Thomas Wolfe may have been wrong when he wrote You Can’t Go Home Again, if flautist
Lori Bell’s latest album Brooklyn
Dreaming is any indication. Fronting a quartet featuring Tamir Hendelman on
piano, Katie Thiroux on bass and Matt Witek on drums, the West Coast transplant
takes the opportunity of her ninth studio album to put together a nine-track
musical return to her roots in Brooklyn and Manhattan (since six of the tunes reference
New York City). Home is where the music comes from.
Although the album’s main focus is on original Bell
compositions, she begins with a swinging version of the Charles Mingus classic
“Nostalgia in Times Square”—note the appropriate emphasis on nostalgia to set
the thematic tone. The other covers are a brilliant romp through Monk’s “52nd
Street Theme” and Earle Hagen’s “Harlem Nocturne” which closes the set. This
last providing a bit of personal nostalgia recalling the rock and roll blues
version of Sam “The Man” Taylor, a favorite of my own youth in Brooklyn, here
treated with a Latin beat and some elegant solo work from Bell and Hendelman. It is tough
competing with youthful memories of Alan Freed and the Brooklyn Paramount, but
Bell and her quartet manage quite well.
The original material includes an inspired almost mystical
“Times Squared” with a dynamic conversation between Bell and Hendelman and a
smoky “Streets of New York.” The title song with its dreamlike melody
re-enforces the nostalgic theme, while “A Dog on Coney,” a real jazz romp,
changes the mood entirely. “Lower Manhattan” and “3 Deuce Blues,” with a wispy
opening leading inevitably to the blues in its title, round out the album.
The Lori Bell Quartet is an ensemble that demands attention.
These are four top notch musicians who work as one. Bell has a vision, and
Hendelman, Thiroux and Witek buy into that vision with gusto. Their
collaboration has produced an album that is both beautiful and intelligent. Brooklyn Dreaming is a winner.
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