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D-Erania - Offerings of Love
D-Erania - Offerings of Love
Date Posted: November 02 2011
Written By: Hrayr Attarian
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D-Erania – Alto, soprano saxes, vocals
Anthony Morgan – Drums, vocals
Sammy Torres – Percussion
Joe Rocha – Bass
Derrick Bounds – Piano
Fareed Haque – Guitar
Orbert Davis – Trumpet
The owner operator of the Esteem Fitness & Personal Training gym in Maywood, Illinois is also one of Chicago’s most exciting underexposed musicians. Composer, bandleader and saxophonist D-Erania (Donella Stampley) was born in a large musical family.
The youngest of seven children, she was a child prodigy, playing the piano at age three by listening to her organist and pianist mother. To this day D-Erania composes primarily on the piano. Her mother exposed her to Gospel music, while she was exposed to other artists, like Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire and “Bootsy” Collins through her siblings.
Like many African American musicians her formative years were at church where, at age 14, she started playing organ and piano. She calls it a breeding ground for young musicians. She can still be heard at various area churches. At 17, a high school friend introduced her to jazz through the records of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jaco Pastorius and Dexter Gordon. Something about jazz spoke to her; she states she was fascinated by the vast expressive capacity and the never-ending vocabulary of it.
She names jazz greats Wes Montgomery, Kenny Garrett and Bill Evans as her primary musical influences. When she was 18 years old, after hearing Wayne Shorter and stumbling in the attic upon an old Cohn alto saxophone that used to belong to her brother, she decided to become a saxophonist. She refurbished the instrument, taught herself to play it and within a couple of years she was doing it professionally.
Her first gig was with an organization called “Up With People,” a group of international students with whom she toured the world promoting world peace through music. Since then, she has mastered soprano sax and most recently guitar, which she says is like piano, sax and percussion bundled into one. A prolific composer, she performs almost exclusively original material that she records in her home studio.
D-Erania claims that the most challenging aspect of being a woman instrumentalist in a male dominated field is the ability to juggle two careers and a family, which she does with the support of her husband and children and by practicing late at night when everyone else is asleep.
She adds, “I love it, and must say that it’s also fun impressing the guys on the scene.”
Her debut album D-Erania’s Offerings of Love came out in 2005. It is a diamond in the rough, showcasing her distinctive voice as a composer, improviser and instrumentalist, though there are uneven spots.
Her warm, emotion laden soprano soars in improvised loops of music over the earthy groove laid down by the rhythm quartet led by the pianist Derrick Bound, on, for example, the boppish “Y.J.T.,” the live recording, “Knuj,” the percussion and electronics heavy “Brazillian Dance,” and electric soul-jazz ballad, “I Love Your Smile.”
Her resonant and thick toned alto is best heard on her creatively meandering and heartfelt solos on the modal sounding “Jahari’s Home,” another piece that relies on an electronically enhanced background, and the hard bop “Song for Ari,” where she finds a perfect foil in guest musician Orbert Davis’s Miles Davis-inspired trumpet.
She also penned all but one of the tunes, a funky rendition of Miles Davis classic “Blue in Green,” which showcases her on both saxes and features an interesting percussion duet between drummer Anthony Morgan and conguero Sammy Torres.
As a composer her pieces are unique, carefully constructed and allow ample room for improvisation, primarily by her, but also by pianist Derrick Bounds, whose understated unique pianism is another revelation of the record. In addition, she allows her guests to share in the spotlight, specifically in the very original title track that opens with a few bars of her vocals, sounding like another alto saxophonist and vocalist Vi Redd, and becomes a vehicle for guitarist Fareed Haque’s lengthy, pensive and emotive acoustic solo.
The other two vocal tracks––the very Sade-esque “Morning After,” featuring her voice, and “Let’s Groove,” spotlighting Morgan’s smooth tenor––add nothing to the overall work, but thanks to the leader’s compositional skills do not detract from it either.
This freshman recording by a saxophone virtuoso, composer and arranger D-Erania, despite a few rough spots is a delightful and rewarding listening experience, and I hope is a sign of more mature things to come from this immensely talented artist who clearly deserves wider exposure.
More information, look up her website: d-erania.com.
—Hrayr Attarian
The Magic Number
Zack Brock
Zach Brock – Violin, baritone violin, voice
Matt Wigton – Bass
Frederick Kennedy – Drums, percussion
Scott Anderson – Percussion
Violinist Zach Brock brings together a superlative virtuosity with a forward looking musical ideology to create a unique sound that is part Regina Carter and part Billy Bang, and almost entirely Brock.
