Monday, September 15, 2014

Youn Sun Nah

I still haven't officially restarted this blog yet, but like last weekend I just saw a show that I have to write about:


Youn Sun Nah in action

So there I was Saturday night going through the Fall Arts Preview Section of the Washington City Paper not thinking I'd see much of interest coming over the next few months that I didn't already know about.  Then I turned to an ad for the Howard Theater and read the listing "Youn Sun Nah - Ulf Wakenius Duo, Sept. 14".

Now most people wouldn't have paused at that but I did an instant double take.  I knew the name. Youn Sun Nah is a Korean jazz vocalist well-known in Europe and her native country whose work I knew and had been listening to just a few days ago.  I had no idea she was doing a US tour, let alone stopping in DC. Once I gathered my senses I realized that the 14th was the next day, so I instantly 86'ed any other plans I had and schlepped my way to the Howard Theatre Sunday afternoon.

I thought the show might be sparsely attended since this is a singer completely unknown in the US but my aging brain overlooked a couple of facts. One,  Washington, DC is the capital of the United States and has a lot of buildings called "embassies" and  something called a State Department where a lot of folks who are from other countries or know foreign cultures work.  Two, this area has a sizable Korean population, much of it concentrated in Fairfax County where I live. Suffice it to say the theater was packed.  In fact I now count myself lucky that I was able to walk up to the box office 45 minutes before the show started and buy a ticket.

The concert itself was great.  Nah has a remarkable voice that ranges from a low growl to a roof-shaking soprano and her repertoire includes folk songs from all over the world,  rock songs, singer-songwriter tunes from the likes of Randy Newman and Jackson C. Frank and a standard or two.
Her lone accompaniment was her long time musical partner, Swedish guitarist Ulf Wakenius who played an amplified acoustic guitar with sensitivity,  speed and dexterity that matched the storms and calms of her singing.

On record Nah is impressive but live she's amazing.   She whispered a version of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" 180 degrees different from the iconic Johnny Cash treatment but just as affecting and sang "My Favorite Things" as a lilting lullaby accompanying herself on thumb piano.  At the other extreme when the music got loud, it boiled over.  Nah went from a rapid-fire scat duet with the guitar to hair-raising banshee wails on Wakenius' flamenco-flavored "Momento Magico".  The British folk song "A Sailor's Life" was a fierce blend of rocky guitar and Nah's powerful British-style plain singing which electronic enhancement turned into a chorus of voices at one point.  "Ghost Riders In The Sky" (!) was a riot of glassy slide guitar with a touch of Ennio Morricone by Wakenius while Nah's singing went from a Joan Jett-like growl on the verses to an operatic soprano on the chorus.  After all that she ended with a simple and touching rendition of a Korean folk song that was warmly appreciated by the mostly Korean audience

Youn Sun Nah is a remarkable talent, a fearless singer who can either coo softly or raise her voice to extremes of pitch and volume, yet still sound melodic and human within that range.  She is a star in Korea and Europe with good reason. It would be nice if someday she got that kind of acclaim here among us non-Korean-Americans.

Here are a couple of videos of her work. First, "My Favorite Things"...



And Metallica after a major makeover...



Monday, September 8, 2014

My All Jazz Weekend

I'm still in the process of figuring exactly how I want to revamp this blog but in the meantime I wanted to get down my impressions of all the music I saw this weekend:

I retired from my job on August 29 and although I didn't plan it that way I ended up celebrating  after a fashion by seeing live music all this weekend, something I wouldn't have dared done while I was working.

Friday I went to a concert in  the Capitol Bop DC Jazz Loft series, something that's been going on for a couple of years but which I had never attended before at their home base in DC's Northeast market/warehouse district.  The lead performer was Todd Marcus, a bass clarinetist who plays that instrument with amazing facility and skill and led a quartet that also featured a fire-breathing saxophonist in Gregory Tardy.

The eye opener for me at that show though was the opening act, pianist Dwayne Adell who was amazing. Adell plays with astonishing speed and dexterity in a style that combines stride bass, classical ornamentation and gravity coming off like some mad cross between Art Tatum and McCoy Tyner.  His hands flew along the keyboard at 100 miles an hour with improvisations that seemed incredibly complex but always had weight, drive and logic to them.  Even more impressive he chose to do this on mostly standard fare like "Stella By Starlight" and a Jobim bossa nova from Black Orpheus. The man's playing was scary.

Saturday I went to the Rosslyn Jazz Festival, an outdoor event that usually comes up with one or two acts every year that I want to see.  This year the heat was so intense I couldn't hang for the whole show but I did manage to see Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra,  a unit of New York players that plays the music of jazz bands from the 20's and 30's.  They dig deep into the repertoire unearting pieces by the likes of Tiny Parham, Fess Williams and Don Redman and play the work with modern panache and a touch of anarchy coming from banjo player Brandon Seabrook and a tuba player and violinist whose names I didn't catch.

On their most recent CD the orchestra went up the timeline a bit and played "novelty" pieces from the 30's and 40's by composers like Raymond Scott, Reginald Forsyth and Alec Wilder.  I was a little disappointed that they didn't pull out any of that work live but what they did play went down nicely.

That brings us to Sunday and a show I had been circling ever since I heard about it months ago, the
Laubrock and Rainey
Ingrid Laubrock Quintet at Bohemian Caverns.  Laubrock is a German-born player who spent a few years as part of the London scene before moving to New York.  I'd seen her twice before in groups led by Anthony Braxton and Kris Davis and was impressed both times by her mastery of all facets of the tenor saxophone.  Here she was the leader and her composing turned out to be ferocious as her playing.

The group consisted of herself on tenor sax, Tim Berne on alto sax, Ben Gerstein on trombone, Dan Peck on tuba and Tom Rainey on drums.  Laubrock's work uses a wide spectrum of sound ranging from high-pitched squeals to static low drones.  She often broke down the band into subunits of two or three with the two saxophones bubbling together or Gerstein blaring and roaring all over Rainey's endless carpet of rolling rhythms, something he created as often with his bare hands as his drum sticks.  Berne played lovely flowing lines with his usual energy,  Peck was constantly keeping the bass part going and Gerstein made hair-raising sounds, especially when he attached a reed to his trombone mouthpiece and made very un-trombone like wails,  but the most commanding figure was Laubrock herself.  She has a unqie way of playing that utilizes barks, whinnies and other wild sounds, sometimes even taking off the entire tenor mouthpiece and blowing right into the metal horn.  She particularly sounds simpatico with Rainey, who it so happens is her husband.  Their rattling and thumping sounded like a hailstorm.  Then in the middle of all that sturm und drang she laid back and played a stretch of lovely pure melody thsat sounded like the sun coming out after a downpour.

The first set was taken up completely by a suite that traveled all over the place and the second had some bits of time playing, ending up in a parade march rhythm playedjmostly straight by Rainey and the brass while the saxes flew around frantically throwing monkey wrenches into the groove.

Ingrid Laubrock is one of the most exciting composers and saxophonists around today and Tom Rainey is a criminally underrated drummer.