[JPL] Have Trombone, Will Travel

[Jazz Promo Services]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118593186721784179.html

Have Trombone, Will Travel

By MARTIN JOHNSON
August 1, 2007; Page D9
New York

Many jazz musicians have been called cultural ambassadors, but few -- if any
-- have taken the concept to the extremes found in the recent music of
trombonist Roswell Rudd.

Mr. Rudd, one of jazz's greatest trombonists, has spent the past decade or
so in a series of ambitious collaborations with musicians from all over the
world. When contacted for this story, he had just completed three weeks of
performances with the Beijing-based opera singer Li Xuai Feng in China. And
he was heading to Siberia, where he and a group of Mongolian musicians with
whom he has recorded were about to perform, aided by a 35-piece orchestra of
local artists playing instruments indigenous to the region. He has also just
released "El Espiritu Jibaro" (Sunnyside) a recording with Yomo Toro, the
Puerto Rican master of the cuatro (a ten-stringed guitar) and he has
completed another with the virtuosic Cuban tres master David Oquendo. Many
jazz musicians have added an exotic instrument to their otherwise
conventional ensembles, but in Mr. Rudd's case he's often the misfit playing
alongside musicians from other traditions developing unique sonic fusions.

Earlier this summer, Mr. Rudd brought one of his best-known cross-cultural
projects, Malicool, to the Jazz Standard in New York for six performances.
The group formed in 2000, and its only recording, an eponymous disc released
by Sunnyside Records in 2003, is one of the most praised jazz recordings of
the decade.

The Malicool project began eight years ago after Mr. Rudd's manager, Verna
Gillis, played him some recordings of Toumani Diabaté, a Malian kora master.
The two musicians met in Bamako, Mali, in February 2000 and the music began
to take shape.

"Toumani is one of the best improvisors I have ever heard," said Mr. Rudd
via email. "With our mutual flexibility we were able to create a musical
nucleus that other musicians could easily connect into."

In jazz, the trombone is often a gruff, flamboyant force accenting the
emotional extremes of the song. To work with the group of Malian musicians
he and Mr. Diabaté assembled, Mr. Rudd lightened his approach, diminishing
the force of his tone and extending the length of his solos to blend with
the delicate, hypnotic weave of African stringed instruments and balaphones
that provide the rhythmic underpinning in Malicool's sound.

"I had to find an intensity that didn't overpower their sound," he said.

The two musicians composed most of the repertoire for the recording, but Mr.
Rudd brought in one Thelonious Monk tune, "Jackie-ing." Mr. Rudd thought
that the piece resembled some of the Malian music he had heard in his visits
to Bamako. However, in teaching the music to his bandmates, he was surprised
by the depths they found in it. "They pushed it over a rhythmic edge," he
said. "I almost had to learn the song all over again."

Following the recording, Mr. Diabaté went on to form the Symmetric
Orchestra, a jazz-influenced big band of Malian musicians, and released a
stellar disc of their work, "Boulevard De L'independence" (Nonesuch), last
summer.

Sadly, due to visa problems, Mr. Diabaté was unable to make the Jazz
Standard engagement; instead, Mr. Rudd performed with New York-based
musicians from West Africa. The engagement suffered an additional calamity
when the kora player hired to replace Mr. Diabaté couldn't make the
engagement, which robbed the group of a key sound. Yet, in a way, this was a
blessing in disguise. Rather than trying to re-create a very delicate music
that may not have suited a nightclub setting, the performance became a band
workout with a series of dynamic solos on unusual material providing the
peaks. Mr. Rudd carried the evening with one rich, colorful solo after
another.

Mr. Rudd is 71 years old, and during his career he has been at the forefront
of many new movements in jazz. The Yale graduate's work was first noticed in
the mid- and late 1950s, while he was playing with a small cadre of young
Dixieland revivalists. He then fell under the sway of Monk, the legendary
pianist and composer, and Herbie Nichols, a lesser-known but superb pianist.
Mr. Rudd became a champion of their work, co-leading ensembles devoted to
their repertoire. In the mid-1960s he was founding member of the New York
Art Quartet, one of the pivotal groups in the rise of the East Coast school
of avant-garde jazz.

Mr. Rudd's interest in world music was nurtured by the great
ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. Mr. Rudd's cousin Charles Kiel was a colleague
of Mr. Lomax, and the trombonist collaborated with the renowned folklorist
in 1964 and sporadically for the next 30 years. "We were working on a
project called Cantometrics" -- Mr. Lomax's system of statistically
analyzing folk songs from all over the world -- Mr. Rudd says. "I helped
analyze several thousand field recordings."

Mr. Rudd says the experience affected his approach to music. "I can't say
that my years with Lomax impacted my performance style, but hearing all
these field recordings of them made me more aware of pure melodic resources
and possibilities."

One of the links Mr. Rudd sees in his various collaborations is collective
improvisation. It was what first fascinated him about swing music, and it
enabled him to move comfortably into and within avant-garde jazz circles. He
found that improvisatory verve among the Malian musicians as well as his
recent Caribbean collaborators.

In contrast to the discreet, meticulous sound of Malicool, "El Espiritu
Jibaro" is a relaxed and rousing program of music in a variety of Latin
American styles. Mr. Rudd and Mr. Toro trade pithy solos, and the play of
veteran percussionist Bobby Sanabria provides another highlight. Mr. Rudd
contributed "Bamako," a wistful, meditative track on Malicool, to the
sessions, and here it is presented with equal success as a fiery merengue.

Mr. Rudd hasn't forsaken more conventional jazz settings. He recently
released "Airwalkers" (Clean Feed), a recording of duets with bassist Mark
Dresser, and later this summer he will debut a new quartet with piano, bass
and vocals at the Newport Jazz Festival.

He allows that his international collaborations have affected his forays
within standard jazz boundaries. "I just sing on the trombone and put all
the colors I can into it," he said. "[These projects] enable me to bring
more of what's possible in terms of melody and rhythm."

Mr. Johnson writes about jazz for the Journal.



     
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