stringed llanera harp, and Grégoire
Maret, equally adept on harmonica
(a.k.a. mouth harp), meet up and make
beautiful music together. It’s not a
pairing that comes to mind readily;
both instruments are rare enough in
the jazz world to be perennially quar-
antined to that nebulous “Other” cat-
egory in year-end best-of polls. When
they show up in jazz at all, it’s usually
to serve very different purposes, the
harmonica to lend a bluesy touch and
the harp, more often than not, taking
its place within an orchestra to provide
the occasional dab of extra lushness.
Both the Colombian Castaneda and
the Swiss Maret have loftier goals than
that. Each is ceaselessly adventurous,
eager to find a new avenue of expres-
sion, stretching definitions and poking
at boundaries. That they would think
to come together like this isn’t all that
surprising. Nor is it a great reveal that
they stay far from stereotyped usage of
their tools throughout this thoroughly
enthralling duo set.
Maret and Castaneda get right to it
here, opening the collaboration with a
composition by the former, “Blueser-
inho,” that takes both instruments far
from their comfort zones. As its title
suggests, they start with a bed of blues
but they don’t stay there long; just past
the halfway mark, Castaneda’s South
American roots begin to dominate the
flavor of the melody, taking the track to
a place that hadn’t even been suggested
before. While the pair contribute a few
self-penned tunes, some of the most
hypnotic duets, placed at the end, are
written by others: Charlie Haden’s “Our
Spanish Love Song” is feather-light and
dreamy, while right before it, the two
harpists are joined by banjo maestro
Béla Fleck on an interpretation of Jacob
do Bandolim’s “Santa Morena,” which
flits from dark/foreboding to breezy/
welcoming without breaking a sweat.
JEFF TAMARKIN
AVERY SHARPE
400: An African American
Musical Portrait
JKNM
This four-movement suite, which
both invokes and honors the 400-year
MARK TURNER/
GARY FOSTER
Mark Turner Meets Gary
Foster
CapriThe liner notes to this two-CD set do
not explain how the meeting came
about or why it took 16 years to release
its results. Perhaps only critics fret
over such uncertainties. What matters
is that on Feb. 8, 2003, Mark Turn-
er (an adventurous New York tenor
saxophonist, not yet as prominent as
he would become) and Gary Foster
(almost 30 years older, a fixture on the
Los Angeles studio scene, already a
cult figure among alto saxophonists)
performed a concert in an auditorium
in Claremont, Calif. It was the only
time they ever played together.
They were musicians with dissimi-
lar styles from different generations,
but they met on common ground: the
arcane melodic/harmonic environ-history of African-American people
from the arrival of the first slave ships
in 1619 to the present, resonates with
tonal, improvisational, and lyric rich-
ness, befitting both the subject matter
and the ongoing legacy of bassist
Sharpe, one of our premier musicians
and jazz educators.
Like Ellington, whose Black, Brown,
and Beige is an obvious point of refer-
ence, Sharpe melds the African-Amer-
ican and Euro-American musical tra-
ditions, incorporating both “classical”
and “vernacular” elements into his
musical storytelling. “Arrival” sets the
tone: On the surface it sounds almost
pastoral, as the Extended Family
Choir delivers a Negro spiritual-tinged
chorale (sung in Swahili), with only an
occasional tough-edged imprecation
from Sharpe and a desolate, forlorn
tinge to Don Braden’s flute work
hinting at the Middle Passage horrors
the protagonists have just endured,
presaging the torments to come.
Several sections make specific musi-
cal references to the eras they represent.
“Fiddler” (in “Century Two: 1719-
1819”) is especially notable for empha-
sizing the too-often under-recognized
Celtic and Anglo-European musical
forms that African-American musi-
cians adapted and mastered early on.
In “Blues and World War II,” guitarist
Kevin Eubanks grafts T-Bone Walker
onto Wes Montgomery to summon the
spirit of mid-century jazz/blues.
The album’s penultimate track,
“Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me
Around,” bristles with militance. Sofia
Rivera’s spoken-word narration calls
out liars and racist dissemblers both
historical and contemporary while
honoring modern-day race heroes and
warriors. In a succinct piano solo, Zac-
cai Curtis seems to hit a barrier, back
up, make another run, and only after
repeated efforts break through into
a freer new space. The final section,
“500 – Barack Obama and the Next
100 Years?”, returns to the feel of what
might be called solemn celebration
that has characterized most of this
suite: hope with a dark undercurrent,
as we realize that once again it could
all be taken away—both girding for
and seeking to temper (if possible) the
fire next time. DAVID WHITEIS