Volume 29 Issue 6 | June, July & August 2024

celebrity, Sun Ra was

celebrity, Sun Ra was only five years younger than Tatum, an obscure record producer and bandleader in Chicago when Tatum played at the Blue Note. After extended stays in Montreal and New York and permanent relocation to Philadelphia, Sun Ra occasionally returned to Chicago for triumphant performances, as evidenced by Sun Ra at the Showcase: Live in Chicago 1976-1977 (Jazz Detective DDJD-013 deepdigsmusic.com). Sun Ra was undoubtedly a genius, mixing musical and theatrical elements into a bizarre pageant that threw multi-hued lights on the African experience in America. For a period of some four decades, from the mid-1950s to Sun Ra’s death in 1993, Sun Ra and John Gilmore worked together, somehow Sun Ra’s mysterious electronic keyboard fantasias and prophetic pronouncements both contrasting and fusing with Gilmore’s hard-edged, intense tenor saxophone, his work particularly prominent here, rooting the music in urban reality. There’s also the collective squall of several alto saxophonists (among them Marshall Allen, the band’s current leader, who recently turned 100), percussionists and singers, totalling 19 in all. The sets are presented in reverse order, an early evening set from 1977 preceding a final set from 1976. The polyrhythmic Ankhnatan, first recorded in the 1950s, successfully encapsulates big band swing, funk and free jazz, while Ebah Speaks in Cosmic Tongue, a solo encore by trumpeter Akh Tal Ebah, is a manic vocal feature ranging from glossolalia to gospel to screaming, all propelled by the shouting audience. As long-term American expatriates in Europe, pianist Mal Waldron and soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy worked together often, clearly complementing one another’s incisive minimalism and dark lyricism. However, The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp (Elemental 5990446: 2LPs/2CDs elemental-music.com) has even more to recommend it than usual: the presence of visiting New Yorkers, every bit their equals, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille providing special stimulus. These are forceful performances, intense examinations of well articulated themes. Disc One is about roots, with Waldron’s What It Is and Lacy’s Longing alternating with Thelonious Monk’s Epistrophy and Monk’s Dream. It’s rock-solid music with every element sculpted in the compound legacies of bop and blues, each one focussed with watchmaker precision, with Lacy’s devotion to Monk’s music particularly apparent. Disc Two is highly exploratory. Workman’s Variation of III begins with an extended bass solo that develops a range of techniques, the instrument seemingly in dialogue with itself. Cyrille, too, creates tremendous drama, by contrasting volumes, densities and timbres. What comes through strongly here is a collective economy, even in free improvisation. Yusef Lateef was a musician in whom immediate roots and visionary possibilities were always intertwined, from blues-drenched passion to explorations of alternative rhythms and pitches, even integrating Middle Eastern strings and reeds on his recordings from 1957. His studies in world music dovetailed with his work throughout a lengthy career as performer, composer and educator. Atlantis Lullaby: The Concert in Avignon (Elemental 5990450 elemental-music.com) was recorded for broadcast in 1972. Lateef’s huge tenor saxophone sound is apparent on the modal Inside Atlantis, the soulful Yusef’s Mood and the ballad I’m Getting Sentimental Over You, while several tracks stretch toward India. Contributing much to the music’s overall quality, its blend of polish, vitality and invention, is the band, Lateef’s working quartet from 1971 to 1975. Pianist Kenny Barron contributes several compositions, including the extended, constantly shifting The Untitled. Bassist Bob Cunningham is an exceptional soloist, with Roy Brooks’ exotic Eboness a feature for his creativity with bowed harmonics. Drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath, a model of support, comes to the fore playing Indian flute on Lowland Lullaby, a duet with Cunningham. What we're listening to this month: thewholenote.com/listening Vol 29 Issue 5 9 Zombie Blizzard Measha Brueggergosman-Lee 59 TRAILBLAZERS, Sonatas by Henriëtte Bosmans, Ethel Smyth, and Dora Pejačević Molly Gebrian, viola; Danny Holt, piano 65 ...of dreams unveiled Clare Longendyke 66 Voyages Philip Chiu 71 Summertime In Leith Paul Novotny 71 Oh Mother Andrea Superstein In This Issue 57 Matters of Time Exponential Ensemble 58 SYNTHESIS: The String Quartet Sessions Ryan Truesdell 58 Ysaÿe: Six Sonatas for Solo Violin Sergey Khachatryan 58 Ysaÿe, J. S. Bach & Paganini: Works for Solo Violin Karl Stobbe 60 Vivaldi & Piazzolla: The Four Seasons Isabella d’Éloize Perron & FILMharmonic Orchestra 61 Spanish Gems Aaron Larget-Caplan 62 Poppaea Michael Hersch 63 East is East Infusion Baroque 64 Sibelius 2 & 5 Yannick Nézet-Seguin, Orchestre Métropolitain 66 Nova Pon: Symphonies of Mother and Child Turning Point Ensemble 68 Sonix and Other Tonix Jan Järvlepp 70 Ebony Chants Paolo Marchettini 70 Crescent Kamala Sankaram 70 Takács Assad Labro Takács String Quartet; Clarice Assad; Julien Labro 71 Available Light Daniel Janke 72 Magpie Sarah Jerrom 72 The Way In Mike Downes 74 Self-Titled Disaster Pony 76 The Curious Badger Marc van Vugt 76 MOnuMENT Maria Faust 78 | June, July & August 2024 thewholenote.com

