Music Review: Sir Roland Hanna - "Colors From a Giant's Kit"

This article was first published at http://blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-sir-roland-hanna-colors/

Back many more years than I would care to remember, I took a college music appreciation course called "Piano Literature of the Romantic Period."  Neither a pianist myself, nor even particularly knowledgeable about music in general, I thought it was time to learn something about the music written for an instrument I had always loved to listen to.  The course turned out to be a comprehensive introduction to some of the most thrilling music ever written—some of it for piano and orchestra, most for solo piano.  There is something about the solo piano in the hands of a skilled artist playing the works of master composers that can paint emotional colors like no other instrument.  Think of Rubenstein playing Chopin, Lang Lang playing Beethoven. 

If this is true for the classical piano, it is no less true for the jazz piano, where the artist is as much a creator as he is a performer.  Sir Roland Hanna is just such an artist.  Let me begin by acknowledging my ignorance.  I had no knowledge of Hanna, until one day an album of his arrived as they say "over the transom," but once I had listened, it was clear I had been missing a truly exceptional talent.   Colors From a Giant's Kit is a collection of fourteen solo tracks recorded by Hanna before his death in 2003.  While Hanna may not have the achieved the same kind of public acclaim as some of the more noted jazz pianists—the Keith Jarretts, the Oscar Petersons, the Monks—a little surfing makes it clear, that he is what is known in the trade as a musician's musician.  The people who know know about Hanna.  He has played with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra and Benny Goodman's band among others.  He has accompanied singers like Sarah Vaughn and Al Hibbler.  He has composed works for the piano and orchestra and has soloed with some of the major classical orchestras in the country.  This was a pianist that deserved a lot more attention.

The album is a diverse mix that shows the range of Hanna's musical interests.  There's nice little traditional blues and a modernist take on the old time rag in his own composition, "20^th Century Rag."  He takes "Cherokee," the swing classic made famous by Charlie Barnet, and first turns it into a romantic ballad before making clear he can swing it as well.  He jams his way through jazz standards like "Robbin's Nest," "In a Mellow Tone," and a richly evocative version of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life."  There is an almost impressionistic take on Coltrane's "Naima." Then there are his own compositions: the album's title song is an upbeat romp.  "Natalie Rosanne" is a sweet ballad.  "A Story Often Told But Seldom Heard" is an eight minute tone poem with echoes of classical modernism.

And in a way this may be the most compelling thing about both Hanna's playing and his composing.  His work reverberates with echoes of the classics from a variety of traditions.  Throughout the album you hear the influences of not only "Piano Literature of the Romantic Period," not only of Liszt and Rachmaninoff, but Satie and Gershwin and probably a bunch of others as well.  He takes these influences and mixes them with Scott Joplin and Duke Ellington and he produces something all his own.  As some of the more experimental voices in modern jazz go, he may be a little tame.  He may be a little too traditional.  But for anyone who finds themselves thrilled with that Romantic piano music, Sir Roland Hanna (the Sir by the by according to Wikipedia is an honorary title bestowed on him by the president of Liberia) is someone you will want to get acquainted with and Colors From a Giant's Kit is a good place to start.

Music Review: Various Artists - ZZ Top: A Tribute from Friends

This article was first published at Blogcritics.

Covering another artist's hits can be a tricky business.  If you simply mimic their performance, you invite the wrath of those who have made a fetish of the original, while leaving yourself open to the question of why you bothered in the first place.  Who after all needs a cheap imitation?  If you make the song your own, you will still rile the fetishists, and you may or may not come up with something to compete with the original.  Still if you do come up short, you will at least have failed on your own merits.  The choice seems obvious; the only question is how far from the original should you stray. 

In an interview on the Canadian talk show, Paul Simon was asked about why he chose Aretha Franklin's cover of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" for his new album Songwriter.  His answer was that the singer's soulful rendition was as good as "Artie's." She didn't copy; she created, and she won a Grammy for it.  The greatness of her performance was that she honored the song as a work of art with more than one possible interpretation. 

