Charlap Plays Strayhorn

There's an age old saying that applies to countless situations: Get the right tools for the right job. When assembling the pieces of the weeklong Billy Strayhorn salute in Dayton, booking Bill Charlap's trio made perfect sense. To take nothing away from other supreme interpreters of Strayhorn's music at the keyboard (Fred Hersch, Marian McPartland, John Bunch, Andy Bey and a half-dozen others spring immediately to mind) Charlap's enthusiasm for the task at hand is undeniable. One peek at his curatorial work at the 92nd St.Y series in New York--which continues to carve thoughtfully considered tributes to America's greatest songsmiths--the acclaimed composer-themed CDs his trio has done for Blue Note Records or his appearance in Robert Levi's Strayhorn documentary Lush Life and you find an authoritative pianist who also happens to be an authority on the great canon of American popular song.

For this Saturday's performance with his longtime trio, which includes bassist Peter Washington and Kenny Washington, Charlap will roll out a mix of both better known tunes and obscure nuggets from the vast trove of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington compositions. As Downbeat Magazine describes this band, “...this trio is best at casting spells. There is a magic peculiar to piano trios; the coming into being of an inner-directed world within a triangle upon which the listener eavesdrops, an atmosphere so rapt that even up-tempo pieces feel like ballads.”

With one of the best and busiest of current piano trios in jazz kicking off Celebrating Billy Strayhorn, the music Saturday night promises to be special.

[Photo by Carol Friedman]

Bill Frisell's "The Disfarmer Project"

Fresh off his triumphant Cityfolk appearance on St. Patrick’s Day, guitarist Bill Frisell rolled into the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts in Davis, California (near where I live in Sacramento), April 4 for a concert performance of Frisell’s The Disfarmer Project: Musical Portraits from Heber Springs. Frisell’s co-conspirators for the evening were Viktor Krauss (bass), Jenny Scheinman (violin, mandolin) and the great Greg Leisz (pedal steel guitar, dobro, mandolin).

Co-commissioned by the Wexner Center at Ohio State University, Musical Portraits from Heber Springs was “inspired” by the life work of small-town portrait photographer Mike Disfarmer, who lived and worked in Heber Springs, Arkansas, from 1917 until his death in the 1950s. Frisell’s work is meant to evoke life in Heber Springs during that period, aided by the projected photos of Disfarmer, which, frankly, became a distraction after just a few minutes.

Other than an inside-out version of the old fiddle tune “Arkansas Traveler,” the music was not as traditionally oriented as I expected it to be, but the quartet’s playing was never less than enjoyable and quite frequently transcendent. Some of the music resembled film scoring and was rather atmospheric, some was pure noise and guitar skronk (Frisell gleefully stomping his array of distortion and effects boxes) and some flat-out rocked. The most musically satisfying moments came when the quartet dug in and powered through actual songs—“That’s All Right, Mama,” and the Hank Williams classics “Lovesick Blues” and “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You).”

The story of the eccentric Disfarmer and his photos is beyond the scope of this short piece (follow the Disfarmer link above and click on 'Disfarmer Story'), but I think the concert was best appreciated as an evening of Bill Frisell and friends rather than a conceptual work about Heber Springs. I’ve looked at quite a few Disfarmer photos in the last several weeks, and I like them a lot, but never really felt a connection to them during the concert. Some information during the concert might have helped, but Frisell is a man of very few words, speaking only to introduce the musicians at the very beginning and the very end.

A fifth member of the Frisell team also made a significant contribution to the evening—Frisell’s longtime sound engineer Claudia Engelhart, who did a superb job of mixing and mic-ing the instruments, providing what was easily the best sound I’ve heard at the seven-year-old Mondavi Center, a beautiful state-of-the-art hall but an acoustical challenge for amplified music.

The grim, unsmiling faces in the Disfarmer pictures suggest that maybe Heber Springs wasn’t the happiest place in the world—or maybe those folks have just heard that their family photos are currently selling for tens of thousands of dollars on the New York art market. But Bill Frisell’s The Disfarmer Project: Musical Portraits from Heber Springs didn’t really need the Disfarmer angle to please the audience of nearly 1,000. We came to hear some extraordinary guitar playing from one of this country’s most creative musicians, and we went home happy.

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My introduction to tap dancing came through my Dad. He loves big band music, and when I was a kid, we watched many of the movies from the 1940s and 50s that featured them playing. One by one, the great dancers of that era held me in thrall. Here are a couple of my favorites.

Fred Astaire
The movie Holiday Inn starred Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby, was filled with song and dance. I'm not sure if this number was born out of artistic creativity or the studio wanting as many gimmicks as they could dream up, but it's fun either way. Astaire's partner here is firecrackers!