His dark and m aodal The Magic Number opens with him plucking his violin strings, followed by the echoing of voices repeating the title before it launches into an edgy tune that blurs the lines between improvisation and composition. This type of genre bending is the hallmark of this record, with the music covering a wide range of styles and influences. For example, the classical sounding “Brooklyn Ballad” starts as a duet between bass and violin with the cymbals and snare drums gently supporting the two instruments before Brock launches into a Gypsy-esque and deeply heartfelt song. This is in contrast to the funky “Golden Nuggets” that harks back to the 1970s and features a mellifluous and soulful bass solo.
The inclusion of wordless vocals fits well with Brock’s violin sound, as on the ballad “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” which is dark and drum-heavy, with the added contribution of percussionist Scott Anderson, and with Brock’s baritone violin (an instrument between a viola and a cello in range) singing the melody like a heartbroken lover. This is also apparent on the closer, “In the Dark,” an almost baroque piece with voices and violin almost chanting the theme; each bar maintains a hypnotic atmosphere with repetitive but never repetitious musical lines. They then give way to Brock’s guitar-like improvisation that starts off like a Bach lute sonata but melts into an almost Hawaiian groove.
There is an intense camaraderie among the members of the trio with rocking rhythm laid down by his band mates––Matt Wigton on bass and Frederick Kennedy on drums––supporting Brock’s Sugarcane Harris-like complex and heartfelt playing on “Summer Dance.” On the cinematic “Man of the Light” the very rhythmic theme is enhanced by Wigton’s circular bass echoed by Brock’s pizzicato, while on the more traditional sounding “Sno Peas” Brock plays the notes over Kennedy’s polyphonic drumming, which supports Wigton’s rapid-fire bass.
With this record Brock and his cohorts are taking both violin and improvised music into a new and exciting direction.
—Hrayr Attarian
Ring-A-Ding Romance!
Peter Oprisko
Peter Oprisko – Vocals
Frank Catalano – Tenor sax
Leandro Lopez Varandy – Piano
Keith Brady – Bass
Joe Derenbos – Drums
Peter Oprisko is one those rare vocalists who is keeping the art of the traditional pop song and the great American songbook alive. Heavily influenced by Frank Sinatra, but having his own unique musical voice, Oprisko has been called the “Rolls Royce of singers” by the legendary Ramsey Lewis and has many recordings to his credit. The most recent album was recorded a decade ago and features the highly versatile tenor saxophonist Frank Catalano. The spotlight is on Oprisko’s impeccable phrasing and delivery, but there are also tasteful and interesting, albeit not far stretching, solos by Catalano and occasionally by the talented members of the rhythm section. Like Keith Brady’s walking bass solo on “I’m Beginning to See The Light” and “Our Love is Here to Stay,” which also features the piano stylings of Leondro Lopez Varandy.
The title tune is an original by Oprisko (a title shared with a 1961 standard) and is very much in the spirit of the jazz-infused vocal tradition popularized by Sinatra and Tony Bennett among others. The latter’s “Watch What Happens” is well suited for Oprisko’s pleasing baritone, crisp as a dry martini. The record also includes songs varying from Cyndi Lauper’s “Time after Time” to Mancini’s “Moment to Moment,” and the standard “Day by Day,” which Oprisko navigates effortlessly.
Catalano, who over the past 10 years has expanded his repertoire beyond jazz without losing his improvisational edge, is heard in best form on this disc’s standards and excels in playing the melodies in his own unique style, breathing new life into classic compositions. The disc contains three bonus tracks recorded a couple of years later, on which the instrumentalists stretch out their solos.
This disc is not a groundbreaker and is not going to win any converts to this genre of music, but it is a solid, above average endeavor by a talented and versatile singer, and creates the perfect atmosphere for romantic evenings.
