Tiny Reviews: Paul Brody’s Sadawi, Matt Bauder, & Barbara Morrison

Tiny Reviews edition!

Featuring:  Paul Brody’s Sadawi Behind All Words, Matt Bauder & Day In Pictures Nightshades, and Barbara Morrison I Love You, Yes I Do.

*****

Paul Brody’s Sadawi – Behind All Words

Paul Brody’s Sadawi have built their reputation by meshing Klezmer with a disparate number of music influences, from traditional and free jazz to electronic and trance to Middle-Eastern and Caribbean and pop… all with a curious cinematic appeal that has made it easy to embrace forward-thinking music.  On their enthralling new release Behind All Words, he puts the poetry of Rose Auslaender to rollicking tunes and heartbreaking ballads and seeks to mirror Auslaender’s own journeys from the war ghettos of Germany to New York City by meshing the old-world music of Klezmer with the NYC indie-pop of today.

And for all its inventiveness, the music exudes the simple song-like structures and an undeniable tunefulness that gives the impression of songs heard once before… a quality of a good pop song, a timelessness that instills a de facto false memory that the song has been encountered previously, creating a sonic endlessness that extends into both past and future simultaneously.

An album with an arresting, unique personality.

Your album personnel:  Paul Brody (trumpet, flugelhorn, piano, vocals, programming), Christian Dawid (clarinet, bass clarinet, alto sax, vocals), Christian Kögel (guitar, vocals), Michael Griener (drums, percussion, vocals), Martin Lillich (bass), Clueso, Jelena Kuljic and Meret Becker (vocals), and Chloe Miller, Jan Schade, Johannes Henschel, Verena Wehling, Adrian Kimstedt (strings).

Released on Yellowbird Records.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon CD | Amazon MP3

*****

Matt Bauder & Day in Pictures – Nightshades

Okay, right here is Exhibit A when it comes to showing that just because a musician chooses to follow a creative path out on the fringes of jazz, it doesn’t mean they don’t know how to express themselves deftly in ways that closer resemble the territory of Jazz center.  Saxophonist Matt Bauder, whose passport has plenty of stamps from his travels on the fringes, returns on Nightshades with a session that hits upon the interval during the late 60s, when in/out music was developing out of hard bop, and wild improvisations and melodic inventiveness meshed happily with rhythms that had plenty of bop and swing.  Music that shouts, music that swoons, music that’s an old soul even when it’s displaying a youthful exuberance and an experimental bent.

Your album personnel:  Matt Bauder (tenor sax), Nate Wooley (trumpet), Kris Davis (piano), Jason Ajemian (bass), and Tomas Fujiwara (drums).

Released on Clean Feed Records.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon CD | Amazon MP3

*****

Barbara Morrison – I Love You, Yes I Do

The voice of Barbara Morrison is all kinds of emotive, and is capable of bringing the heat with a wide range of temperatures.  But she’s at her best when she delivers it with a fireplace warmth… a heat that can singe if the listener gets too close, but at just the right distance, it’s the most comforting thing ever.  Morrison also has the kind of voice where no matter if a song is about good times, grey skies or heartbreak, the blues come through loud and clear.  On this old-school set of straight-ahead tunes, Morrison is joined by a quartet of jazz vets, and their easy-going groove is one that Morrison settles into nicely.  It provides the perfect home for Morrison to deliver that welcoming fireplace warmth, and so when she sings, “I Love You, Yes I Do,” there’s no doubt she means it.

Pretty hard not to find something to like here.

Your album personnel:  Barbara Morrison (vocals), Houston Person (tenor sax), Stuart Elster (piano), Richard Simon (bass), and Lee Spath (drums).

Released on Savant Records.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon CD | Amazon MP3

*****

Some of this material was used originally in the weekly new jazz releases column I write for eMusic (via Wondering Sound), so here’s some language protecting their rights to the reprinted material as the one to hire me to write about new jazz arrivals to their site…

“New Arrivals Jazz Picks” & “New Arrivals Jazz Picks,“ reprints courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc.
© 2014  eMusic.com, Inc.

As always, my sincere thanks to eMusic for the gig.