Kurt Riley: The Man Who Fell to Earth

| Tyran Grillo

Music and life start the same way: as a seed germinating until it is ready for the world. Many have beaten objects for want of rhythm; others have extended their bodies through instrumental prostheses in deference to melody. But the most primal search of the modern age is that of a voice for an amplifier. Ithaca, New York-based singer Kurt Riley is one such seeker, holding a microphone like a newborn whose umbilical cord twirls back into the electric womb where his second album Kismet has been incubating for over a year.

Mic

A student among a band of students, Kurt has balanced his academic life at Cornell University with a musical one on another planet, from which his sonic gatherings at last fell into place during his premiere performance on April 29, 2016.

At the mic

Teaming up with the glam rocker on this interstellar ride were drummer Olivia Dawd, bassist Charlie Fraioli, guitarists David Dillon and Sam Packer, keyboardist Ruth Xing, saxophonist John Mason, and backing vocalist Kristina Camille Sims. The latter added dialectical undercurrents to Riley’s over, balancing dichotomies not only of gender but also temporality and location in the grander context of his outreach.

Kristina

The band played the entire album from front to back, opening with the instrumental “Eternity,” a synth-heavy blush that plowed through stardust in a procession of songs without words. Wavering before a backdrop of endless galaxy, Kurt and his musicians prepared their earthly transmission with steady hands and fibrillating hearts. Not only was it a portal of insight into the emotional story about to unfold, but also a foreshadowing of hope: a touch of rain amid the brimstone to ease the pain of progress. More importantly, it lent sanctity to the venue, allowing us to forget we were sitting in nothing more than a university auditorium. Between the retro arpeggio, which flushed the audience of its insecurities in a space normally reserved for less intimate instruction, and the slack guitar floating above it all, a cosmos waited to unleash its primal scream.

Guitar face

In their rendition of “Eye of Ra,” the album’s first proper song (at least on human terms), Kurt and his astronauts stared into the face of something sinister and acknowledged lack of escape from that which knows us without sight. Hanging on to a kingdom by its lowest rungs, a realm where hardship is a prerequisite for the course of life, they nevertheless cradled this dire circumstance for what it was: a baseline of realism that allows lowly citizens to remember, in the end, just how far they’ve come beneath untouchable authority.

Hand

Like motivations flowed through the follow-up song, “Engines Are Go!” Here the narrative voice was youthful, almost naïve in its gradation from verse to chorus. Kurt pushed these images through the mesh of experience until they were unrecognizable as their former selves. This road trip through the unrequited jungle gave over to “Theft of Fire.” The first incision of an even more romantic surgery, it was a turning of tidal expectations from doom to failure, the key difference being that the latter involves a choice.

Alone 1

The first single off Kismet, “Hush Hush Hush,” provided the most classic sound. Its pianistic backbone flexed to the beat of a retroactive metropolis in anticipation of biting its own tail. As the ballade du jour, it was a singular passage of reflection, projected through a darkly loving lens of yearning. All of which fed into the first push of “Domino,” sending us all through a cavity of falling rocks.

The circularity of “As We Know It” came about through words of material destruction. “Humanity: Why so in love with the end of things?” Kurt sang, blowing his brains out through a harmonica at the end like a catharsis beyond false semantic promises. It was also a turning point in the program, which paled from black to red as the contours of “Whore” came into focus. For this, Kurt was joined by local rapper Asanté Quintana, whose delivery rose like gorge mist through safety netting.

Asanté

This sea change was further evident in “God’s Back in Action,” a piece of soul for the lonely sharpened to an edge of comfort. It was the very definition of the Kurt Riley experience, which behind the weathered leather and mascara teardrops cradled a motivation of care. As too in the all-reaching “Universe” especially, a Queen-like danse macabre for the soul, true love was never far behind.

Alone 2

And in “Human Race,” which sent balloons flying throughout the auditorium, Kurt pulled that hope into the present. A self-imagining broken into heated breath…

Red

…but nowhere more so than in “Burn It Up,” which gave that hope a vessel in which to soar.

Banksied

And with that benediction, closed like a fist around slippery assurances, Kurt and his mortal cohort closed up the castle, swept the blood and sweat under the carpet, and tread out into the galactic night with new followers in tow.

Galaxy

Toward the end of his life, David Bowie once characterized himself as a man lost in time, but Kurt is one who is just beginning to find himself in it. Should you wish to know more about his time on Earth, which is sure to breed noteworthy developments, click the album cover below.

Kismet

See you on the other side.

