Inverted Garden

Guillermo Klein & Aaron Goldberg's Bienestan

Loyal readers probably don't need to be told again that one of this blog's heroes is the Argentine composer and pianist Guillermo Klein. In early May, Klein arrives back in New York for a week at the Village Vanguard with his 11-piece ensemble, Los Guachos. (They'll be recording a follow-up to 2008's Filtros during that time, as well.) I was planning to hold off on any Argentine jazz blogging until the week before the Vanguard shows, but last week I received word that a new Klein album is set to drop on June 14th.

The record, Bienestan, is a collaboration between Klein and pianist Aaron Goldberg, with crack players Miguel Zenón, Chris Cheek, Matt Penman, and Eric Harland filling out the band. Klein composed and/or arranged all the songs on Bienestan and Goldberg takes on the role of featured soloist. "We were conceiving of it almost in a Gil Evans-Miles kind of way," Goldberg writes in the press release announcing the album.

Needless to say, I'm hugely excited. Klein's contrapuntal duet with keyboardist Esteban Sehinkman—which introduced "Coplas de Regreso" on Klein's last album, Domador de Huellas—executed mind-bending rhythms with maximum tension and propulsive force. Goldberg filled in ably for Sehinkman when Klein came to the Vanguard last year. Those brief moments of piano-Fender Rhodes conversation are enough promise for me. But you might need more. Sunnyside has pre-released two tracks from Bienestan. Here they are:

Burrito:
 

Anita:

(Updated) Search & Restore's Spontaneous Construction

(Update: Tuba master Bob Stewart will be the fourth member of the Moran, Malaby, Baron quartet for this Friday's Spontaneous Construction.)

A commonly heard lament among the younger jazz crowd is that New York clubs are too expensive, too impersonal, too conservative. They’re designed for an older audience, not the kind of people who are used to paying $10 for SRO indie-rock shows. One of the reasons I loved the jazz scene in Buenos Aires is that it had a distinctly DIY vibe. Fogies in Buenos Aires listen to tango or classical (plenty of non-fogies do too); jazz there is a cutting-edge music and its entrepreneurs tend to be like the wild and crazy Cutaia brothers. One of my favorite venues, Corrientes 2014, was a music studio that occasionally hosted jazz concerts. It felt like listening to music in a friend’s living room.

Since moving back to New York in 2008, I’ve seen the city's DIY jazz scene bloom. The Douglass Street Music Collective in Gowanus is basically Corrientes 2014-New York, a studio rented by several musicians (including the powerhouse baritone saxman Josh Sinton) that doubles as a cheap, informal performance space. The Jazz Gallery has always given off the vibe of a slightly hidden, informal workshop. But the most resolutely “New York jazz” exponent of this kind of music presentation is Search & Restore’s new concert series: Spontaneous Construction. Here, S&R’s Adam Schatz has pulled off the ultimate coup: staging a cheap, midnight free-jazz series at the most commercial and least intimate of New York clubs, Blue Note.

The series is based around a proto-jazz concept: gather together four simpatico musicians who have never played together as a group and let them discover music on the bandstand. Many of the musicians who play have never met each other. It’s a hello, and a handshake, and then an hour of trying to make it work. It’s not a jam session—at jam sessions musicians play standards and try to cut one another—this is a dry run at creating a real group sound. Schatz curates these evenings around one musician and then expands the band from there. Sometimes the chosen musician will recruit the other three players on his or her own. Sometimes it’ll be left up to Schatz.

The night I went, the featured player, Sex Mob drummer Kenny Wollesen, had deferred band-creation duties to Search & Restore, and the resulting group was excellent: accompanying Wollesen were saxophonists Samir Zarif and Jon Irabagon and banjo player Brandon Seabrook. The virgin quartet played for an hour uninterrupted. Some of it didn’t mesh, and some moments—Zarif and Irabagon pulsing on their horns, Seabrook strumming static tension, and Wollesen defining the contours with his sticks—were sublime. After the set, Wollesen looked giddy and winded—like a guy who’d just finished a ten-mile run—and applauded us for sticking around through the madness. On our way out, Zarif—at the bar for a nightcap—thanked us for hanging out. That’s exactly what it was: hanging out with music. I was back in the living room of Corrientes 2014.