ZZ Top: A Tribute from Friends is an album filled with the kinds of covers that honor the work of "that little old band from Texas," honor it with performances that may not make you forget the originals, but might have you saying they were as good as Frank's and Billy's and Dusty's.  The "friends" featured on the disc are a mixed bunch of some of the finest on the contemporary scene and represent a wide range of musical genres from as far apart as Wyclef Jean and Jamey Johnson.  And if Jean's "Rough Boy" may be a bit too mannered for some tastes, Johnson does a job on "La Grange" that is eight minutes of rocking power. He takes the song to another level.  It probably didn't hurt that Billy Gibbons is sitting in with guitar and vocals. 

Of the eleven tracks on the album, some stay closer to home, some stray further away, but each and every one sheds some new light on the band's musical genius.  Grace Potter and the Nocturnals deliver a "Tush" with a whole new point of view (talk about sexy).  Filter's "Gimmie All Your Lovin'" is a roaring re-imagination of the classic all their own as is Duff McKagen's Loaded's lowdown "Got Me Under Pressure."  Daughtry handles the combined "Waitin' for the Bus/Jesus Just Left Chicago" with style.  Mick Fleetwood, Steven Tyler, John McVie, and  Jonny Lang, calling themselves The M.O.B., get together to open the album with an all star stab at "Sharp Dressed Man" that has some really nice energy.  Nickelback's "Legs" does full justice to the classic.  Mastodon's "Just Got Paid," Coheed and Cambria's "Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers" and "Cheap Sunglasses" by Wolfmother round out the album.  There isn't a loser in the bunch.

The story  told about the band's reaction to the idea of the album is that when the ZZ Top triumvirate was told that a tribute album was in the works, they asked, "Who are we paying tribute to?"  How's that for modesty? Want more? "Then we found out that a bunch of great artists were paying tribute to us and we were in disbelief.  For the past 40 or so years, all we've done is get out there and crank it and try to have a good time while doing so. . . . Now comes A Tribute From Friends and we're so delighted that our music resonates with these great musicians whom we so admire."

ZZ Top has been cranking it out and having a good time.  The Friends playing their tributes cranked it out and had a good time.  Listen to the CD; you may not crank it out, but you'll have one hell of a good time.

Music Review: Patrizio Buanne - Patrizio

Article first published as Music Review: Patrizio Buanne - Patrizio on Blogcritics.

Uncork a bottle of wine. Turn down the lights. Put Patrizio, the latest album from Italian heartthrob, Patrizio Buanne on your stereo if you still have one, your iPod dock, if not. Sit down next to your lady, and wait for her to melt. Clearly that's what the singer intends, and he's got the goods to make it happen. There are some up tempo numbers on the disc, but romance is what Buanne is all about. It is really what he's always been about. He flirts with his audience, sure he jokes at times, sure he teases at times, but flirting—flirting always. And why not? The man is as sexy as they come and he has the voice that makes women swoon, if women still do that, and turns men green with envy (which indeed they still do).

Although some may be disappointed with this new album because it strays quite a bit from the Italian standards that the singer is probably best known for, it is the singer's attempt to broaden his repertoire. He doesn't neglect his bread and butter entirely. There are some songs with something of an Italian pedigree--"Make Love," "Americano" and "Maybe This Summer"—but they are all sung in English. "Never, Never, Never," a lovely duet with Reneé Olstead, does have a couple of verses sung in his native language, and then there is his cover of the Rosemary Clooney classic "Mambo Italiano" which at least has an Italian title and an Italian reference or two if it doesn't quite deliver the romance of the romance language. He doesn't completely ignore his Italian roots, but he might as well have. So If you're looking for "O Sole Mio" or "Al Di La," you're in the wrong place.

On the other hand, if you're looking some very sexy versions of some standards and a newer song or two sung in the best traditions of the romantic crooner, Patrizio is for you. He does a nice job with Patsy Cline's classic, "Crazy," and Bryan Adams' "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" reeks with husky passion. "Fly Me to the Moon" is delivered as a smoldering ballad. Dianne Warren's newly written "Why Did You Have to Be?" is right in the singer's wheelhouse. Buanne says he aimed to present his "passion for interpreting any great song—no matter if Italian, American or new." He wanted, he says, to open himself up artistically. Despite the unhappiness of some fans, this is an album that proves he was right.