The Nicholas Brothers
Sun Valley Serenade featured the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Sonja Henie (yes, the ice skater) and Milton Berle. This clip from the movie starts off with a fabulous rendition of Chattanooga Choo Choo by the Orchestra before segueing into a dance routine by Fayard & Harold Nicholas and a woman I can't identify. In case you're so anxious to see the dancing that you don't want to wait, it starts about 4:50 in.


Gene Kelly
Well I have to admit--I haven't seen this movie. The other tap clips led me to this one, and WOW! Kelly is a talented dancer, but this proves he's a darned fine roller skater too. That's right--he tap dances on roller skates!

Wandering the Web: Digital Library of Appalachia

If the Internet had existed in my youth, I doubt very seriously that I would have finished high school, let alone college. There’s just too much good stuff out there and not enough time to check it all out. YouTube alone could eat up 30 hours a day. Even so, it’s always cool to find out about fun and informative websites. To that end, this is the first in an occasional series of posts called “Wandering the Web,” short articles about interesting websites I’ve found while looking for something else.

It is not an exaggeration to say someone could spend years exploring and digesting the contents of the Digital Library of Appalachia, an online consortium of nearly three dozen universities, colleges, libraries, archives and museums. These member organizations have pooled their collections of sound recordings, interviews and oral histories, photographs, books, newspapers and unpublished journals, diaries and manuscripts. It’s designed to be a one-stop resource for all things Appalachian.

Choose “Music” as your Topic, and a wealth of material appears, including music recordings as well as recordings of interviews, radio programs, concerts and more. Most of the recordings are field recordings or some other kind of non-commercial recording, such as at festivals and workshops. The collection includes recordings of 3,580 fiddle tunes, running the gamut alphabetically from “Ace of Spades” to “Zollie’s Retreat.”

Don’t like fiddle music? Not a problem. The online archive also includes shape note and sacred harp religious singing, country music radio programs from Louisville in the 1940s, ukulele-playing blues songster Rabbit Muse, ballads recorded by John Lomax, songs by the Six Bits of Rhythm Jug Band of Jefferson County, Kentucky, blues singers from all over the southeast, folk storytellers, recorded church and revival services, Cherokee songs and dance music and even a player of the Hungarian cymbalum.

In addition to music, the collection contains fascinating interviews with Cleo Davis, Bill Monroe’s first Blue Grass Boy, talking about early days with the Father of Bluegrass; blues singer Sparky Rucker talking about black country stringbands; and fiddler J.P. Fraley talking about his early influences.

One disadvantage of exploring this site is that it’s relatively time-consuming to listen to a recording, as it has to be downloaded first if you want to hear it all. (Samples can be heard if you click 'click here to display item.') On the other hand, you’re allowed to legally download, for free, as much as you want—even all 3,580 fiddle tunes.

The Digital Library of Appalachia is an almost unbelievable resource for scholars, students, researchers and musicians. Having all this material under one roof (as it were) increases access immeasurably and allows a much fuller study of any given topic. The DLA is a model of enlightened cooperation for other archives and collections to follow.

As much information as there is under the heading of “Music,” that’s just one of 10 categories; the other nine are Cultural Landscape; Daily Life and Customs; Education; Literature; Natural Environment; Politics and Government; Religion and Beliefs; Visual Arts and Handcrafts; and Work and Occupations. I look forward to checking out these other topics as time permits.

Review: Lo Cor de la Plana

Incroyable, merveilleux, et exubérant! Incredible, marvelous, and exuberant!

Last night's concert by Lo Cor de la Plana was nothing short of amazing. The performance was so full of life that at times it felt like a wild thing, barely contained by the four walls of the theater. Somehow, the music was both spiritual and fierce, the tone sometimes cheeky and sometimes reverent.

The subjects of their songs, as described by the leader of the group, range from policemen to a history of their home city of Marseilles to a homage to wine. They dedicated one to Dayton--a song about Christmas, because it was so cold. While I love a good turn of phrase, not understanding the words they sang was freeing: I got lost in the incredible blend of their voices as they went from unison to harmony, the ever-shifting rhythms and the way they made them.

You may think that watching six guys sing and drum would be boring, but nothing was further from the truth. The performers moved on the stage, shifting emphasis from one to another, from voice to drum. Sometimes the music moved one to dance a few steps, too powerful to be expressed in voice alone. The rhythms they beat out on drum and tamborine, with foot and hand were usually simple, but carried each song to new heights. For the most part, they sang for several minutes straight, shifting to new rhythms (and songs) seamlessly. It was fascinating, and built the energy up higher and higher.

Every once in a great while, a performance astounds me, reaffirms how deeply creative traditional music is, and invigorates me. This concert by Lo Cor de la Plana has joined that very short list. Sure, I'm biased, but I have to say it: we are profoundly lucky to have an organization like Cityfolk in Dayton, to bring such incredible performers to our city. What a treat and a joy to enjoy this performance so close to home.