January 12, 2007
MUSIC REVIEW
Seven Hours in a Swirl of Jazz With a French Accent
By NATE CHINEN
The NYC Winter Jazzfest, now in its third year, carries off a small thing on a large scale. A profusion of small things, actually: well over a dozen separate acts in 40-minute sets, spread out over all three stages of the Knitting Factory. In essence the event conspires to produce the sensation, not common enough in New York jazz circles, of plunging into an enveloping atmosphere. All it asks of its patrons is a dash of curiosity, a dose of patience and the will to trudge repeatedly up and down several flights of stairs.
What it asks of its artists is only slightly more complicated. At its root the Winter Jazzfest is an industry showcase, an opportunity to perform for the sort of person who might have a future booking in mind. So Wednesday night’s seven-hour program was timed to coincide with the annual conference of the International Association for Jazz Education. (A separate edition of the festival, again at the Knitting Factory, is scheduled for Jan. 20, during the conference of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters.)
The audience on Wednesday included a number of nonconference types — the festival was open to the public and a relative bargain at $25 — but an official feeling still prevailed. Because it was also planned in conjunction with the French Quarter Jazz Festival, a combined initiative of the jazz education conference, the French Embassy and an organization called CulturesFrance, the festival had a clear Francophonic streak.
Brice Rosenbloom, the festival’s producer, balanced its competing agendas deftly. Grouping all the evening’s artists under the all-purpose banner “Jazz Alternatives,” he delivered a solid banquet. If some of the program felt shopworn by New York standards, there was also an occasional whiff of something unfamiliar, imported from overseas.
The alto saxophonist Géraldine Laurent delivered the evening’s most straightforward jazz set, and one of its pleasant surprises. Backed only by a bassist and a drummer, she played economical arrangements of bebop tunes, carrying the weight of propulsion with an appealingly roomy tone. Her version of Charles Mingus’s “Fables of Faubus” employed swaying funk as well as rollicking swing.
Some of the other European artists favored more contemporary grooves. Lucien Dubuis, a Swiss multireedist, covered the extended range of his bass clarinet — from a low squawk to a piercing shriek — during a trio set devoted to smirking funk. The pianist Antoine Hervé, with François Moutin on bass and Louis Moutin on drums, focused on skittering odd-metered exercises. Another trio led by a pianist, Michel Reis, tempered its impressionism with mounting rhythmic suspense.
Groove was a priority of the New York-based groups, too. The trumpeter Maurice Brown spiked his rousing quintet set with equal intimations of hard bop and R&B, while Gutbucket aimed for a kind of brash, lightheaded punk-jazz. A group called IsWhat?! delved into swaggering hip-hop territory. So Percussion, a post-Steve Reich chamber ensemble, spent a few minutes tending to an airy beat sequence that was like the acoustic translation of something off a Matthew Herbert album.
For a regular New York clubgoer, the festival presented some amusing dislocations. It was slightly odd to see Slavic Soul Party, a Balkan brass band that plays weekly at Barbès, unleash its frenzy in a bigger room. A group led by the guitarist Joel Harrison delivered the sort of surging fusion associated with the 55 Bar. And Lionel Loueke, a guitarist and singer, led a working trio that can be heard most often at the Jazz Gallery.
Mr. Loueke, with his fluid fingerpicking and percussive vocalizing, cast the festival’s most engrossing spell. And his trio, on material like the stutter-stepping “Benny’s Tune,” conveyed a distinctive interplay. Their stirrings were all the more rewarding for providing refuge from a concurrent performance by Mina Agossi, a singer seemingly intent on channeling all the sultriness of Eartha Kitt but none of her magnetism.
At times there were more difficult decisions to make. Two of the most compelling performances happened almost simultaneously: the alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa and the guitarist Liberty Ellman, each with a working group. Where Mr. Mahanthappa went for blowtorch intensity, Mr. Ellman employed a heady polyphonic cohesion.
The final group on the program was Wonderful World, a project of the pianist Guillaume de Chassy, the bassist Daniel Yvinec and the video artist Antoine Carlier. Their set — delayed by the guest singer Mark Murphy, who briefly couldn’t be located in the bowels of the club — ended just shy of 2 a.m.
Before that, an image by Mr. Carlier flashed on a video screen above the stage. It was a commercial airliner with “Transatlantic” printed on its fuselage. It was a convenient symbol for the evening, especially as the plane slowly sank into a bed of clouds. The festival left a similarly hazy impression after so many bustling hours.
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