It is hard to blame an artist for wanting to stretch, to show what he can do. If this album is any example, Patrizio Buanne can do a lot. Sure he is something special with the music of his country and the way he sings it, but what Patrizio shows is that if he keeps at it, he will be just as special with " any great song—no matter if Italian, American or new."

DVD Review: The Hour

This article was first published at Blogcritics.

Think 60 Minutes mixed with a touch of Broadcast News in a stylish British spy thriller set against the backdrop of the Suez Canal crisis and the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian Revolution in the 50's and you've got a sense of what you're in for in the six episode BBC production The Hour now available on DVD. It's got spies and secret agents. It's got a bit of sex. It's got a bit of betrayal, and it's got shocks and surprises enough to keep you guessing about what's going to happen next. All in all, it is a thriller in the best British tradition.

In the opening episode, the BBC is starting a new hour long investigative news journal called The Hour. Ambitious young beauty, Bel Rowley (Romola Garai) is chosen to produce the show. Her friend, colleague, and unacknowledged love interest, the earnest idealistic Freddy Lyon ( Ben Whishaw) comes along with her as a reporter although her had hoped for a more significant role. The cynical Hector Manning (Dominic West), less qualified professionally but with a made for TV face signs on as the show's anchor. If this doesn't remind you of Holly Hunter, Albert Brooks and William Hurt, check out Broadcast News again. Manning, although married, is not above making the moves on an attractive woman, and so you've got the perfect set up for a nice little love triangle. Then when a terrified old friend pleads for his help, Lyon becomes involved in soviet espionage, coded messages, traitorous moles and political intrigue, all played out against the production of the new TV show and the budding romantic rivalry.

Whishaw, with his slight almost undernourished physique, is a most unlikely hero for the typical thriller, but as a journalist with a passion for his craft and its importance in a democracy he is entirely convincing. Garai as a woman trying to make her way in a man's world is appropriately feisty even if it is hard to see how she can succumb so easily to West's seductions. Clearly he is a charmer, but one would think someone in her position would be more hardened to that sort of thing. West, no doubt best known for his performance in The Wire, is at his best as a self centered ladies man. They are joined by an excellent supporting cast of low key British character actors. Anton Lesser turns in an effective job as the network's head for the newly developing show. Juliet Stevenson is intense as a stoically bereaved mother, and Tim Pigott-Smith is subdued as her guilt ridden husband. Julian Rhind-Tutt is appropriately slimy as the government's liaison with the media. Anna Chancellor is right at home as a hard-nosed foreign correspondent.

Set back in the 50's, The Hour will, of course, invite comparison with Mad Men and this season's Mad Men wannabees. And, indeed, there is plenty of cigarette smoking. Like Mad Men, The Hour is very good at holding the mirror up to the period. The From the typically amateurish set for the new show to the small screen TV's scattered through clubs, offices and homes, from the flowing dresses, the hair styles and the bright toned makeup, the show creates a sense of time reminiscent of the films of the period. Moreover the newsreels and the references to the events of the day all over the world—the Eisenhower election in the U.S., Israel's invasion of Egypt, Anthony Eden's government—give the show as convincing a historical reality almost as if were made at the time.

Included on the two disc DVD set are two extra features: a behind the scenes look at the production and a making of special.

Music Review: Paul Simon - Songwriter

This article was first published at Blogcritics

In celebration of Paul Simon's 70^th birthday on October 13, Sony/Legacy is releasing Songwriter, a two disc set of 32 songs spanning the composer's fabled career from the sixties to the present. The songs on the album were chosen by Simon himself, and although they include a number of his most famous pieces, this is not a greatest hits collection. Tom Moon, in the liner notes, contends that the album "features commercial landmarks alongside ambitious and often criminally under-appreciated compositions." Now this may be something of an overstatement, but it does, as Moon goes on to explain, allow Simon the opportunity to highlight some of his lesser known songs, songs that are sometimes "overlooked." Whether this will make up for the omission of a ton of fan favorites is problematical.