—Hrayr Attarian
Tao Tunes
Dave Flippo
Dave Flippo – Keyboards, vocals
Donn De Santo – Bass, vocals
Dan Hesler – Saxophones, flute
Heath Chappell – Drums
Larry Gray – Cello
Neal Alger – Guitar
Hamid Drake – Percussion
Mike Levin – Clarinets, flute
Kathleen Hughes – Violin
Pianist Dave Flippo’s Tao Tunes is built on the intriguing idea of putting to music the ancient philosophical work, Tao Te Ching. In doing so, Flippo follows a classic Chicago session of 1970, The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby, which also was inspired by and featured ancient Eastern verses (The Rubaiyat or Quartets by the Persian mystical poet Omar Khayyam) in a jazz setting. The similarity between the two recordings ends with the respective leaders vocalizing the poetry. While the older disc featured lush orchestration and had mostly a soul-jazz groove with touches of Japanese sounds, the newer effort features multifaceted compositions and improvisations from a number of Chicago’s best musicians.
The disc opens and closes with intensely spiritual tracks. “Tao,” featuring Katherine Hughes’ fluid and atmospheric violin, is like a Benedictine chant echoing in an empty chapel, while “Truth,” with Larry Gray’s cell cadenzas, is more like a solemn church sermon. Flippo, who has shown his skills as a vocalist only recently, sings the poetry of the sacred text often chanting, but sometimes, like on the bluesy “Stop,” in a more mainstream jazz fashion complete with a scatting coda. The former style fits better with overall construct of the work, as the music itself reflects their beauty and wisdom even without recitation, like on the soul-jazz “Within,” with its electric groove and Dan Hesler’s edgy and rugged tenor saxophone solo that conveys the wise inner peace of the sage the chapter is about. This is also demonstrated on the avant-garde piece “Spirit,” with Gray’s dark and ominous cello punctuated by Hesler’s tenor screeches and spoken word recitation actually creating the atmosphere of the valley where source of all life dwells.
The songs vary from the Levantine sounding “Sick,” with Neal Alger’s guitar almost sounding like an oud, a feeling enhanced by Hamid Drake’s use of Eastern percussion instruments, to the almost art-rock “Hopeless,” again featuring Alger’s guitar; a piece that could have come from a King Crimson album. If singing the Tao Te Ching sometimes feels superfluous, it is because the high quality and original music already reflect the power of the words. Much like Ashby’s record, Tao Tunes will satisfy those who like a philosophical bent to their jazz.
—Hrayr Attarian
Tribe
Enrico Rava
Enrico Rava – Trumpet
Gianluca Petrella – Trombone
Giovanni Guidi – Piano
Gabriele Evangelista – Bass
Fabrizio Sferra – Drums
Giacomo Ancilloto – Guitar
Veteran trumpeter Enrico Rava’s Tribe is less a disc of a dozen originals than it is a suite consisting of 12 movements. The different tracks are spread out as if over a day. Opening with “Amnesia,” a piece that creates the atmosphere of early morning hours. The somber yet soothing soundscape of silence and sound is characterized by a simple melodic refrain, out of which grows an improvised dialogue between Gianluca Petrella’s soft trombone growl and Ravs’s openly resonant trumpet. The record closes with “Improvisation,” a free, mellifluous group ad-libbing by the quintet; like an after-hours get together for an intelligent, relaxing exchange of ideas.
In the tradition of democratic leaders, Rava frequently cedes the spotlight to the others, as on the trio piece “Garbage Can Blues,” featuring the light yet firm notes of Giovanni Guidi’s piano that drip like coffee on a foggy morning, supported by the sympathetic duo of another newcomer, bassist Gabriele Evangelista, and seasoned drummer Fabrizio Sferra. “F Express” continues the closing theme of the preceding track “Cornettology,” creating a sweet afternoon lull with Rava and Guidi gently trading lines over Evangelista’s soft and deep bass theme, but then fading out to feature guest soloist Giacomo Ancilloto’s Bill Frisell-influenced guitar. His smooth, intellectually stimulating sound fits well within the overall dualism of the song.
Not all of the originals are new. A few, like “Planet Earth” and the title track, have been recorded on prior albums Secrets and Plot, respectively. Rava’s compositions, austere in their minimalist construct, allow him and his band ample room for improvisation and reinterpretation that fits within the unifying theme of the album. The group interplay on the former is like a chorus of voices rising in a soaring paean to the planet, with Rava’s trumpet in the lead. It is as reverent as on the older recording, but wiser and more mature. On the latter, the percussion-heavy sound of the earlier incarnation gives way to a Latin sound, with the dark hues of the horns building a danceable ritualistic, angular melody.
With this album, rich in imagery, Rava and his cohorts have created yet another shimmering work of kaleidoscopic music.
—Hrayr Attarian
nCJM
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