Welcome to Notes From New York, a monthly jazz column by Bill Milkowski that includes observations on the scene along with interview snippets, gossip and gig information.
Ribot’s Philly Soul
The remarkably versatile guitarist Marc Ribot, a stalwart on the “downtown scene” since the ‘80s, has showcased his deconstructivist aesthetic with his Rootless Cosmopolitans, unleashed his shredding instincts with his avant rock trio Cermaic Dog and his Albert Ayler tribute band Spiritual Unity, and explored the music of the great Cuban bandleader Arsenio Rodriguez with his son montuno party band Los Cubanos Postizos. He has been John Zorn’s hired gun in projects like Electric Masada and The Dreamers and he’s performed the music of Haitian classical guitarist Frantz Casséus, who he studied with while growing up in Newark. But nothing comes close to the level of sheer delight that Ribot has been able to generate on gigs with The Young Philadelphians, his all-star group performing tweaked renditions of Philly soul classics from the ‘70s like Van McCoy’s “The Hustle,” The Trammps’ “Love Epidemic” and Mother, Father, Sister, Brother’s “TSOP” (aka the Soul Train theme). With former Ornette Coleman Prime Time bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma and former Lounge Lizards drummer G. Calvin Weston laying down a thick, irresistible groove, guitarist Mary Halvorson layering on avant textures and colors and a lush three-piece string section remaining faithful to the memorable melodies, Ribot and his post-modern soul revue recast these Philly soul classics (and other ‘70s funk-disco-groove anthems like The Ohio Players’ “Love Rollercoaster” and “Fly, Robin, Fly” by the Munich-based band Silver Convention) with a touch of punk-funk-noise while retaining the essence of these groovy numbers. Their chemistry was documented on the recently released Live in Tokyo (recorded at the Club Quattro on July 28, 2014) and the band has been on a European tour this summer before returning to the States for a July 28 performance at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City.
Ribot coined the slogan “Where Deco Meets Disco Meets Decon” to capture what the Young Philadelphians are all about. “One of my favorite things in the world is when people get up and dance at our gigs,” said the Newark native who lives in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn. “I have nothing profound to say about it, it just makes me happy. I didn’t come up through the conservatory system, so I played a lot of gigs that were in some ways regrettable…you know, weddings and lounge gigs and stuff like that. But I don’t regret at all the fact that I spent sometimes four hours a night trying to make people dance. I still dig it. And it is not for nothing that Calvin Weston and Jamaaladeen Tacuma play in this band. I wanted to reconnect players who had come out of Ornette’s Prime Time band and the harmolodic improvising training that they had been through with material that we all remember from when we were kids. The string parts are direct transcriptions from the original recordings, so they kind of hold the tunes together and trigger our memories of them. But I wanted to bring us as improvisers into confrontation or juxtaposition with the original recordings. Making people get up is still part of the agenda and always will be. But we are abstracting it a little further. As the band progresses, we’re getting further along towards the improvisatory potential of the tunes.”
Micic’s Night Music
Serbian-born guitarist-composer Rale Micic, who hosted the successful Guitar X 2 duet series at the Bar Thalia in Symphony Space in June, will release his Night Music this fall on Whale City Sound. There’s a delicious sense of destiny that permeates this project, which was inspired by the music of Hungarian classical composer Bela Bartok. Consider the uncanny coincidences: Micic grew up in Belgrade hearing Bartok’s music from his classical music-loving grandfather. He later studied Bartok’s String Quartets in college. But the Bartok connection grew deeper when Micic moved to New York following four years of studying jazz composition at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Several years after settling into his Riverdale neighborhood in the Bronx, Micic made a chilling discovery about the man he considered one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. “I’ve been living here in Riverdale for 12 years, and then a couple of years ago I just found out by accident that Bartok lived here in his final years, literally two blocks from where I am now.”