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Kristen R. Bromley Quintet's Bluish Tide

8/29/2022

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Dr. Kristen R. Bromley has got the goods. She is a renowned instructor and is a remarkable composer and guitarist. She is also extremely well-educated with advanced degrees in Music Education and in Jazz Studies.

Her playing puts one in mind of Django Reinhardt and, like so many guitar greats—Les Paul, Django, Phil Keaggy—she also suffered a tragic injury to her left arm. That was in 2016. By 2018’s end, she had recorded her debut album, Simply Miraculous, in testimony to her return to performing despite doctors’ predictions.

Now she and her quintet have released Bluish Tide, a splendid album of nine originals and one excellent swinging cover of a classic hymn. Her quintet is comprised of herself on guitar, Ray Smith on tenor sax and alto flute, Steve Erickson on piano, Matt Larson on bass, and Jay Lawrence on drums. The right band for this wonderful song list. Whether they share Bromley’s faith or not, they certainly play like they do.

The 10-song track list moves from Swing to Bossa to Funk to, you guessed it, Gospel. The album opens with the brilliant Pillar of Fire and lights the listener up with Jazz visions of God leading the Hebrews through the wilderness as a fiery column. The blistering guitar is offset by some of the coolest piano you’d ever want to hear from Steve Erickson.

Groove O’clock Time
picks up with the Bossa groove and Ray Smith turns in some beautiful sax work with the backing of the rhythm section that sets such a fun pace. Bromley herself works in her extremely enjoyable guitar solo and Erickson’s piano is spot on. The song concludes with smoking unison playing of guitar, sax, and piano.

Between Canyon Walls
provides some of the most entertaining moments of this fantastic album. Think George Benson meets the Funk Brothers. The same goes for Junkyard Dawg, R&B-infused Jazz that is electrifying. Then Just Walkin’ creates an andante Jazz tone poem of life at a leisurely pace. The starts and stops are infectious.

The title track, Bluish Tide, is a fine and fun rollick that makes you bop along with it in sheer enjoyment. The great sax and piano solos add to Bromley’s oh-so-fine leadership. Even Jay Lawrence takes on an understated but warm drum solo. But Paint Me a Picture My Love has to be the warmest and most touching moments of the album. All of that is enhanced by Dr. Smith’s alto flute solo, the only appearance of the alto flute on the album. With the guitar’s Samba feel, the flute is well-placed. Seriously, I couldn’t get enough of this one.

Then there are the faith-inspired tunes that provide the tone and tempo of the whole experience. The Gospel hymn she chooses is an anthem of praise and gratitude, How Great Thou Art. Surely, this must be the thread that runs through and holds together her faith through such harrowing ordeals Bromley has experienced. She continues that theme with Faith Preceded My Miracle, the essential ingredient to our most personal wonders. The building of the song’s musical motif is like a testament to ever-growing faith and is joined by the community of her quintet.

The album concludes with Through the Veil. Bromley’s experiences and pains have give her a glimpse through the veil of our earthly life and she has seen the revelation of what lies in store for those with the eyes of faith to see it. The music and the artists’ performances are crystal clear in depicting the rewards of hope, and trust, and faith.

To many of us, great music is a religious experience in the listening. It is even more so when the composer and performer feels it as much or more than we do. Kristen R. Bromley is a brilliant composer and marvelous artist. She may also be a prophet.
 
       ~Travis Rogers, Jr. is The Jazz Owl


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Miguel Espinoza Flamenco Fusion's Veneta

8/25/2022

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Miguel Espinoza Flamenco Fusion formed in 2018 and has wowed Denver audiences ever since. With influences and infusions of Jazz, Flamenco, Caribbean, and Indian forms and styles, Miguel Espinoza Flamenco Fusion is a wonderful band who hooks you from the opening notes of their new—and second—album, Veneta.

With a remarkable array of instruments and talented artists who play them, the band is admirably prepared to take on the rhythms and melodies that make this album so incredible. Miguel Espinoza is on the acoustic guitar with Dianne Betkowski on cello, Lynn Baker on saxophone, Randy Hoepker on bass, and the percussion of Andy Skellenger on table and cajon, and Mario Moreno on timbales, congas, and bongo. From Latin to Indian rhythms, this band is percussive even when playing melodies. This is music to energize you, romanticize you, and enthrall you.

The album opens with the emotional and evocative Gnossienne and, as the title suggests, has a marvelous dance-like feel that conjures up Gnossiennes No. 1 of Erik Satie. This was the way to grab my attention from the start. The flamenco guitar of Espinoza with the fabulous cello of Betkowski anchors the melodic line before Baker’s sax works into the theme with its haunting melody. Somewhere Erik Satie is dancing.