This Friday’s Spontaneous Construction is your chance to hang out with the stars. If it’s not the most promising lineup yet, it’s certainly the most famous—a meet-up of the percussive piano genius Jason Moran, the whirlwind tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby, the lyrical drummer Joey Baron, and a TBA bassist. (A great bassist will want to play with these three, guaranteed.) tuba master Bob Stewart!!! (If you weren't already excited about this gig, the inclusion of a tuba dynamo has to have you stoked.) I had other plans on Friday, but after writing these few grafs, I think I know where I need to be. See you there.

Note: A number of readers have asked me why my blogging has slowed to a trickle. One reason is my day job and other writing I've been doing. The other is a new blog project I've launched with two friends: Back At This Table, a semi-anonymous celebration and critique of Charlie Rose and his nonpareil nightly interview show. If I have any readers left, I hope some of you will check it out.

Guillermo Klein and the New Argentine Jazz: Radio Documentary and Interviews

My radio documentary, "Sounds of Upheaval: Guillermo Klein and the new Argentine jazz" debuts tonight on The Checkout. Listeners in the New York area can catch it on WBGO 88.3 FM. (Or streaming live everywhere!) The Checkout airs at 6:30 p.m. My segment will likely start around 6:39. (I'll post a link as soon as it's online.)

I didn't move to Buenos Aires expecting to find jazz. I'd grown up in New York, the jazz capital of the world, and going to hear "the music" in Argentina seemed roughly equivalent to catching a baseball game in Paris—a waste of time that would only make me long for home.

About a month after arriving in Buenos Aires, I went to hear Ramiro Flores's quintet at Thelonious. My expectations were low. The venue was cool. The music was astounding. When Ramiro and his band played "L'aprés-midi d'un Curupi," his riff on the legend of a well-endowed Paraguayan faun, it sounded as savvy and of the moment as anything Jason Moran was doing at the time.

L'aprés-midi d'un Curupi

The more Argentine jazz I heard, the more I became convinced it was special. Not only was this accomplished music on aesthetic grounds, but it also seemed to have a deep connection with its time and place. This music was the soundtrack to Buenos Aires in 2008. The link between American jazz and post-millennial New York had felt more strained.

I wanted to know why Argentine jazz was so vital. The quest led me to seek out many of Buenos Aires' jazz musicians, to pick their brains, to befriend them, and to begin to assemble an answer.

The New Argentine Jazz

Pipi Piazzolla talks about how the Argentine economic crisis changed jazz...

...and sticks around for a rhythm class

Juan Cruz de Urquiza examines the legacy of his group Quinteto Urbano

Richard Nant discusses his years at Berklee

Esteban Sehinkman delves into the theory behind his Real Book Argentina

The Cutaia brothers talk about the history and mystique of their club, Thelonious

Fer Isella gets into the nitty gritty of mic placement (coming soon...)

Plus, previously published interviews and profiles:

Guillermo Klein on his Argentine roots
Dino and Jose Saluzzi on family music
Ramiro Flores on self-analysis
Pipi Piazzolla on sharks and drums
The Ale Demogli Quintet kills at Thelonious

Esteban Sehinkman: The Real Book Argentina

Esteban Sehinkman is one of the great forces on the Buenos Aires scene. His Real Book Argentina has gathered compositions by 194 (and counting!) Argentine and Uruguayan musicians. His studio, Corrientes 2014, hosts underground concerts by some of the city's best musicians. He plays keyboards on Guillermo Klein's Domador de Huellas. And he leads the funktastic El Sapo Argentino trio.

Macropunto (El Sueño de Nikima)

Eric Benson: How did you get the idea for the Real Book Argentina?

Esteban Sehinkman: In the schools where I teach, the libraries only have traditional materials—basically, American and Brazilian composers. But students here are going to have more of an affinity with Argentine composers than with Cole Porter. It’s great to analyze Cole Porter tunes, you’ve gotta do that, but you also have to do the other thing.

