Showing posts with label pan jazz. Show all posts

Wednesday, 21 September 2022

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 13 - Andy Narell

Andy Narell, globe-trotting and pioneering steelpan jazz musician, composer and arranger chats about his beginnings in the world of steelpan in the 1960s, and the evolution of the sound that he is leading in the 2020s with a new sample library of steelpan instruments created by the legendary master tuner Ellie Mannette. And everything in between. From the West Coast of America to Trinidad to South Africa, to the French Antilles and Japan, the Narell sound and music is a standard for many on how the business of steelpan jazz performance and recording operates. Caribbean and Latin American rhythms, African pulses, post bop references all colour his music, and with a prolific output of recordings, steelpan jazz is part of the global jazz conversation Wed, 21 Sep 2022

Programme Date: 21 September 2022
Programme Length: 01:31:10

Sunday, 28 August 2022

Island Jazz Chat: Episode 12 - Victor Provost

Victor Provost, from St John, USVI, has been variously described as a "rising steelpan master...whose refreshing melodic approach to soloing on the pan is wholly steeped in the jazz tradition," and "living proof of the nuance and versatility of the [steelpan]." In this chat, Victor discusses his beginnings, his influences and the practicality and privilege of "being in the right place at the right time" to develop both a performing and recording career that continues to build receptive audiences. Solo albums, collaborations and featured sideman duties over a two decade professional career are explored. Sun, 28 Aug 2022

Programme Date: 28 August 2022
Programme Length: 01:58:10

Thursday, 1 November 2018

Playlist (November/December 2018) | Music reviewsª

Pillar Jonathan Scales Fourchestra

(Ropeadope Records)

The steelpan and its sound have become almost the cliché of Caribbean fantasy and escape, but in the hands of musicians with a determination to move away from that old trope, the music can challenge listeners to re-imagine the unique timbre of this creole invention and its canon. North Carolina native Jonathan Scales revels in odd metres and radical time signature changes to produce music for the instrument that can be complex, intriguing and ultimately funky enough for listeners to bop their heads. On this new album, the bass guitar serves as a fulcrum for a rhythmic chase as the steelpan matches it on some tracks like, “This Is The Last Hurrah”, or plays counterpoint standing in awe of the superb musicianship of the likes of Oteil Burbridge, Victor Wooten and MonoNeon on “Fake Buddha's Inner Child” and “The Trap”. Scales's musical hero, banjoist Béla Fleck guests, showcasing the adaptability of the steelpan in musical settings born outside the archipelago.

These reviews appear in the November/December 2018 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

Monday, 1 January 2018

Playlist (January/February 2018) | Music Reviewsª

Glass World Rudy Smith

(Stunt Records)

Trailblazing steelpan jazz virtuoso Rudy Smith has been fusing the sound of the pan with bebop and progressive jazz for nearly fifty years, premiering the sound of native invention and “creole imagination” in the wider world. Europe has been his stomping ground for all those years, and with his eleventh full-length album Smith serves as a bona fide symbol of music excellence. Glass World finds Smith back fronting his Danish jazz band, re-inventing the idea of the steelpan as a solo instrument for jazz without the feeling of it being too avant garde. “Plangent” was the word used by a reviewer to describe the sound of the double second steelpans used by Smith, but a more apt descriptive would be “euphonious.” That tone juxtaposes beautifully within the songs, mainly written by his long-time collaborator and pianist Ole Matthiessen, to serve up a new standard in a diminishing marketplace for unique jazz. Traditional jazz is best served with originality, and this album delivers.

More Caribbean Playlist reviews appear in the January/February 2018 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

Tuesday, 1 December 2015

Jazz in the Islands Reviews: December 2015

Etienne Charles: Creole Christmas

(Culture Shock Music, 2015)

Christmas albums are described in the music industry as sure fire money-makers as they can be re-cycled annually to keep newer fans in the spirit. Etienne Charles, that creole soul as personified on his last album has crafted a New World reflection of the idea of Christmas and what the season of giving looks like from the perspective of that kind of fortunate traveller. On Creole Christmas, Charles re-imagines the European, American and Caribbean holiday songbooks with a cast of jazz and folk musicians from around the globe. Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and “Chocolate (Spanish Dance)” from the ballet, “The Nutcracker” are transformed into a jazz ensemble improv workout and a parang jam respectively. Calypsonian, Relator is placed in the context of live horns to recast his classics, “Make a New Friend For Christmas”, and "Christmas is Yours, Christmas is Mine” as potent responses to the canned background music for mall shoppers. A sure fire classic has arrived to balance the creole influence of here with the temperate seductions of there.

Rudy "Two Left" Smith: What pan did for me

(Caprice Records, 2015)

Rudy Smith is a pioneering musician who, in the early 1970s, put the steelpan front and centre in jazz recordings before just about anybody else, and has never looked back since. A legend in this native Trinidad, and living in Denmark for many years now, Smith on this compilation album showcases the instrument as a subtle lead voice. Calypso, jazz and steel have forged music for listening. Veering towards bebop as the signifier of jazz, Smith used the steelpan to great acclaim in Scandinavia and throughout Europe, after migrating there in the 1960s. The answer to the question implied in the album’s title, What pan did for me, is that it provided a tool for a long music career for Smith and placed the instrument into the consciousness of European audiences of jazz, World music and popular music as more than an accompaniment for island ditties. This career-spanning collection is a great indication of his worth.

