A Tale of God’s Will •••••
(A requiem for Katrina)
Terence Blanchard, Blue Note
Trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s latest release is a masterpiece of heartrending beauty, an immortal triumph that ravages our souls with pain and sorrow. New Orleans as we knew it is dead and Mr. Blanchard is a survivor with the nightmarish pain of telling its story. And who are the victims — the poor. When have the poor ever been able to fight God, except, of course, in death. In life or death, the poor are truly the eternal “Wretched of the Earth.” Listen to “A Tale of God’s Will” (a requiem for Katrina) and cry for the death of New Orleans.

“A Tale of God’s Will” tells the story of God’s will on folks’ helplessness and the futility of their existence. As in the Katrina’s disaster, it is warning that reminds us that we are not in control. We live today and die today. There is no tomorrow and no one can predict the future. I’ve always felt that death is the flower from which life blossoms. One example of this is the story of the “Levees,” a remarkable lament on the city of New Orleans. The liner note reads:
“Before a storm hits, the weather cools. The winds are gentle. New Orleans feels big and easy. My hometown is known for food, music, and summer heat so oppressive that you almost don’t feel the like eating, or dancing. But before a storm hits, the weather is calm and beautiful. The city seems to move at a laid back pace like the tempo of  ‘Levees.’” But that calm is a warning. A cry. Listen to the trumpet.

“After Hurricane Katrina, when my city, its people, our desperation were on display for all the world to see, one of my best friends told me that he never knew there were so many poor people in New Orleans. I hadn’t shown him the Katrina places, those parts of our city that would become infamous for images of poor people stranded on roofs, begging for food, dying from lack of water.

“These are the people the trumpet is crying for. For the 72-year-old man I met who was on his roof for three days with two73-year-old women. What did they have? No food, but plenty of dirty, filthy water.
The calm gives way in the final vamp. The water and the cries, the strings and the trumpet, the deep menace and the pleas for help. The pleas asking, as I did, why did this happen?”

“Levees” is a tour de force of the raw passion of love and pain. With trumpet in hand, Mr. Blanchard begins his own Iliad. The sound of the trumpet, forceful and robust, is beyond reproach. This is the heart of Mr. Blanchard’s signature sound. The lyrical effusion is superbly immortalized without undermining the sense of inexorability; the climaxes with their soaring lines are not just powerful but luxuriously breathtaking as well. The closing tempos, underpinned by the most crystalline lucidity and poetry, bring a rush of adrenalin. This is great music-making, the rubato always there when needed, the long phrases immaculately tailored yet always sounding spontaneous. Mr. Blanchard is knocking at heaven’s gate and God is finally listening. There is a silence, then a whisper, followed by the ushering of a thunderous applause from the bowels of the earth, and the cry of “Amen, Amen” is heard everywhere.

Two other beautiful, melancholy epitaphs are “Ashé” and “In Time of Need,” arguably some of the finest trumpet and saxophone renditions I’ve ever heard from any musician. Once again, it’s the lines notes that tells it best: “Ashé is a word from the West African Yoruba tradition which translates to ‘and so it shall be.’ The song acts as a benediction: an acceptance of (and release from) past troubles, and an ushering in of something new, determined, and optimistic.”

Recording quality aside, Mr. Blanchard, by his “A Tale of God’s Will,”gives us by far the most affecting interpretation of the New Orleans catastrophe that I’ve heard, read, or seen so far. Throughout the album, Mr. Blanchard’s playing and, of course, his admirable notes, tellingly evoke the chilling terrors and the awesome majesty of Hurricane Katrina. This album should earne him a Grammy-award for  Jazz Album of the Year 2007. This remarkable album also has some exemplary performances from Brice Winston (tenor and soprano saxs), Aaron Parks (piano), Derrick Hodge (acoustic and electric basses), Kendrick Scott (drums, percussion), Zach Harmon (tabla and the happy apple) and The Northwest Sinfonia conducted by Mr. Blanchard.

The Lost Chords Find Paolo Fresu •••••
Carla Bley, ECM
Pianist Carla Bley loves jazz. She also believes that jazz should be fun and a part of all of us. Her music has a spiritual quality, a meditative thoroughness that recalls the purity of most jazz masters. Ms. Bley leads by example with tonal sweetness and exemplary musicianship. Her latest album contains her most vivacious and attractive works, played with great élan, sensitivity and neatness, and recorded with exemplary clarity and balance. Supported by Paolo Fresu (trumpet, flugelhorn), Andy Sheppard (soprano and tenor saxophones), Steve Swallow (bass), and Billy Drummond (drums), the music is a masterpiece of color, light and beauty. These are notes that are shaped, nurtured, and performed with such ingenuity and freedom — a “musical big bang” explosion that’s always expanding indefinitely in a world of brilliant beauty and life forms. One effect is that the album feels more unified, more monumental.