Let me ask you, why do so many Argentine musicians feel this impulse to search for an original sound?

EB: I’m not sure.

ES: Well, there’s a myth, a false belief, that our musical roots are diffuse. So, it’s like the search for a lost ship. A lot of idealists go searching for a lost ship to see what they can find.

EB: Does the lost ship exist?

ES: The lost ship is our inability to identify ourselves stylistically. American jazz musicians know exactly what their roots are. It’s different here. No one agrees on where our roots are from. Are you going to tell me that Richard Nant’s music is really closely related to tango and traditional South American folkloric music? No. It’s much more difficult to categorize it.

EB: So, you’re looking for roots that might not exist?

ES: I think this book demystifies the idea that we don’t have roots. They’re all here! There are 150 composers. It’s all categorizable. It’s all logical. This country was formed by immigrants, by creoles, by indigenous peoples, and here, in this book, you see all of that. Tango is here. Folklore is here. Rock is here. And beneath all of the diversity of styles there’s something that unifies them. This book has a lot of material from people who are investigators as much as musicians.

EB: Investigators of?

ES: Of this, of the music. They’re searching. And every day it’s something: the discovery of a new chord, or a new polyrhythm, something outside of the normal canon. There’s a concentration of those people here.

EB: Who are they?

ES: Klein is one. Klein is a madman. He’s capricious. He’s the synthesis of an investigator. Once he starts experimenting, he spends days experimenting. I was lucky enough to visit him in Barcelona when he was tranquil, when he wasn’t doing any shows. He showed me what he was trying out on the piano. We spent hours there at the piano.

EB: He’s an obsessive?

ES: He’s super obsessive. But here there are a bunch! Richard Nant, Pipi Piazzolla. I think Pipi—even with his low profile, even though he’s a quiet guy—is the leader of the tribe. Everyone loves him. Everyone respects him. He has this extraordinary humanity and then there’s the way he plays!

But there are lot of people like that here. Richard is the same way. We all had the experience of going to Boston, going to Chicago, going to New York, of working with the best—guys who aren’t fucking around at all. That’s generating an echo.

EB: An echo of?

ES: Of what we brought from abroad. And what we could put together here if we worked together. If we’re alone, the reality drags us down. If there are more of us, we create a climate where we can survive, where we can experiment with ideas. Having a book, having a club, being able to experiment with our ideas, staging a little festival...

If you look at the great artistic movements, say, French Impressionism, well, that was a group of people. New York in the 50s and 60s, that was a group too. It wasn’t just one or two guys. They were groups of like-minded people who knew that there was something much greater than their individual points of view.

This interview has been translated from the original Spanish. It was conducted on July 11, 2008 in a café in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires.

The Real Book Argentina (free download)

In 2008, Argentine pianist Esteban Sehinkman undertook a grand project: he would create a "real book" of compositions by Argentine jazz musicians. Anyone who has ever played in a high school jazz combo is familiar with the American real book (or "fake book"), a collection of lead sheets for pretty much every standard you can think of. The first time you play "All The Things You Are" or "Body and Soul," you're probably looking at the real book.

Sehinkman's idea was that Argentine jazz students needed to learn the music of their own country—that an Argentine student who played only American tunes would forever look north and think, "if only I'd been born in the USA!", but an Argentine student who looked at his own countrymen as fundamental referents could declare proudly, "I'm an Argentine jazz musician!"

Sehinkman's real book project has gathered compositions by 194 Argentine composers, and this week, he released a CD (you can download it for free!) of performances related to the book. You'll hear Richard Nant and his Argentos band play Guillermo Klein's "Va Román," saxophonist Ramiro Flores and his quartet take on Martin Iannacone's "Andrea en la boca," and the keyboardist/sound conjurer Mono Fontana caress Román Cea's "Vals." Most readers of this blog won't be familiar with these artists, but I highly recommend checking out the downloads (it's also streaming on the website). You can read an English version of the book's introduction, translated by yours truly, off a link on the "project" page.

