As the second collaboration between Ran Blake and Christine Correa, Out of the Shadows is one of those rare albums that walk the line between the truly feral and the truly sophisticated. Pianist Blake and vocalist Correa have created something majestic with these 14 pieces, journeying into the wildness of Monk and the mournfulness of Decca-era Billie Holliday and the audacity of, well yeah, Christine Correa.

As good as Blake’s piano playing is, it’s Correa’s remarkable vocals that I can’t keep my ears off of. Her tone is impeccable and her searching interpretation of the lyrics of each song is remarkable. She is an unquestionably honest singer, too, and that sincerity shines through the darkness like piercing headlights on a forest road.

It’s not surprising that Correa and Blake have worked together before, nor is it surprising that they’re great friends. Their relationship is present and obvious with each note and each segment. Blake knows how to play elegantly with Correa’s voice, while Correa is more than aware of the pianist’s ability to exceed the material with his own heightened perceptions of sound and depth.

All good records provide challenges and Out of the Shadows is no different.

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You can find Out of The Shadows by Ran Blake and Christine Correa well as Frank Carlberg’s Tivoli Trio at cdbaby.com by clicking on the links below.

Their 2nd Collaboration, and First in Nearly 20 years, Available March 30 on Red Piano Records

The fourteen tracks that make up “Out of the Shadows”, the second collaboration between McArthur award winning pianist/composer/educator Ran Blake and the amazing Indian/American vocalist Christine Correa (their first in nearly twenty years) have been, it seems, carefully selected for their emotional reach, melodic possibilities, noirish implications and Monkishly tantalizing underswing.

Ms. Correa, an adjunct professor of vocal music in the jazz department at Columbia University, has been widely recognized as a leading interpreter of the works of a range of modern American and European poets as set to music by some of today’s most innovative young jazz composers, such as Frank Carlberg, Sam Sadigursky, Nicholas Urie, and Steve Grover among others.

In her fearlessly insightful and probing readings of the program, from the delicate, almost literary narratives of “Little Yellow Bird”, “Hi Lili Hi Lo” to the stark, uncompromising edginess of “Mendacity” and “When Malindy Sings,” Ms. Correa evinces such an implicit honesty of phrasing and attack that one comes away from these performances trusting they’ve just heard the songs’ definitive renditions.

Mr. Blake’s art is not based solely on the well -acknowledged grandeur of his playing, or his probing and probative interpretations of standard tunes or the thrilling demands of his original compositions, but is rather an art that, as he himself expresses it, strives toward “recomposition”; a re-enactment of intention through the twin prisms of his heightened appreciation of the material’s sonic formulations, and his unabashed love for the material per se, at a depth well beyond mere deconstruction:

“the head by way of the ear to the note/
The heart by way of the breath to the line.” C. Olson

In their intertwining roles as reciprocal accompanists, Mr. Blake and Ms. Correa, inspired by years of friendship and musical affinity, have created a testament of singular beauty and unique emotional clarity and candor.

With the release of this recording their remarkable creative association will not remain “in the shadows” for much longer.

PIANIST/COMPOSER FRANK CARLBERG’S CINEMATIC “TIVOLI TRIO”  AVAILABLE MARCH 30th ON RED PIANO RECORDS

With bassist John Hebert and drummer Gerald Cleaver

With the release of Tivoli Trio, his remarkable new CD on the Red Piano Records label, pianist-composer Frank Carlberg has, with the incalculable support of his stellar accompanists, New Orleansian John Hebert on bass and the great Gerald Cleaver on drums, taken his place in the first rank of contemporary jazz masters, as both composer and performer.

The word “Tivoli” conjures up for many the mysteries and excitement, magic and otherworldliness of the carnival, the amusement park… be it the Tivoli Gardens in Mr. Carlberg’s native Helsinki, or the hurly-burly of the Mardi Gras in Mr. Hebert’s home town.

In these thirteen compositions Mr. Carlberg revisits the untrammeled precincts of innocence; reanimates the cusps of youthful anticipation of thrill and adventure; of facing our fears in order to discover the bittersweet perquisites of risk.

These songs are gifts from the edges of memory; intimations of “a world”, as the poet Robert Creeley wrote, “Underneath, or on top of this one- and that’s here, now.”

And it is into this world, where imagination trumps the so-called real, that Mr. Carlberg and his intensely simpatico collaborators, have provided us a glimpse and an access; frissions of the kaleidoscopic hurdy-gurdy that alternately delights and unnerves us.

The bass virtuoso John Hebert, whose unerring sense of mood and shading sets him apart from a generation of contra-bass colleagues, summons up the echoes of the Crescent City Boogaloo, from Marie Laveau to Eddie Blackwell, echoes that resonate in and around Mr. Carlberg’s compelling narratives.

Drummer Gerald Cleaver, magus of the motor city, has an uncanny ability to enter into, enhance and amplify, the compositional intentions of a range of band leaders from Ben Waltzer to Craig Taborn to, in this instance, Mr. Carlberg, against whose sonic architecture he provides a tantalizing underscore, exact and substantial.

In Tivoli Trio, Mr. Carlberg deciphers the mystique (and extents) of the Midway, from the romantic reveries of young love “on the stroll” past the barkers and shills, to the anxious, noiristic rigadoons of lost innocence and to the vast unknown onto which it opens, an unknown replete with all the possibilities and promises this remarkable music suggests and insinuates.

There are very few recordings being made these days (among many great records) of which in can be said they leave you wanting more… let’s hope this offering is the first of many by this extraordinary trio.

