Monday, January 28, 2013
To Rudresh Mahanthappa at Bruce Eaton's Hunt Real Estate Art of Jazz series at the Albright-Knox. Mr. Mahanthappa was supported by David Fiuczynski(g), Francois Moutin (b) and Dan Weiss (d), and was playing material from his Gamak project.
We'd seen Mahanthappa last time through with The Vijay Iyer Quartet, and knew to expect some sort of jazz-Indian fusion, but what we got this time was quite different from what Iyer played. Everyone my age probably went through a brief Indian music phase, but I'd be lying if I said that I am at all knowledgeable about it. Luckily the pre-show was sitarist Naryan Padmanabha , who ran some of it down. This provided a useful foundation for understanding some of what was happening structurally when the headliners took the stage. When I think of Indian music what my minds' ear hears is a sort of drone, but what Padmanabha talked about was the rhythmic element, and it was this which opened the door to what the quartet was doing. To my way of thinking this was more fusion than Indian-- Fiuczynski, playing a double-necked guitar, sometimes sounded like John McLaughlin, sometimes like Jeff Beck, and-- when he was working on the fretless neck, sometimes sounded a little like Jan Hammer. What made it all work was the way the band meshed. It was like a zippy sportscar-- when more power was called for it was right there.
Mahanthappa is no secret-- he is right in front of the cutting edge right now and if he is playing near you and you care at all about this music you will know about it. See him.
// posted by Bill @ 10:40 AM 
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