Bulerias Barrocas
reveals the heart and drive of these artists with the furious flamenco rhythms which, sadly, lasts only just short of three minutes. The fury of that song is followed and supplanted by Sad with Betkowski’s cello at the forefront. It is emotional—as one would suspect—and it is captivating, especially at the jump to vivace before returning to the slower pace. This is such a well-constructed song and it performed flawlessly.

Veneta,
the title track, is a play between guitar and cello before the soprano sax adds its voice. All throughout, the percussion is mesmerizing. This demands several plays and replays. Then Cayendo switches tempo and tone as it becomes an almost-lullaby. It is enchanting as the guitar leads off before again being joined by the soprano saxophone. Baker’s saxophone is charming and Betkowski’s cello adds depth to the mood. But you’ve got to love Espinoza’s guitar and the way it draws everyone else into its gravitational pull. At the 5:15 mark, it turns into a flamenco of seismic proportions before sweetly and softly returning to the lullaby.

The album concludes with Happy. It is exactly that. The percussion kicks off a lively rhythm that underlies the melodic work of guitar, cello, and saxophone. This is how you conclude an album. The dancing and drifting melodies and harmonies are intoxicating and gratifying. It ends with celebration and lightens the heart.

​Miguel Espinoza Flamenco Fusion’s Veneta is absolutely wonderful. It will gratify the World Music lover, the Flamenco enthusiast, and anyone who has a heart. My God, I love this album.
 
        ~Travis Rogers, Jr. is The Jazz Owl


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Cathy Segal-Garcia's Live in Japan

8/15/2022

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Cathy Segal-Garcia is a national treasure. She is warm and witty, absolutely delightful. She paired up with pianist Phillip Strange for their duo’s performance in Osaka, Japan in December of 1992 and it now comes to us as Live in Japan, a wonderful 2-disc album capturing the warm and memorable performance.

From the playful introductions through an array of Christmas selections and Jazz standards to the joyous finale, Cathy and Phil entertain, enrich, and enchant. The chemistry is palpable and the results are perfection.

They begin Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields’ I’m in the Mood for Love. Phillip Strange adds great soul and spice to the tune and Cathy, of course, just owns it. In addition to that great start-up piece, You’ve Changed (Carl Fischer, composer), More Than You Know (Vincent Youmans), Day by Day (Sammy Cahn), The Nearness of You (Hoagy Carmichael) and Gershwin’s I’ve Got Rhythm are included among the classics and standards—all done exceedingly well.

With all of those in the first set, Cathy includes her original piece, The Story. That comes from her 1992 album Song of the Heart. If you are not familiar with that album, find it. It featured Peter Erskine on drums, Phillip Strange on piano, and Marc Johnson on bass. You’re not too late to the party. In the live version here, Strange takes flight in his piano solo and Cathy is a wonder. Seriously, nothing not to love here and throughout the whole album.

A sentimental favorite for Cathy and for the rest of us is Bob Hilliard and Sammy Fain’s Alice in Wonderland. It is a true beauty and worthy of repeated plays. At least, I did.

Rodgers & Hart’s This Can’t Be Love is the swinging opening to the second set (and disc). Once more, it is proven just how fine a duo were Cathy and Phil. They follow with Jobim’s Desafinado and it is another winner. The great bossa tune is treated with reverence and with great fun by these two. Terrific.

When You Upon a Star
and Taking a Chance on Love follow and beautifully set the stage for Gershwin’s How Long Has This Been Going On. With the two Gershwin tunes on the album, it becomes clear that Cathy (and Phil) are great interpreters of Gershwin, knowing when to stay close and when to depart from the originals. And the departures are splendid.

They conclude the concert in Osaka with a run of brilliant tunes, brilliantly performed by the duo. Errol Garner’s Misty is warm and inviting and Billy Holiday’s God Bless the Child is just as tender and soulful as Miss Holiday intended.

Cole Porter’s Night and Day is given a grand workout by the duo. It is given a little swing and a whole lot of exquisite tonality. Seriously, the album just keeps getting better. Then comes the Bluesy/Gospelesque Sentimental Journey by Les Brown with its raucous crowd response and a bit of Asian chops from Phil. This as the second one to demand repeated replays. Phil just works this over and you just have to love the way Cathy plays with it.

The finale is Mel Torme’s The Christmas Song. In the Christmas season of this live performance, it was a perfect ja ne for the Japanese audience. She delivers the song so wonderfully, and Phil accompanies so tenderly, that you find tears in your eyes. Good tears.

Almost thirty years after its recording, Live in Japan is worth the wait. Cathy Segal-Garcia and Phillip Strange are terrific together. The wit and wisdom, light and love, is thick on every track.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Cathy Segal-Garcia is a national, now international, treasure.