On Tuesday, I'm going to be publishing an interview I did with Esteban a couple years back. For now, a few of his words:

"I think this book demystifies the idea that we don’t have roots. It’s all here! There are 150 composers. It’s all categorizable; it’s all logical. This country was formed by immigrants, by creoles, by indigenous peoples, and here, in this book, you see all of that. Tango is here! Folklore is here! Rock is here! And beneath all of the diversity of styles there’s something. It's going to help us define our roots. We’re not Horacio Salgán or traditional tango or folkloric musicians. We’re playing outside of all that..."

Guillermo Klein's new album (plus an exclusive clip!)

Tomorrow, Sunnyside will release Guillermo Klein's latest album, Domador de Huellas, an inventive and powerful take on the music of the Argentine folklore legend Cuchi Leguizamón. The early reviews are stellar. The Times' Ben Ratliff lauds the way Klein transforms Cuchi's music while retaining its essence. NPR's Patrick Jarenwattananon analyzes Klein's entrancing introduction to "Coplas del Regreso" and admits that, like me, he's been listening to the album on repeat for the last week.

For the next day, you can hear the entire album streaming on NPR's website. Then you can buy your very own copy. I can't recommend it highly enough.

But, wait, there's more—much more. Last December, I traveled to Buenos Aires and conducted lengthy interviews with Guillermo, Richard Nant, Pipi Piazzolla, Fer Isella, and Esteban Sehinkman, all part of the Domador de Huellas team. (Richard plays trumpet and bombo, Pipi is the drummer, Esteban plays keyboards, and Fer is one of the producers.) This material will be part of my forthcoming radio documentary, "Sounds of Upheaval: Guillermo Klein and the new Argentine jazz." The doc will be released on next week's installment of Josh Jackson's The Checkout (Tuesday, 8/17 at 6:30 p.m., 88.3 on the FM dial), which just so happens to be the night that Guillermo, Richard, and Pipi open their run at the Village Vanguard.

On the same day that my Checkout show premieres, I'm going to be releasing a veritable encyclopedia of Argentine jazz on this very blog. Interviews with Pipi Piazzolla, Richard Nant, Juan Cruz de Urquiza, Esteban Sehinkman, Fer Isella, Lucas and Seca Cutaia, and Guillermo Klein (and possibly more) will form the backbone of the project. I'm busy putting all of this together. It's going to be a multimedia extravaganza (words and sounds and sights, oh my!) and should feel like the Criterion Collection Disc 2 (the making-of docs, interviews, outtakes, etc) to my Checkout show's Disc 1.

For now, I leave you with a recording from my afternoon with Guillermo Klein at his house in the Buenos Aires neighorhood of Nuñez. He was playing a mash-up of Cuchi Leguizamón and Duke Ellington on his upright piano, and a very unskilled radio engineer managed to capture a few minutes of it in mono:

Klein Plays Cuchi

The Argentine Invasion, Pt. 1: Esteban Sehinkman 3

Argentina's World Cup team may have lost in apocalyptic fashion last Saturday (something in the sun-drenched field and a screaming Carlos Tevez seemed to augur the End of Days), but don't expect to be rid of the Argentines any time soon if you're a reader of this blog.

Next month, Guillermo Klein, Pipi Piazzolla, Richard Nant, Juan Cruz de Urquiza, and Matías Méndez will come to New York from Buenos Aires for a week-long engagement at the Village Vanguard that will coincide with the release of Klein's latest album, Domador de Huellas: Music of "Cuchi" Leguizamón. The visit will also bring about the release of my long-gestating radio show on Klein and the Buenos Aires scene that I'm currently working on with WBGO's Josh Jackson. Around the time the show hits the airwaves (August 17), expect some in-depth interviews with the musicians to start trickling into Inverted Garden.

For now, though, I'll leave you with a teaser for Argentina month, a just released video of my friend keyboardist Esteban Sehinkman (he plays on Domador de Huellas but sadly won't be making the trip to New York) in his funked-up groove trio with Piazzolla and Méndez.