Take Five: Tarbaby, Jihye Lee Orchestra, Ivanna Cuesta, Linda Sikhakhane, Ada Rave
World-expanding music, for the head and the heart.
Summer Fridays — is that a thing for you? If so, I hope you’re taking full advantage. If not, take heart in some new music, including the goods I’ve gathered here.
Before we forge ahead, I’d like to share a few timely updates, not only to catch you up but also to let you know what’s coming. It’s been a busy stretch especially onstage. One week ago, I joined flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell at Solar Myth for a pre-concert talk about her Xenogenesis Suite, which premiered in 2008. This was a spirited conversation that began with a heartfelt apology. I hope to share it with you soon.
Earlier this week, I parachuted into Chicago for a concert and interview with pianist Brad Mehldau at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, this event centered on Formation: Building a Personal Canon, Part 1, Mehldau’s remarkable memoir, which arrived last year. Our conversation, following the book’s lead, was both reflective and revealing. Again, stay tuned for more.
Tomorrow evening, June 8, I’ll be at World Café Live in Philly for the world premiere of Generate Music, an ambitious suite of material commissioned by PRISM Quartet. The project, celebrating affinity between the musics of Black and Jewish Americans, features new work by klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer, klezmer trumpeter Susan Watts, jazz and classical violinist Diane Monroe, spoken-word poet Ursula Rucker, drummer Tyshawn Sorey, and others. Everyone I just named will perform, and join me in a post-concert talk. I’m looking forward to exploring the stated ideal of connection, especially at a time when so many forces conspire toward division.
Speaking of expressly Black music: Juneteenth 2024: Freedom Songs is a new playlist on Apple Music, with contributions from an array of young jazz artists. (Kamasi Washington, the leadoff hitter, looks to be the oldest in the lineup by some margin.) Apple Music is my streaming service of choice, and I’m happy to see this earnest cultural initiative — especially in the wake of last month’s disastrous iPad ad.
Based on my initial run-through, I’m especially digging new tracks by Endea Owens (“Black Matter”), Brandee Younger + Terrace Martin (“Damage”), and Theo Croker (“Dinner with Sade”). There’s also a welcome salvo from Lakecia Benjamin, who, coming off a week with The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, just dropped two singles and an exultant Tiny Desk Concert that’s worth 15 minutes of your day.
But there I go again, throwing a mess of music at you before we get to the main event. Consider that your musical amuse bouche. Now let’s get into it.
Take Five: June 7, 2024
Ivanna Cuesta, “Chaos”
Growing up in the Dominican Republic, drummer Ivanna Cuesta Gonzalez was drawn to nature, and surrounded by its bounty. “However,” she writes in the liner notes to her debut album, A Letter to the Earth, “the reality is that climate change is a problem that gradually is destroying our home and everything that we know.”
Out today on Orenda Records, A Letter to the Earth is more than a statement of principles for Gonzalez, who’s been on my radar since around the time she finished her studies at the Berklee College of Music. She was in the 2022 cohort of the Next Jazz Legacy program, which provided an apprenticeship with esperanza spalding and a “creative mentorship” with Wayne Shorter. The album features another role model, pianist Kris Davis, alongside saxophonist Ben Solomon and bassist Max Ridley. It also features a full program of Gonzalez’s astute compositions — opening with “Chaos,” which she pushes forward from the inside, even as the tempo dissolves midway.
Tarbaby, “Reconciliation”
Just over a decade ago, reviewing a Tarbaby gig with Oliver Lake at Jazz Standard, I offered an appraisal: “This is a strong postbop collective with plenty of moves at its command: advanced rhythmic calculus, sly harmonic implication, cohesive elasticity, brute force.” All of which remains true enough of Tarbaby, and emphatically true of its new album, YOU THINK THIS AMERICA, recorded live at Hunter College in 2022 and due out on Giant Steps Arts toward the end of this month (on June 28).
In the unlikely event that you weren’t aware, Tarbaby is a three-headed monster whose equal partners — pianist Orrin Evans, bassist Eric Revis, drummer Nasheet Waits — all contribute tunes and temperament. Reading press materials, I was startled to note that this album is their first with no outside guests. (I’ve covered each previous Tarbaby release in some form, so I shoulda known.) The track list strikes a healthy range of allusions, from The Stylistics to Sunny Murray, along with some originals. “Reconciliation,” with its muted convolutions, initially struck me as a likely Revis invention — but I should have recognized it as an Andrew Hill tune.
Jihye Lee Orchestra, “Surrender”
Infinite Connections, the deeply impressive new release from the Jihye Lee Orchestra, seeks inspiration in ancestry. To put it more plainly, it’s a tribute to Lee’s grandmother, who was born in Korea under Japanese colonial rule in 1935, and “lived through the most dynamic century in Korean history,” as Lee writes in her liner notes.
A bandleader of bold imagination, Jihye Lee began her musical career in South Korea as a singer-songwriter, before heading stateside for formal studies in composition. The previous releases by her orchestra, April (2017) and Daring Mind (2021), established a strong new voice in the modern big band tradition. Infinite Connections, which Lee produced with Darcy James Argue, should only advance that forward momentum. Each of its nine pieces subtly incorporates a traditional Korean rhythm, executed by drummer Jared Schonig and percussionist Keita Ogawa. “Surrender” is the opener, and a concerto of sorts for trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, who rises to the moment.
Linda Sikhakhane, “Inkehli”
Today, June 7, marks the release of uNomkhubulwane, an enchanting trio album by pianist Nduduzo Makhathini. Because that release has received due consideration elsewhere, I’d like to focus here on Iladi, by his longtime compatriot, South African saxophonist Linda Sikhakhane. Due out July 12 on Blue Note/Universal Music Africa, it’s a quartet album with Makhathini on piano, Zwelakhe-Duma Bell le Pere on bass and Kweku Sumbry on drums. Listen to the album’s softly burnished lead single — “Inkehli,” which Sikhakhane calls “an ode to matriarchy” — and you’ll likely hear echoes of both South African freedom music and Keith Jarrett’s European Quartet.
Ada Rave, “In search of a real world”
Until fairly recently, I had never heard of Ada Rave, an Argentinian saxophonist who grew up in Patagonia and started her career in Buenos Aires, though she’s lived in Europe for more than a decade. That’s on me, of course. Firmly established in the Amsterdam avant scene, she specializes in freeform exploration and sonic experimentation, up to and beyond what often gets filed under “extended technique.”
What is she doing to her tenor saxophone to create the organically distorted, phlegmy sound at the outset of a brand-new solo recital, In search of a new world? I’ve seen photos of a drumhead (or some other membrane) stretched taut over the bell of her horn, but that’s only my best guess. Listen past the timbre and you’ll hear that Rave is a player of careful tensions and a structural mind, even though she’s working within a framework of putative abandon. “She speaks with a soulful voice that brings back memories of the great tenor saxophone players: a big, deep and dark sound,” attests a fellow saxophonist, Ab Baars. “But you also hear her reach out for ancestral dances, rituals, prayers and thanksgivings of her land of birth.”
That’s it for this edition of Take Five. I trust there’s something in this lineup that speaks to you — and I welcome your feedback!
I should note that access to the comments is a benefit available to paid subscribers. If you support The Gig with a paid subscription, you’ll also get access to the full archive, and an array of new content that would otherwise lurk behind a paywall. You’ll also be helping sustain this independent enterprise — support that I truly appreciate. Anyway, think about it! And whatever the case, have an excellent weekend.
Awesome recommendations. The Jihye Lee record is aces.