(Concert photos: Yours Truly)

Yelena Eckemoff Quartet review for The NYC Jazz Record

| Tyran Grillo

This week marks a new venture for me as a writer for The New York City Jazz Record, for whom my first review appears in the May 2016 issue. Scroll down to read the review. You may also access the entire issue directly in PDF format on the magazine’s website here. The issue also features an article about ECM artist Nik Bärtsch, whose CD release concert for the new album Continuum I will be reviewing for All About Jazz in May.

Front cover art

Since 2006, pianist Yelena Eckemoff has been stirring a chamber jazz cocktail two parts through-composed for each one improvised. With Leaving Everything Behind, she has perfected it. Eckemoff’s road to this point has been paved with classical roots, but has attracted increasingly heavier hitters of jazz to her entourage. Her friendship with bassist Arild Andersen, for one, led to their “Lions” trio with drummer Billy Hart. The latter’s approach to color makes for an easy corollary to Eckemoff’s painterly ways and his retention this time around is felt alongside two new collaborators: violinist Mark Feldman and bassist Ben Street.

Though Eckemoff has always been a self-aware musician, Leaving Everything Behind finds her in an especially conceptual mode. She repurposes earlier compositions among the fresh to tell the story of a young woman fleeing Soviet Russia and the ways in which music has constructed bridges to the places she put behind her. Whether comping with confidence in “Mushroom Rain” or drawing with light in “Hope Lives Eternal,” she moves around her bandmates by means of a genuinely expressive outreach.

The Eckemoff-Hart nexus gives off its broadest spectrum in the more programmatic pieces. Between the raindrop impressions of the “Prologue” to warmth of closer “A Date in Paradise,” pianist and drummer dispel an overcast sky until only sunshine remains. Titles such as “Spots of Light” and “Ocean of Pines” further indicate that silver linings reign supreme.

The balance of distinctly classical arrangements and jazzier change-ups yields affirmative soloing, most effectively through Feldman’s clear and present notecraft, as in the evocative “Coffee and Thunderstorm,” a quintessential embodiment of what unites Eckemoff’s chosen genres: namely, the ability to expand fleeting moments into poetry. Other highlights in this regard—all the more so, ironically enough, for being so darkly ponderous—include the panoramic “Love Train” and, above all, the simpatico title track.

This set of variations on a theme of memory is Eckemoff’s finest to date and may at last put her on a map where she has been largely ignored.

Bernie Worrell: Elevation – The Upper Air

| Tyran Grillo

Elevation

Bernie Worrell may be best known as the backbone of George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic, but on Elevation that spine sprouts veins, flesh, and wings in the keyboardist’s first solo piano transformation on record. While one may find it to be a surprising turn in an already-varied career, here is where the most paramount vessel of his seeking can be found: the heart.

The tune “In A Silent Way” by Joe Zawinul begins the album with a lyricism more expected of Tord Gustavsen, whose patience is echoed here. Worrell brings out a feeling of the American South in this rendition, painting the then and the yet-to-be in single brushstrokes. Hanging somewhere in the middle, he forges music like the glue between polarities of time. A low bass tone rises from a subconscious abyss, and writes its name across the mind’s eye with the control of a master calligrapher.

Whereas many jazz albums might use such tenderness as a warmup for quicker movements, this one keeps its promises. And so, Bootsy Collins’s “I’d Rather Be With You” lengthens the thread being pulled from this garment, removing a band of color from an overall pattern at once fading and forming. The balladic wavelengths allowed through this sonic portal are of the same frequency as those which link separated lovers by thought alone. Such transcendence is so damn immediate that you can’t help but feel like it’s your hands at the keys. And as Worrell draws lines in the water in order to feel its droplets clinging and separating, he evokes every human life caught in the karmic wheel.

It’s one among a handful of popular songs reimagined to be as naked as possible. Between the anthemic goodness of Carlos Santana’s “Samba Pa Ti” and Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” one common theme rules: the hidden truth of slowing down. It’s a philosophy epitomized in his take on “Ooh Child” by one-hit wonders The Five Stairsteps and “I Wanna Go Outside In The Rain” by The Dramatics. Both melt down the base metals of improvisation into the key of Worrell’s uniqueness. He makes no efforts to reveal secrets hidden in these melodies, but rather something far more difficult. He reveals their true selves.

John Coltrane’s “Alabama” is another example, which in the present version evokes rolling plains and clouds of smoke curling from pursed lips. A bittersweet nostalgia seeps through its curtain like light onto a kitchen table that was once alive with laughter but at which now sits only one. The pacing makes every snap of this uprooting that much more lucid to bear, while a stormy shadow trembles beneath it all.

Charles Mingus’s “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” enacts further transformations from solid to liquid, throughout which balances of technical and creative emotions are under constant negotiation. Worrell turns the entire piece into one long inhale, as if to incorporate every particle of breath before expelling the carbon dioxide of his own infinitude.