Disc one, which contains most of the 'hits' that Simon decided to include begins with "The Sound of Silence" from a live 2011 performance where Simon plays some interesting harmonic games with the melody. It is a clear indication that this is not going to be a simple recycling of material. There is of course no Garfunkel and that is unfortunate. This is followed by "The Boxer" from the live concert in Central Park and Aretha Franklin's soulful cover of "Bridge Over Troubled Water," the only cover on the album. Other classics included in the collection are "Mother and Child Reunion," "American Tune," "Kodachrome," and "Still Crazy After All These Years." The first disc ends with three songs from Simon's African collaboration "Graceland," "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes," and "The Boy in the Bubble." I would, myself, have put in a word for "The Myth of Fingerprints," but I suppose a third and fourth disc would have been necessary for all the songs I would have put in a word for.

The second disc begins with four songs from The Rhythm of the Saints highlighted by the much praised "Spirit Voices" with its Portuguese interpolation by Milton Nascimento. There are a couple of songs from Simon's ill-fated Broadway venture, The Capeman. If the music represented here, the dramatic "Born in Puerto Rico" and the doo wop throwback, "Quality," is any indication, one has to wonder why the show didn't do better. The album ends with selections from his 2011 release So Beautiful or So What including the title song. If the music on this disc is not as well known, it is nonetheless indicative of the composer's range and the continued variety of his interests.

Tom Moon's liner notes provide a lucid critical evaluation of Simon's work. He talks about the composer's lyric brilliance, emphasizing his sense of humor. He stresses the composer's eclectic musical passions. "Simon's songbook," he suggests, "can be appreciated as the journey of restless songwriter searching for new ways to communicate, driven toward new musical settings for his ideas." Simon has never been one to keep repeating his successes. No doubt he could have kept turning out the kind of music that made the duet's name a household word back in the sixties, but that is not the way of the true artist. The true artist is always looking to exceed his grasp.

Paul Simon is the true artist. Songwriter, with its classic songs and its new works that may yet become classic, is simply one more demonstration of that fact. Certainly there will be those that object to this or that inclusion at the expense of this or that omission, but the more one listens to the newer pieces, the more familiar they become, the more likely those objections will disappear.

DVD Review: The Last Happy Day

This article was first published at Blogcritics

In an interview with Otherzine experimental film maker, Lynne Sachs talks about realizing "that there was a pattern emerging in my work, a rhythm between films that were open to changes brought by the times and films that followed a very clearly defined vision or concept. " Later in the interview she relates what she is trying to do in her films to the avant garde poet, Gertrude Stein's desire to "create provocative ruptures between the sign and the signifier, between the way we are taught to speak (to communicate) and the way we ultimately choose to express ourselves (art)." Sachs says that her aim is to do the same kind of thing with images and sounds, and one way to do this is to get rid of the traditional chronological narrative and instead tell a personal story through patterned imagery.

What she comes up with is illustrated in her recently released DVD of her 2009 documentary essay, The Last Happy Day, which also includes four of her shorter films as well. The Last Happy Day aims to create a portrait of her distant cousin, Alexander (Sandor) Lenard, a Hungarian doctor who had kept his Jewish identity hidden from his family when he married. With the threat from the Nazis growing, he fled to safety in Rome, helped rescue other refugees and eventually began working for the US Army's reconstructing bones of dead American soldiers. Later, fearing a WW III in Europe, he moved to the Brazilian countryside. It was there that he turned out his Latin translation of Winnie the Pooh, a somewhat strange undertaking, but one that was to garner him something more than his five minutes of fame.

Sachs' documentary rejects the normal grammar of the genre. The Last Happy Day uses some historical war footage, sometimes straight, sometimes in negative, sometimes superimposed over other images. There are no expert talking heads. There are two family members who speak, Lenhart's son and his second wife, but their commentary is limited, and the wife an elderly woman points out that what she says may well be untrue. Memory, she adds, often betrays us. She can't always tell truth from fantasy. Instead most of the information comes from Lenhart's letters read as voiceovers. There are shots of contemporary children playacting the Pooh stories, and one of them does some of the background narration as well. All this has the effect of downplaying the narrative and foregrounding the visual imagery.

