Listening Post /Brief reviews of select releases
R&B
Leigh Jones, “Music In My Soul” (Peak/Concord). If there’s anything that’s in as sorry a state as the economy, it’s modern R&B. The music has become so dumbed-down and all-inclusive that any singer with even the vaguest hint of soul chops is revered as a vessel of the form’s reinvigoration, a return to the glory days of ’70s R&B. Leigh Jones is a bit different than her oversinging peers. Her music, like theirs, is not exactly groundbreaking, nor even particularly original. The difference is that she gets it — it being the fact that soul music at its best has always been about subtle, sexy insinuation, not about beating the listener over the head with histrionics. So “Music In My Soul” really sounds like the music of Jones’ soul, and her sultry, full-throated singing, layered vocal harmonies and command of the instrument comes through the speakers like a warm breeze on an early fall evening. The young woman can sing, no doubt about it, and she is also is capable of at least referencing jazz as easily as she lifts from, say, Roberta Flack. All of this adds up to one of the more pleasant R&B albums of the past year. A welcome respite from the Mariahs and Christinas of the world. ★★★(Jeff Miers)
Folk/Rock
Graham Nash, “Songs for Beginners” CD and DVD-A (Rhino/Atlantic). When Graham Nash recorded his debut solo album, “Songs for Beginners,” in 1971, he was looking to drop anchor in the middle of a sea of madness. Fresh from the storied, drug-soaked CSN&Y tour of the previous year, and smack in the middle of a painful breakup with muse Joni Mitchell, Nash was looking for healing in the sound of his own voice. Though the album ended up being a star-studded affair, it didn’t — and doesn’t today — sound like one. Nash started working in Los Angeles, got sick of the vibe, and relocated to San Francisco, where the atmosphere was loose, friendly, hazy and forgiving. He brought some of the finest tunes he’d written yet in the form of “Simple Man,” “Wounded Bird,” “I Used To Be King,” “Military Madness” and “Chicago,” and tracked them in sparse, refined and crisp arrangements. The music revolves around Nash’s singing, his heartfelt, near-Utopian lyrics, and the spare but extremely effective contributions of Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, David Crosby, David Lindley and Neil Young, among others. Singer Rita Coolidge aids in the summoning of a gospel feel on several tunes, and veteran CSN&Y drummer Johnny Barbata plays gorgeously throughout. This is a record that demands to be referred to as a classic. ★★★½ (J. M.)
Classical
Schubert, Lieder, Bernarda Fink, mezzo soprano, Gerold Huber, piano (Harmonia Mundi). The cover of the notes to this disc is unbelievably touching — a shot of Schubert’s round glasses, sitting on a manuscript. But though I am a fan of Fink’s honeyed mezzo voice — almost a soprano, it sounds like — I found her interpretations of a generous 25 songs slightly less moving. She’s terrific in delicate love songs like “Hark, Hark, the Lark” or “Du Bist Die Ruh,” in which the piano, and Schubert’s genius, do most of the work. But she takes a song like “An die Musik” too rapidly and lightly, and stops short of the passion required in “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” “Die junge Nonne” and “Rastlose Liebe.” I think she is carried away by the beauty of her own voice. Which, agreed, is tremendous. But it’s not enough. ★★½ (Mary Kunz Goldman)
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Michael Nyman, 8 Lust Songs, Marie Angel, soprano, the Michael Nyman Band (MN Records). At last, a classical record with a parental advisory! Nyman has set sonnets by Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), who wrote in a style you might describe as Early Penthouse Forum. The poems’ unrelenting dirtiness gets kind of silly, like Monty Python — I kept checking to make sure it wasn’t a joke. But Nyman, who wrote the music for “The Piano,” uses his impassive, Philip Glass-like music to put them in various memorable contexts. One becomes a conversation at a masked ball, another, a whisper between guilt-ridden religious individuals, and yet another poem outlining a sex act is set against a rhythmic march. More clever than erotic, the songs are missing a certain soul, and the whole project has a gimmicky, attention-grabbing aura that makes me uncomfortable. But hey, it worked, didn’t it? Here I am writing about it. Helpfully, the liner notes include the Renaissance porn engravings that inspired the poems. Rating: X. Just kidding. ★★½ (M. K. G.)