​ 
~Travis Rogers, Jr. is The Jazz Owl


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Dana Fitzsimons' Fault Lines

8/11/2022

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Drummer Dana Fitzsimons has joined with pianist Bill Graham and bassist Brandon Boone to embark on a magnificent project of Jazz improvisations on the album Fault Lines. It is the next evolutionary step from Fitzsimons’ 2017 debut release, with a different trio, The Cheap Ensemble. This is the stuff I love.

It is Fitzsimons’ rhythms and drive that are the propulsion of this album but Graham and Boone are more-than-willing accomplices in this splendidly emotional hijacking. Make no mistake, this is a grand collaboration. Fault Lines is hopeful and powerful, sometimes wistful, but always pulling at the depths of one’s being. It is expansive and explorative and you are more than happy to follow the quest.

After the isolation of the COVID period, the trio had the urge to return to performing together. “When we finally got together to play again, there was a lot of pent-up energy between us. We were all on the same page musically,” says Fitzsimons. “The music we wanted to make requires a lot of close listening and allowing the music to take you wherever it wants to go, untethered from strict ideas about time, form, and harmony. With all this freedom, it was important to me that the music still be rhythmic and lyrical so that the music invites the listener in, even for people who are not accustomed to free jazz.”

Let me clear, I can’t get enough of this album. If I sound like a gushing fan, it’s because I am.

They start off with Slant Anagrams by Graham. It is probably the most straight-ahead Jazz tune and bears the indelible marks of Chick Corea and Paul Motian (two other artists I admire). The precision of the trio reflects the afore-mentioned artists brilliantly.

Speaking of Motian, his It Should Have Happened a Long Time Ago is covered wonderfully. Graham’s piano is so subtly accompanied by Fitzsimons’ drums and the cool, cool bass of Boone.

Rodgers and Hart’s Where or When is the only Jazz standard on the album and it retains the gentle melancholy of the original with the depth of emotion that this trio can bring to bear. It is one of the most moving tunes on the album. Couple that with Agitation Lullaby and you’ve got music that touches your past, present, and future. Co-written by Fitzsimons and Chris Otts, it reflects Fitzsimons listening to his wife sing his children to sleep. A lovely and haunting piece. This may be my favorite piece on the album.

Crystals is a free improvisation with Fitzsimons giving no direction, only imagery. The results are each member’s interpretation of those images. Amelia by Joni Mitchell reveals the influence of Keith Jarrett’s trio with the result of sounding better than Mitchell ever did.

The rest of the tracks were all composed by pianist Bill Graham. From the ballad Ice Bridges Before Road to the anthemic Borders, the writing and the performing is extraordinary. Weeble Wobbles is wistfully innocent and reminds of the children’s toy commercial, “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” The fluidic time signatures give the wobbly sensation. Fun and fascinating.

Number Six is a very fresh take on the Graham tune that Fitzsimons and Boone has heard only moments before recording the track. This is the vibrant and improvisational approach that makes this trio so hot and so satisfying. If you need more evidence of that, Intersections begins and ends with fully scribed passages but is shot in the middle with marvelous free improvisations.

Dana Fitzsimons’ Fault Lines has got everything we like in a Jazz recording: stellar musicianship, wonderful compositions, and staggeringly good improvisation from artists who know how to do all three. The rhythmic considerations offered by each member of the trio make Fault Lines more than just a drummer’s approach. It is all rhythm, all the time, and is not just rhythm in service to the melody or vice-versa, it is both in service to the musical vision.

This just may be my album of the year.   
 

​
~Travis Rogers, Jr. is The Jazz Owl

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Hanka G's Universal Ancestry

8/5/2022

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Slovak vocalist Hanka G has just released her debut US album, her fourth album overall. Having been nominated for two Slovakian Grammys and winner of the Slovakian Jazz Man of the Year award in 2017 (one of only two women to achieve the honor), she was encouraged in 2016 to come to the US by none other than Cassandra Wilson. And thank heavens she did!

You can hear the Wilson influence in Hanka’s warm and oh-so-soulful vocals. In fact, she is the guest lead singer at Harlem’s Memorial Baptist Church. How’s that for soulful?

Hanka has previously released three albums in Europe, including Reflections of My Soul (2007), Essence (2014), and Twin Flame (2017). Essence and Twin Flame were both nominated for Best Jazz Album of the Year in Slovakia.

She says of herself, “Since moving to New York four years ago and performing at the jazz and gospel scene, I learned so much about the origins, history, and diversity of cultures forming music genres that I love - jazz, gospel, and soul music. That's why I dreamt to bring together the best American musicians to arrange and record traditional Slovak folk songs together with jazz, gospel, and r&b classics for my first international album. I believe that regardless of our cultural background, we all as a human race dream about love, happiness, and peace, and these dreams will be celebrated in my new record called Universal Ancestry.” 

