cerebral circumstances within which they’re created. Anthony Braxton and George Lewis have proven this theorem when they record their newest works, as has drummer Royal Hartigan with this two-CD set. Hartigan who earned his Ph.D in world music at Wesleyan University in 1986 and has since taught ethnomusicology, African drumming, and world music ensemble at Wesleyan and New York’s New School for Social Research, combines non-Western rhythms with a standard jazz quartet to create a series of impressive originals.

Contrast that with the single disc put out by veteran Italian guitarist Augusto Mancinelli. Mancinelli, best known for the period he spent in trumpeter Enrico Rava’s band, has put together a combo with the same instrumentation as Hartigan’s: reeds, guitar, bass and drums. Made up of top-flight professionals, the band’s extensive experience encompassing jazz and studio work, easily trumps that of Hartigan’s band. Yet its almost all-original program is so technically clean and note perfect that it ends up being colorlessly proficient rather than exciting.

To give the guitarist and his crew their due, they’re some of the top players in the country. Saxophonist Pietro Tonolo has recorded with Rava, Paul Motion’s Electric Bebop Band and the sax quartet Arundo Donax. Drummer Massimo Manzi and Mancinelli played with American accordionist Art Van Damme and Mancinelli himself has taught Jazz arrangements and compositions to many younger musicians.

Of Hartigan’s combo, only reedman David Bindman has related experience, having worked in a trio formation with drummer Kevin Norton and bassist Joe Fonda and in the Brooklyn Sax Quartet. Plus, the downside to BLOOD DRUM SPIRIT, is when the drummer invests his compositions with a certain non-musical academic trendiness. In the notes he insists on spelling his name in all lower case letters. He also obsessively enumerates each and every global rhythm he recreates and conspicuously copyrights nearly every composition in his name and that of the indigenous people with which the ethnic rhythm originated. Yet more happens than on RESONANCES.

On the plus side, Mancinelli is a top-flight mainstream guitarist, whose diamond-sharp, liquid tone usually combines some of the qualities of Jim Hall, Herb Ellis and Barney Kessel. On the andante, boppy “Blue Goose Blues”, for example, he snaps out phrases without ever letting the tempo upset his subtle touch or overall sense of relaxation. Before the piece ends with him trading fours with the saxist, he even pushes Tonolo to extend his angular reed biting to overblow until he pulls himself up short.

“Twist Me Love”, floating on triplets from Manzi, is another bouncy, devil-may-care melody that may reference Wardell Gray’s “Twisted”. Still, the combination of rhythm guitar licks and electric soloing seems to move it closer to a bossa nova. “Monna Lisa” on the other hand -- not the Nat “King” Cole tune -- finds Tonolo’s luxuriant soprano sax making the tune sound more like a traditional Celtic dirge than an Italian ballad. It also begins with Paolo Ghetti’s arco bass playing matched arpeggios with Mancinelli’s guitar.

Then there’s the title tune where the fretman adds a bit of country flat-picking to his well-shaped solo. Manzi has a low-key solo that’s all paradiddles and rim shots, while Tonolo opens up to exhibit discordant slurs, irregular vibrations and honked notes.

Most of the time, though, the reedist comes across as a foursquare modern mainstreamer like American Larry Schneider, who has often recorded with Italian sidemen. You note that on the Monkish “Round Blue” where his extended sax lines ping-pong from a Sonny Rollins-like to a Stan Getzian stance, never loosing control. Mancinelli responds with pinpointed finger picking with almost classical precision.

That sounds better than the quartet’s treatment of Monk’s own “Skippy”, the one non-original here, where all the rough edges are pared down with speedy, finger picking slurs. Nadir is reached with “The Promise”, luckily the final tune, which fairly reeks of smooth jazzisms. A resonating, simplistic sax line, repetitive guitar hook and overly polite brush work makes you wish Mancinelli would promise never to play this way again.

Hartigan’s promise is most obviously expressed in two extended suites and “Eve”, the more than 28-minute final tune.

Initially, the three-part, more than 19-minute “Pilipinas Suite” shows how traditional ethnic and improv can be meshed. On “Pilipinas” -- the middle section -- Bindman moves from mainstream tenor sax smoothness to a modal, Trane-like, freeform pitch. Within it, he mixes some linear note caressing plus the odd double tongued trill. Meanwhile Wes Brown produces an unvarying bass vamp that links the tradition to Afrocentric New Thing tunes, while guitarist Kevin McNeal advances the theme with slurred fingering à la George Benson.