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Prokofiev, Alexander Nevsky etc.; Semyon Kotko and Four Portraits from “The Gambler”; Suite from “The Buffoon” and “The Love for Three Oranges” etc.; “Lieutenant Kije” and “The Stone Flower” Suite; “Peter and the Wolf,” “Pushkiniana,” and Suite from “Cinderella”; “The Prodigal Son,” “Symphonic Song” etc., all performed by Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Neeme Jarvi (Chandos/Naxos). Here are seven recordings from the mid-and late-’80s that fully awakened Western ears to Sergei Prokofiev’s Soviet-era output and, at long last, drew a complete portrait of a composer who had only been known in America by some of the most beloved works of all 20th century music (“Peter and the Wolf,” the ballets “Romeo and Juliet” and “Cinderella,” the “Lt. Kije Suite,” “Alexander Nevsky.”) Many of the familiar classics are here too in Jarvi’s tremendous performances with the Scottish National Symphony, but so too will you find such relative obscurities as “Semyon Kotko,” “The Gambler,” “The Buffoon,” “The Stone Flower,” “The Prodigal Son,” etc. While there’s no question that Prokofiev’s masterworks remained what we thought they were four decades ago (“Lt. Kije,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Alexander Nevsky,” “Peter and the Wolf,” “Cinderella” and the symphonies and concertos remain where they were in the canon). Even so, these remarkable performances overturned all notions that Prokofiev’s brutalization by Stalinist demands for an end to “bourgeois music” resulted in arid and hopelessly compromised music beneath contemporary performance. “Semyon Kotko,” “The Stone Flower,” “The Buffoon,” etc. are never going to be concert hall staples, but Prokofiev was too great a composer to produce second-rate work, even under the greatest philistine pressure. Ratings: ★★★½ for all seven discs. (Jeff Simon)
Jazz
Dave Holland Sextet, “Pass It On” (Dare2/Emarcy). Dave Holland knows who the players are. After all these years (four decades) and all those great jazz musicians who have relied so much on the jazz bassist, he jolly well should. New to Holland sextets — and spectacular on this disc — is drummer Eric Harland, who has been so terrific with Charles Lloyd of late and is equally exceptional here. He was a great choice on a disc in which the title tune is Holland’s tribute to the late great drummer Ed Blackwell. Says Holland: “I had played with all the horn players before but played only infrequently with Eric and [pianist] Mulgrew [Miller] . . . I always wanted to do more playing with both of these wonderful players, so I saw this as an opportunity.” Having a foursquare mainstream pianist like Mulgrew Miller changes the sound and conception almost completely from his quintet, but Harland ups the electric charge considerably. His horn men are trombonist Robin Eubanks (his longtime quintet sideman) and trumpeter Alex “Sasha” Sipiagin and the great alto saxophonist Antonio Hart from his much-loved big band. This is where the modern jazz mainstream lives. (Available Tuesday.) ★★★½ (J. S.)
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Patricia Barber, “The Cole Porter Mix” (Blue Note). A very bad idea, even if you love both singer/pianist Patricia Barber and Cole Porter separately. Yes, it’s true that Barber is about as literate as modern song lyricists get, but in an entirely different post-Beat way than Cole Porter’s almost impossibly elegant wit. What Porter did, in fact, was so mind-boggling and singular that it’s unthinkable hubris for Barber to imply any connection at all. Not only did Porter write song lyrics so witty that they are now reprinted as poetry by the Library of America, but he wrote melodies for them so ravishing that he remains, merely as a composer among the handful of greatest ever to have lived in America. Barber’s cold seriousness comes from another place entirely. It’s a good record when saxophonist Chris Potter plays on it (four tunes), but otherwise it’s a mistake that never rises above “interesting.” ★★½ (J. S.)