More reviews reviews appear in the December 2015 issue of Jazz in the Islands magazine.

© 2015, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

Friday, 1 May 2015

Caribbean Beat Reviews – May/June 2015ª

Parallel Overtones Garvin Blake

Brooklyn-based steel pannist Garvin Blake at long last follows up his 1999 debut album Belle Eau Road Blues with his new paean to pan jazz music, Parallel Overtones. The album is described as exploring “the synergy between pan, calypso, and jazz,” which it does with sure-handed skill. Balancing a repertoire between jazz standards and calypsos, Blake stealthily makes the case for renewed efforts of Caribbean pannists to record new music for the instrument. Vincentian keyboard stalwart Frankie McIntosh shares co-production along with songwriting and arrangement credits, making this album a showcase for the art of the Caribbean piano, with a sense of swing found only in hot latitudes. Kaiso-jazz classic “Fancy Sailor” sashays along at the steady chip of a slow lavway, while “Body and Soul” waltzes effortlessly to ably feature Blake’s quintet of players as soloists. The steelpan jazz oeuvre, while notably small, is emboldened by the addition of this well-produced album.

More Caribbean Playlist reviews appear in the May/June 2015 issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

Wednesday, 24 April 2013

An American in Paradise: The sense of Belonging of Andy Narell

Andy Narell

American pannist and composer Andy Narell is an iconoclast who fearlessly challenges the narrow definitions of acceptable pan music. He is global, and his usefulness as an ambassador for our national instrument is tainted by suspicion long held by panmen and the pan fraternity in general here. It may be a an attitude of his own making. Long held beliefs are hard to dispel with logic. Pan pioneer Rudolf "Fish Eye" Ollivierre welcomed itinerant writer Patrick Leigh Fermor back in 1950 to Hell Yard, as described in his travel book The Traveller's Tree—"The ease of his manner was admirable"—implying a sense of awe and acceptance we have nurtured over the years in this region for "tourists." Narell has long ago stopped being a tourist. He is one of us and thus, prone to the same criticisms and praise as the rest of us. He is critical of our music, our Panorama and we react without obsequiousness. And rightly so, for that is the Caribbean posture, effectively practised by the panman forever; never back down from a challenge.

Andy Narell belongs to a pantheon of expatriate creative types who “belong” here and at the same time are aware of their difficulty of so belonging. Important regional authors were temporary immigrants to these shores in the mid-20th century—Edgar Mittelholzer in 1941-48, George Lamming in 1946-50, Derek Walcott in 1959-76—and their presence and experiences added to the canon of West Indian literature. Port of Spain, and by extension, the island is a place frequented by those wanderers in search of inspiration and succour. It still is a moving place designed to shape memory and ways of feeling. (Narell is temporarily resident in St Lucia now, acting as the festival patron for the 17th annual Jazz in the South in Laborie beginning on May 1, 2013.)

Pan Jazz Picnic

I was recently re-animated about the possibilities of programming 24 hours of steelpan jazz and its variants for online radio, when I had to do a little research into the output of this sub-genre of our Caribbean jazz fusion experiment. Some hard realities; we had a proliferation of CDs during the 1990s, both in Trinidad and Tobago and abroad, mainly North America. A smattering of offerings out of the UK and Europe did not hold much sway as we entered the 21st century. As a programming niche, there is a thin line between repetition and redundancy.

There is a sort of renaissance in music recording now from the US, by non-Trinidadians as well as diasporic citizens, but the quality varies with level of music academic qualifications. Two names stick out, Phil Hawkins and Gary Gibson, both offering two and four CDs respectively in the 2000s, leaning to what Andy Narell, among others, has termed "progressive steelpan jazz": jazz-based, harmonically intricate music. To quote a review for one of Gibson's CDs: "Speaking a language of harmonic depth not previously explored within the steelpan community in recorded music, Gibson's compositions provide an excellent springboard for improvisations." Both these West-coast musicians attempt to be innovators of music for steelpan. On the east coast of the US, ex-pats Liam Teague and Leon Foster Thomas are creating variety, Victor Provost recently premiered with bebop stylings, while JAOTG alumnus Jonathan Scales released his third CD of musically complex and outside the box compositions. One critic noted, "the music on Jonathan Scales' [three CDs] defies the conventional parameters of jazz or even "pan-jazz" and pushes composition to unprecedented levels of complexity and sophistication."

Local steelpan recordings seem to revolve around ensemble performance by a whole band, with few offerings by our greats: Boogsie, Professor, Ray. Robbie Greenidge, with his collaborations with Michael Utley of Jimmy Buffett's Coral Reefers Band, has about over a half-dozen CDs, now and then veering towards his boss' carefree tropical blend devoid of the native rhythms that inform Caribbean jazz. I look and listen with keen interest at young Kyle Noel's upcoming offerings. This Trinidad southerner, far from the madding crowd has interesting musical and sonic ideas, and it would be an excellent fillip for the inventors of the PHI to get that instrument into his hands.

Hoping and believing that quantity and quality are what drive a music industry, I look, and wait with bated breath for the day when we get our act together here in the Caribbean, to make that statement that we made years ago when Caribbean people challenged the idea that there was music other than rock 'n' roll that was chart-worthy in the US. Belafonte was a catalyst then, but not a sustainer. It is said that Andy Narell is the equivalent catalyst for the steelpan. Only excellent output will sustain.