IN THE SOIL ARTS FESTIVAL - SUITCASE IN POINT continued from page 34 Everyone has a place in the band during the Massive Band Parade at In the Soil Festival, led by musician Joe Lapinsky. and bolts of how it’s made – who stumbled upon it by accident, and is simply seeing it for all the magical things that it is. Even the things you didn’t plan. Helpful hint: imagine that you are still too short to ride that one particular roller coaster at the Ex. – I hope that your spouses, partners and pets still recognize you, and that your kids don’t grow TOO much between now and the finish line! And that you have a wonderful wrap party for this year’s festival. And that you don’t start planning 2025 the very next morning. – Also a special note of thanks to the volunteer who is running up and down the block putting out awnings when the rain starts falling. And to the businesses who agreed, in advance, to let their awnings be put out in the rain-contingency plan, even though they weren’t going to be open to profit from the party, thank you too. I hope you realise how important you are to the whole equation. In the Soil Alongside official festival-sanctioned volunteers, I would like to extend my very best wishes for the season to all of you “Festival Veterans.” You absolutely know who you are: you have developed a long-standing relationship with a festival. This festival might be somewhere other than where you live. The people in your life know that this relationship is non-negotiable. The festival staff recognize your face, or maybe even know you by name…. For me, that one special festival has, over the past five years, become In the Soil Arts Festival, and it’s very difficult to wrap my head (and heart) around the fact that I won’t be making the long trek to be in St. Catharines for this year’s iteration, June 13-16. In the Soil is one of those festivals that might well slip under the radar of “music focused” audiences, because it’s (quite rightly) billed as a “multi arts” festival. But their music programming is wideranging, delightfully curious and thoughtfully curated. The festival is fiercely proud of its Niagara region roots, while welcoming artists from further afield as part of a supportive creative family. What I love the most is the way it plants the seeds of year-round relationships, across artistic disciplines, between artists, the wider local creative community, audiences and physical spaces in the downtown core. Since 2019, volunteering, working as a collaborative artist, and slowly becoming a part of the festival crew, I have also gotten to know pretty much all of downtown St. Catharines well enough to find my way around in the dark. I know which variety store is open 24 hours. I know that the place that looks like a cafe might be a temporary home to a string quartet, or a singer songwriter, and which alley is secretly an art installation (intentional or otherwise.) Now, St. Catharines is a place I intentionally come back to visit, even when it’s not festival season, because the festival has taught me where to go looking for the magical things all year round, and because it feels like home. On the subject of PO BOXES I wouldn’t call myself a “WholeNote Baby”: rather, I count this magazine as one of my younger siblings. I was definitely a Kensington Market Drum baby though. When I was very little, in the early days of the Drum, there was something tremendously exciting about going to check the post office box, in the drycleaners now long gone from that spot at 576 Dundas St. West. As a city kid with door-to-door mail delivery (and a mail-carrier named Pius whom I adored), there was something very impressively official about having to go somewhere else to collect the Drum’s mail: turning the key in a little metal door to see if there was anything there. (It was also a very early, pre-digital lesson in how to set your privacy permissions: understanding that if you were going to give your newspaper away for free to everyone, you didn’t necessarily want them all to know where you lived.) All this to say, when I moved to Northern Ontario, I took a child-like delight in discovering that once again I had a PO BOX identity; even more so when, shortly after, I received a postcard from my friends Liv Cazzola and Braden Phelan.They were touring their amazing two-person band, Tragedy Ann, and had stopped through Hornepayne to visit and play a lastminute concert in the pavilion at the park. A few weeks later, they wanted to send me a note to thank everyone, and to let me know where to find a great live music venue AND the best Key Lime Pie on Manitoulin Island. Tragedy Ann - The Shield: “When the one way round, Is the long way round, and The Shield makes you surrender and submit, obstacles are where this beauty lives ...” I knew and loved Liv and Braden and their music even before they played the same stage as Lido Pimienta at the 2019 iteration of In the Soil, that first magical year that I was there. Their musicianship and songwriting aside, I have always loved and admired their commitment to getting to know and keeping in touch with the communities they play, and doing what they can to highlight and celebrate the places that sustain the local creative community all year round. So in that spirit here’s my ask of you: If you are Liv Cazzola and Braden Phelan festival-going, or music hunting this year, especially if there’s a road trip involved, and you discover that the place you go to also offers a yearround home for music, please send me a postcard! And if that place has amazing pie, all the better. You can send (postcards not pies!) to Box 673, (or General Delivery) Hornepayne, Ontario, P0M 1Z0. Happy Summer to you from me. The writer gratefully acknowledges that what connects me with the people and places in this piece, is their shared experience of FiXT POiNT’s national tour of The Tale of a Town. Thank you to Lisa Marie Diliberto, Charles Ketchabaw, and Treasa Levasseur, for their leadership and for being shining examples of what it means to add “connector and creative bridge builder” to your multi-hyphenate creative practice. Sophia Perlman grew up bouncing around the jazz, opera, theatre and community arts scene in Toronto, joined the creative exodus to Hamilton in 2014, and is now centred in Hornepayne, Ontario where she eagerly awaits the arrival of her monthly WholeNote in order to armchair-travel and inform her Internet video consumption. thewholenote.com June, July & August, 2024 | 79