Even more permeable borders outline such ruminations as “Light On Water” and “Realm Of Sight.” Each is the culmination not only of elements, but also of impulses that can only be sung, not spoken. Together, they form a modal flower, floating through the dust of history in search of that one stem held in the fingertips of an artist who continues to teach us that connecting with listeners requires the lone musician to unravel into their ears.

This is music you don’t interpret, but which interprets you.

Vilma Timonen Quartet review for RootsWorld

| Tyran Grillo

My latest review for RootsWorld online magazine is of Finnish kantele player and singer Vilma Timonen, whose latest quartet album is sure to please fans of Sinikka Langeland. The music is enlivening and evocative, drawing from folk influences in an originally composed storybook of myths, moonlight, and maidens. Click the cover to discover!

Drops

Hristo Vitchev Quartet: In Search Of Wonders

| Tyran Grillo

Basic RGB

Few guitarists have carried the torch of Pat Metheny so humbly as Hristo Vitchev, and never with such brightness of purpose as on his latest quartet album, In Search Of Wonders. The Bay Area-based musician and producer has since 2009 put out a consistent, top-flight catalog of records, ranging from explorations of his Bulgarian roots to straight-ahead jazz road trips, but always by original design. With Wonders, he has at last tackled that most risky of studio ventures: the double album. The result is not only a magnum opus, but his most emotional work so far, and one that is sure to put smooth jazz naysayers in their place.

I asked Vitchev to elaborate on the significance of this album, which to me feels like his most autobiographical. “It has been an exciting journey since I started recording and publishing my own work. All the music presented in this release describes who I am both as an artist and person.” And if opener “The Transitory Nature” is any indication, Vitchev’s life has been one lived in deepest gratitude. It’s right there in the brotherhood he shares with his dedicated crew of pianist Jasnam Daya Singh (a.k.a. Weber Iago), bassist Dan Robbins, and drummer Mike Shannon. Their connections are key to the integrity of Vitchev’s sound, which by virtue of its infrastructure expands the limitations of any foundation. “All of us are first and foremost best friends,” says the leader of his bandmates. “The camaraderie, trust, respect, and love we all share is very special. That is in reality all you need as an artist to be able to open and present even the most fragile sectors of your soul and heart. I have only them in mind when I write this music.”

jarasun landing page
(Photo credit: Don Barnes)

Vitchev further stresses that he has never subbed in other players when performing this music live, and it shows in the leaps of evolution taken by his distinct method of archaeology, which now yields its best preserved artifacts. Among them is “It May Backfire.” Singh’s intro leads the band into a groove of geometric proportions. The unity of vision, held together in no small way by Shannon’s drumming, is well muscled. And while Vitchev may be the light that gives it sanctity, and Robbins a sense of corporeality through his articulate soloing, it’s the density of build through which the collective reality of this music is best spoken.

If I were to draw any internal relationship from the whole, however, it would be that shared between Vitchev and Singh, whose bond in “Post Nubes” and “Fuchsia Brown Eyes” is unbreakable. The latter’s tenderness reveals a hidden, spectral blues in the pianism, which in tandem with Vitchev’s adlibs adds layers of photorealism. The title track, too, with its Brazilian underlay, opens many doors with a single key.

It’s not by chance that tunes like the understated “Falling In Orange,” which opens the second disc, and the greener “It Is Here, Somewhere” should feel so visual. Vitchev has cultivated this quality in his music with great awareness. “My composing process as well as the arrangements are always driven by vivid imagery,” he explains. “When I sit down on the piano to write I will often close my eyes call up a picture. Only when that picture is in sharpest focus do notes, chords, and rhythms take form in ink.” With this in mind, it’s impossible not to read a growing nostalgia into the album’s progression, at its peak in “Old Theme.” The slick, youthful theme yields some of Vitchev’s most inspired soloing on record, rendered all the more exploratory by the rhythm section’s keen regularity.

Memories thrive throughout the album’s remainder. From the rhythmically savvy “Almost Home” to the dreamlike twists of “The Invisible Stairway,” moving pictures abound, at once frozen in, and animated by, time. In this respect, the album is a living portrait of Vitchev as composer, “a little corner of this musical landscape,” as he puts it, “I can call my own.” In other words, Wonders feels more at home than ever because it reaches farther than ever. This feeling of comfort is perhaps what distinguishes it from its predecessors and underscores the message epitomized in the piano-guitar epilogue, “We Search For Wonders.” Vitchev is quick to underline this point by way of conclusion. “Life is full of amazing things, but it takes desire and energy to lift your head, look around, and notice them. We are so grateful to have found each other and do the things we love as a group. These are our wonders, and this is our musical tribute to all that is around us.”