Circumscribing this are two short tunes, both entitled “Solog”. Here Hartigan through overdubbing, turns himself into a kulintang ensemble, using the collection of suspended kettle gongs and wooden drum in turn to create a solid marimba-like beat. He even ends with a flashy vibes-like glissando.

McNeal is the chameleon at times on the “Apartheid U.S.A. Suite”. In the last section his smooth licks have a fleet-fingered blues cast as they complement the funky blues from Bindman’s alto saxophone. On the first piece, the saxman overblows and the guitarist sounds as if he’s manipulating a ngoni or African lute. Hartigan’s liberal heart is in the right place with the pointedly named “Rodney King Drums”, but his hands merely play another four-minute-plus drum solo.

Dedicated to a Ghanese master dancer the massive “Eve” is a much better showcase. Using various percussion, Hartigan brings forth a powerful Africanized beat with the cymbals and rattles creating as many cross rhythms and percussion timbres as are available from his regular drum kit. Brown’s Afrocentric vamp is the connective tissue between the introduction and a solo section on double handed cow bells, snare rim shots, bass drum and hi hat. When Bindman’s nimble tenor saxophone is added to the mix, Hartigan’s beat becomes more diffuse, adding new site-specific rhythms to his output, including moving a double cohort of hollow-sounding floor toms and snares plus an assembly line of cymbal pressure. McNeal adds a melodic string fillip, Bindman breaths some irregular trilled tones and the piece concludes with a one-minute coda of drum rhythms that that reflects the opening statement.

“Navajo Blood/Pontoosuc Waters/Springside Lands”, the composition with the most convoluted title, shows how Native Amerindian whaleskin drums and three different rattles can create the proper beat for improvisation. As the guitarist chords and skims up and down his strings, Bindman expresses the theme that comes from a Navajo song. Shaking rattles give the track an exotic undercurrent, but despite his good intentions, Hartigan’s drum pulse still sounds stereotypically like Hollywood’s idea of Indian music.

“Tala Vadyam”, a track recorded with guitarist Michele Navazio and bassist Brad Jones in place of McNeal and Brown, highlights some of Bindman’s most impressive soloing. He pumps out a light, double-timed tone on alto as well as a few arching screams. But he does so without appearing to introduce more alien sounds to a piece that is supposed to be based on South Indian music. Navazio’s shaded multi string runs approximate those of a sitar, though Hartigan’s Carnatic style approach seems to give way to a bass drum and cymbal workout that recall Max Roach not the Raj.

Putting aside the booklet rhetoric, BLOOD DRUM SPIRIT is a refutation to those who think that academics can’t provide exceptional music. The climate to appreciate it has to exist though. The discs were recorded in 1993, but just released.

We should hope that Hartigan’s teaching duties and the creation of the almost eight minute, part travelogue and part quartet performance video that’s included in this package was what slowed down its release, not more sinister musical and political conservatism.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Resonances: 1. Scrambled Eggs 2. Resonances 3. She Goes Shopping 4. Twist me Love 5. Round Blue 6. Blue Goose Blues 7. When Love Is Over 8. Monna Lisa 9. Skippy 10. The Promise

Personnel: Resonances: Pietro Tonolo (tenor and soprano saxophones) Augusto Mancinelli (guitar); Paolo Ghetti (bass); Massimo Manzi (drums)

Track Listing: Blood: CD1: 1. Wadsworth Falls 2. Epilogue 3. Dagomba Pilipinas Suite 4. Solog 5. Pilipinas 6. Solog 7. Caravan 8. Tala Vadyam CD2: Apartheid U.S.A. Suite 1. Adzohu, Juba Handclaps 2. Rodney King Drums 3. Double Trouble 4. Navajo Blood/ Pontoosuc Waters/Springside Lands 5. Tie Me Sufre 6. Papago-Saguaro Song 8. Eve

Personnel: Blood: David Bindman ( alto and tenor saxophones, flute, clarinet); Kevin McNeal or Michele Navazio* (guitar); Wes Brown or Brad Jones* (bass); Royal Hartigan (drums and cymbals, Native American rattles, West African gankogui, axstatse gourd rattle, bell and dondo, Philippine kulintang, babandir, agung and debakan)

March 1, 2004