Come hear three quarters of RPR perform at the Tea Lounge on 22 March at 9 and 10:30pm. The concert will feature the compositions of Frank Carlberg and Nicholas Urie as well as the trumpet stylings of one John Carlson and many other highly stylized individuals playing music that leaves you feeling as though you have been dipped into a baptismal font comprised of equal parts hallucinogens and love. Have a coffee, tea, or alcoholic libation while tipping the band generously and reclining on one of the many plush surfaces that adorn this Park Slope institution. The band Is playing two sets starting at 9:00pm with a mystery gift giveaway sometime during the show compliments of the fine people at Red Piano Records. A gift you say? Is it a cursed monkey paw? A visit from the ghost of Miles Davis? A platinum demitasse spoon? A vigorous tickling from disgraced former congressman Eric Massa? Come to the show and find out. Don’t miss it.

Winds: Jeremy Udden, Douglas Yates, Kenny Pexton, Brian Landrus Tpts: Albert Leusink, Ben Holmes, John Carlson Bones: Alan Ferber, Max Siegal Rhythm: Frank Carlberg, Jorge Roeder, Ziv Ravitz Conducting: Nicholas Urie

CITY BAND
March 22 @ 9PM
Tea Lounge
837 Union Street
Brooklyn, NY 11215-1308
(718) 789-2762
www.tealoungeny.com

The legendary poet Robert Creeley passed away before this project was finished, so he was not able to enjoy one final fruit in his many years of labor. Creeley’s word play has previously found a home with jazz musicians like Steve Swallow, Steve Lacy, Steve Kuhn, etc., but here pianist Frank Carlberg has merged his style of progressive and modern creative music with the vocals of Christine Correa, a singer in the mold of Irene Aebi or Ingrid Sertso-Berger. With tenor saxophonist Chris Cheek also on the front line, these three create an existential landscape perfectly suited for interpreting Creeley’s craggy, downtrodden, realistic words that shred dreams, hope, disillusion, and fear into smaller components that beg to be exploded by a simple twist of fate, stereotype, or resolution of human spirit. It’s that delicate balance of skepticism and eternal forward motion that identifies what the band, and especially Correa, does with these musings on life in our dysfunctional nation.

At times the outstanding instrumental music gets lost in translation of the words, but Carlberg’s inventive mind has themes as complicated as the visionary content of Creeley’s expressionism. This involved music, with expert help from Cheek, bassist John Hebert, and drummer Michael Sarin, deserves a further, closer, revelatory listen on its own. “We Get Crazy” also emphasizes “we have fun” as a tricky 7/8 time signature perfectly emphasizes both aspects of artistry. At times spiky and spastic at once, “There…” and the post- to hard bop “Time” displays clipped phrases that reflect on the exponential usage of two words within two worlds. The title track is a frustrating tale of daily struggle in need of its own economic stimulus package. “Loop” turns on an axis, an endless cycle of quiet desperation as Cheek and Correa convene to talk about it, “Sentences” is a free blues on a man, perhaps Creeley’s self-portrait on completed thoughts, and the howling “Be at That” in 5/4 time shows how repeat lyrics can take shape in infinite ways. Dark schizophrenic contradictions about Marilyn Monroe are evoked during “Names,” sexual overtones unmistakably identify “Echo I & II,” and a pensive, hopeful anti-war statement during “If Ever There Is” closes the program.

This album of 12 tracks is meant to be heard from start to finish to embrace how the shattered and exploded myth of the American dream is manifested in contemporary life. Being the jazz modernist he is, Carlberg and the band fully understand, while the unseemly, burning vocals of Correa bring Creeley’s lines to an ultimate tipping point, oft times boiling over the rim. A musical and artistic triumph, albeit for specific tastes and followers of Creeley’s work over the years, it puts an emphatic period on his career, and a big feather in Carlberg’s cap.

Jason Crane from The Jazz Session interviewed RPR artist Nicholas Urie about his new record Excerpts From an Online Dating Service for allaboutjazz.com.

Discussed here: Large Ensembles, suitable and hilarious names for my next record, the internet, Bob Brookmeyer, setting texts, getting started and living the dream.

Listen here. Or, subscribe to The Jazz Session podcast on iTunes.

BUY!

03-07-2009 9:00 pm at Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia Street, New York City, New York 10014
Cost: $15

Red Piano Records CD-release concert for “The American Dream” featuring the Frank Carlberg Quintet.

“Carlberg does a masterful job blending the music and words, the results sounding so organic. The melodies wrap around the words with ease and the solos never seem obligatory.   His music is melodic, challenging, intelligent, and fiercely original. Many projects that attempt to blend poetry with creative music sound stilted but, over his career, Carlberg has proven that one can take these two art forms and make something quite special”.
-Richard Kamins-Hartford Courant-

“The jazz on this marvelous little CD is absolutely astounding…   I give it a MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! ”
-Dick Metcalf-Improvijazzation Nation-

Red Piano Records, a new, artist run, Brooklyn based recording label, could not have chosen a more auspicious musical event for its debut release than pianist/composer Frank Carlberg’s The American Dream.

Brilliantly conceived and stunningly executed by an ensemble (made up) of some of Mr. Carlberg’s most reliable and longstanding associates, The American Dream is a jazz suite cum political cri de couer built around 12 short poems by the late Robert Creeley. The poems have been situated by Mr. Carlberg in musical contexts that extend and enhance the linguistic economy and emotional candor that characterize much of Mr. Creeley’s greatest work. BUY.