But for real commitment to visual imagery, two of the shorter films eliminate narrative continuity altogether, substituting a completely visual syntax instead. A Georgic for a Forgotten Planet is a visual homage to Virgil's poem using settings from New York City, juxtaposing images of typical city life with less typical flowers and gardens. One comes away from the film with telling images embedded in the imagination. The enigmatically titled Sound of a Shadow, a collaboration with her husband, takes a similar look at Japan, creating what Sachs calls a "visual haiku." The visual image is the language of both films. It is a language both highly personal and open ended. It is language that can be fraught with meaning for some, meaningless for others.

And therein lies the rub, indeed the rub for much of such experimental work in art. There are those audiences that will have no truck with Gertrude Stein's "ruptures." They want things to maintain their meaning. These are audiences that will have trouble with some of Sachs' work as well. For them a random collection of images will simply be a random collection of images, and nothing else.

That's the nice thing about The Last Happy Day, while it makes its points with arresting images, it gives the viewer a narrative hook to help navigate through them. Everything in the film from the Bach score, to the horror of collecting human bones, to the beauty of the Brazilian countryside, everything is there in support of a personal vision. Nothing seems random.

Music Review: Eddie Daniels and Roger Kellaway - Live at the Library of Congress

Article first published as Music Review: Eddie Daniels and Roger Kellaway - Live at the Library of Congress on Blogcritics.

You might be forgiven for thinking that an evening featuring a clarinet and piano duo in a jazz recital might have a limited appeal. It is after all an instrumental combination you're not apt to come across very often. Indeed the clarinet itself has lost something of its cachet since the heydays of Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Artie Shaw. Well, if you had been thinking that way about clarinetist Eddie Daniels and pianist Roger Kellaway's February 25^th concert recital at the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress, you would have been wrong—wrong in a big way.

Daniels and Kellaway are two musicians who deserve to be much better known than they are, and the CD release of that February concert by IPO Recordings could do much to remedy that. This is not their first collaboration, they worked together on the critically acclaimed 2009 album, A Duet of One, an album Bilboard lauded as "a wondrous duet date featuring extraordinary musicians taking chances and thankfully succeeding on all levels." Live at the Library of Congress makes it clear that that previous album was no fluke. Two fine albums should mean something. These are albums where the dialogue between the clarinet and the piano is at times playful and quirky, at times lyrically mellow, at times technically brilliant, and always musically inventive. These men are virtuosos with their instruments and they know how to work together.

This was an exciting concert and it makes for an exciting album. The set list, nine pieces in all, is a mix of original compositions three by Kellaway, one by Daniels and works by a variety of other composers from Thelonius Monk to Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. They begin with an eight and a half minute romp through the Gershwin's "Strike up the Band," treating the familiar tune with a variety of inventive rhythms. They end with a Kellaway piece, "50 State Rambler," which alternates familiar sounding lines with edgy modernism. In between, there's an unlikely funky exploration of "America the Beautiful" and a lyrically expressive version of "Somewhere" from Westside Story. Kellaway's pieces show a similar kind of variety. There's the simple lyricism of "A Place That You Want to Call Home" and the dynamic energy of his "Capriccio Twilight." Monk's "Rhythm-a-ning" with a clarinet quotation or two makes for a moment of wit and some of the accompanying grunts might remind you of Lionel Hampton. "Etude of a Woman," Daniels' tune, is combined with Sondheim's "Pretty Woman." It has a haunting melody that seems strangely familiar.

The World Clarinet Alliance called the event a "landmark concert." In a Jazz CD Review of A Duet of One, Tony Augarde says: "Daniels and Kellaway fit together like hand-in-glove." Perhaps that is one way of making sense out of the album's cryptic paradoxical title, and if it was true then, it was equally true in February. The concert at the Library of Congress is nothing short of an eye opening revelation. You can take a clarinet and a piano, put them on a stage alone together and make wonderful music, you can that is if you've got Eddie Daniels playing that clarinet and Roger Kellaway playing that piano.