The central focus of “The Lost Chord Find Paolo Fresu” is “The Banana Quintet” comprised of six pieces, a good introduction to Ms. Bley’s symphonic jazz world with an exquisite flowering of lyricism, prompted in part by her piano virtuosity, and in part by the delicately fresh evocations from Mr. Fresu’s trumpet that recalls the eloquent intensity to touching tenderness of Miles Davis. Here and elsewhere (“Liver Of Life,” and “Ad Infintum”) on this album, the exactness of the voicing, the gentle underscoring of rhythm and meaning, the authentic sound of the classic jazz language and the sheer musicality of the final result are united in performances of expressive power and integrity. An album that is inspiring, moving and totally compelling.

Playground •••••
Manu Katché, ECM
Drummer Manu Katché has every right to be proud of his latest album coming so soon after his successful “Neighborhood” in 2004, an album that should now be considered the prelude to “Playground.” Recorded in January of this year in New York’s Avatar Studios with the iconoclastic Manfred Eicher as producer, “Playground” features Mr. Katché, Mathias Eick (trumpet), Trygve Seim (tenor and soprano saxs), Marcin Wasilewski (piano), Slawomir Kurkiewicsz (double-bass), and guest David Torn (guitar) on “Lo,” and “Song for Her, Variation.” An innovative drummer who on occasion is known to blend the cacophonic rhythms of rock’s tempestuous moods with the free interpretative and expressive styles of jazz, Mr. Katché has often said his drum style is essentially an amalgam of African rhythm concepts and classical drumming, illuminated by the in-the-moment interaction of jazz. Mr. Katché was born in St. Maur des Fossés, near Paris, but his family roots go back to Africa’s Ivory Coast. He studied piano from the age of five, switching to drums at 14 and studying classical percussion at the Conservatorie National Supérieure de Musique de Paris. “I’m always trying to put patterns together and to make a groove out of them, to color things. That’s basic to my concept of music-making whether I’m playing jazz or rock or anything,” explained Mr. Katché.

Nonetheless, “Playground” is clearly not only jazz era redux, but also a clear illustration of how jazz has blossomed into one of today’s most important and universal cultural voices. Art today is more about our own narcissism and how we express it. Paradoxically, our narcissism has also heightened our sense of freedom. Art is therefore life’s greatest tour de force, and hence the rise of cross-culture for greater knowledge and freedom. From the merging of the musical worlds of Latin, Afro-Cuban, Middle Eastern to the classical, rock to R&B, today’s music has found a new voice to please us all. “Playground” is a celebration of the art of music. The interpretations of “Pieces Of Emotion,” and “Song For Her” are remarkable, not just for their vocal qualities and their emotional commitment but also for their exemplary use of their musical roots, which illustrates perfectly the profound unity of culture and music. Beautiful sonorities, and a natural, unforced nobility shine with mermerizing force from the free-wheelng eloquence of “Lo,” along with the groovy but uptempo “So Groovy,” followed by the hot, tango-like “Snapshot.” The imaginatively evocative “Possible Thought,” is equally alluring, making “Playground” a superb album for the quality of the performances and the contribution this recording makes to a richer and fuller picture of our musical heritage.

Starflower ••••
Sinikka Langeland, ECM
Starflower is the ECM debut of folk singer and kantele player Sinikka Langeland from Finnskogen, Norway. Born in 1961 to a Norwegian father and Finnish mother, Ms. Langeland performed her settings of the poems of Hans Borli (1918-89) in an inspired intertwining of folksong, literature, and Nordic ‘jazz’ with a stellar cast of musicians like Arve Henriksen (trumpet), Trygve Seim (soprano and tenor saxs), Anders Jormin (double-bass) and Markku Ounaskari (percussion). There is sort of nobility that arises when poetry and music is united in a setting like this. Wonderful things come alive and beauty reigns supreme. Joy sets in, and the result is a kind of musical healing. According to Ms. Langeland her particular musical journey has “always been about searching. I love folksong but I’m not exclusively a traditional folk singer. There were always influences from other places, too.” All the lyrics on the album are from the poetry of Hans Borli, a fascinating woodcutter who wrote his poetry by night, focusing on his experiences of the Norwegian forests. Ms. Langeland championed Mr. Borli’s work for many years and it was in part due to her singing of his texts that the poet’s work was finally published in English. An example of how the poet’s symbols and images reach back to the roots of myth can be found in the following poem:

The dream is a tree that grows upside down:
Its roots fastened in the sky, delicate root-hairs suck
Strange nourishment
From the moldy darkness between the stars,
While its crown spreads out its branches as
A resting place for the birds
In the boundless spaces of the human heart.

In all the works performed here, Ms. Langeland adopts a wonderfully suave and supple approach to both poetry and music, which allows for more spacious interpretations from the other musicians, thereby bringing each piece to life with expressive fervor. In general, the performers make much of the vivid word-painting — present in each of the settings — but wholeheartedly reveling in the melodic allure of the music and showing a clear view of the entire architecture of each piece. They surge irrepressibly from one performance to another, creating a musical momentum that glides through the hair-raising virtuosity with breathtaking ease. A distinguished debut marked by superb playing.

All CDs reviewed in this article are heard through Bowers & Wilkens 802D Speakers and ASW 4000 subwoofer, and Rotel Preamp 1070, amplifier 1092 and CD player1072. For more information about this column, please email your questions to fagon@hillrag.com.