She has achieved exactly that. With her are brilliant and extraordinary musicians: pianists Shedrick Mitchell (organ, piano), James Hurt (piano, Fender Rhodes), Rodney Kendrick (piano), bassists David Ginyard (electric bass), Rashaan Carter (electric and double bass), drummers Taru Alexander and Nathaniel Townsley, plus guitarists Marvin Sewell and Sherrod Barnes, Antoine Roney (tenor and soprano saxes), background vocalists Keesha Gumbs and Terelle Tipton, and Slovakian artists Sisa Michalidesova (flute) and Veronika Vitazkova (fujara).

Her familiarity and love of American Jazz and R&B was infused with Gospel and peppered with Slovak Folk music to create an album of unmitigated beauty and spirituality. I was already hooked on Hanka but then I got to Donny Hathaway’s Someday We’ll All Be Free and I became a fan. Add to that Whitney Houston’s famous All the Man That I Need and Through the Fire, one of Chaka Khan’s go-to songs and this becomes a must-have album.

But then she doubles down with great versions of McCoy Tyner’s In Search of My Heart, Pharoah Sanders’ As You Are, and Abbey Lincoln ’s Throw It Away. And then there is her version of the 1930 Them There Eyes by Maceo Pinkard, Doris Tauber, and William Tracey.

The quest for love and for freedom is palpable in Hanka’s singing and choice of tunes. Her spirituality is evident with Walter Hawkins’ Be Grateful.

Her Slovak heritage is brought to bear with three Slovak Folk songs. Dance Dance is a popular Slovak children’s folk song but is rendered with a sultry, R&B sense. I’m Such a Pretty Girl is an up-tempo, fun tune and The Bird Has Started Singing is a rather melancholy song featuring the fujara, the Slovakian flute. The instrument itself is quite remarkable but, coupled with Hanka’s Slovakian dialect, it gives the tune real pathos.

Universal Ancestry
is Hanka G’s declaration and description of the human condition. Her vocals give wing to her aims and emotions and, if you listen carefully, she will take you on the trip with her.
 
~Travis Rogers, Jr. is The Jazz Owl


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Dave Slonaker Big Band's Convergency

8/1/2022

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After the massive success of his 2013 debut album, Intranda, Dave Slonaker perceived the time to be ripe for a new era of Big Band music. His new album, Convergency, is the brilliant and much-anticipated follow-up.

Performing Slonaker’s originals are a fantastic collection of favorite artists like Larry Koonse on guitar, Bob Sheppard on alto and soprano sax and flute, and the great Peter Erkine on drums. The full line-up includes:

Brian Scanlon - alto sax, flute, clarinet, Rob Lockart - tenor sax, clarinet, Tom Luer - tenor sax, clarinet, Adam Schroeder - (track 1,4,5,7) baritone sax, bass clarinet, Jay Mason - (track 2,3,6,7,8,9,10) baritone sax, bass clarinet, Wayne Bergeron - trumpet, flugelhorn, Dan Fornero - (track 1,4,5,7) trumpet, flugelhorn, Ryan DeWeese - (track 2,3,6,7,8,9,10) trumpet, flugelhorn, Clay Jenkins - trumpet, flugelhorn, Ron Stout - trumpet, flugelhorn, Alex Iles – trombone, Charlie Morillas – trombone, Ido Meshulam – trombone, Bill Reichenbach - bass trombone, tuba, Ed Czach – piano, Edwin Livingston – bass, and Brian Kilgore - (track 2,4,9) percussion.

This band swings and swing hard. Of course, it could be the Billy Bob Middle School Kazoo Band and Slonaker’s compositions would still shine through. But this band does full justice and honor to those fabulous compositions.

The album kicks off with the title track, Convergency, and never lets up throughout the rest of this stellar album. Keep your ears open for Peter Erskine’s great drumming. Uncommonly Ground gets the first of the cool Larry Koonse solos and Tom Luer’s alto sax is worth the price of admission.

As any Jazz aficionado knows, it is the chart that drives a big band piece and these Slonaker arrangements are amazing. Listen to those arrangements over and over and see what I mean.

A Gathering Circle is a lovely and emotional piece with great solos from Brian Scanlon on soprano sax, Koonse, and Erskine. This is a great track among great tracks. Inner Voices is in the same vein with Ron Stout on trumpet and Rob Lockart on tenor sax for solos. Then listen for bassist Edwin Livingston’s solo on Sometimes a Notion.

And Now the News is a Latin rhythm beauty. The trombones take over for the solos and they push the tune powerfully. This is riotously good fun.

The album concludes with I Had the Craziest Dream. The ethereal trumpet sounds like Gabriel calling you home. Credit Wayne Bergeron for that. It is soaring and compelling and soulful. What a way to end an album.
​
Dave Slonaker’s Convergency is just what a Big Band fan would hope to hear from the composer/arranger who gave us Intrada. From hard swings to delicate ballads to glorious romps, this is a wonderful addition to the world of Big Band.
 
~Travis Rogers, Jr. is The Jazz Owl


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