Inverted Garden

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.

Tuesday Morning Listen: Jason Moran, "Ten"

Jason Moran has always been a bit of aesthete, from his art-film soundtrack covers to the stylish Danish chair in which he "exclusively performs." His music, however, has rarely felt too precious. His piano attack is informed but primal; and his improvisations can feel almost violent—disembowelments as much as deconstructions.

Ten, Moran's new album (out today on Blue Note), could use a little more of this vigor. It's probably Moran's most elegant album—consummately curated, masterfully realized, and more than a little dull. "Blue Blocks" and "RFK in the Land of Apartheid," the opening tracks, start as wispy sketches, and while Moran adds some shading, he doesn't stray very far from the original compositions. "Study No. 6" and Moran's original "Pas de Deux" would be wonderfully lyrical complements on a different album, but here they add to a growing feeling of suffocation by impeccably esoteric taste. On "Gangsterism Over 10 Years," the latest in Moran's signature "Gangsterism" series, the pianist brings back a heavy groove and pounds the keyboard into a rumble of fast-paced chords that recall his best performances. His take on Bernstein's "Big Stuff" is even better. You can almost hear a Broadway star belting over the strutting melody before Moran fractures time and sends the music careering toward joyful oblivion. Such liberations prove too few. Moran's sound is rich and wild, but on much of Ten, he suppresses his better instincts.

Bonus: Check out Ten, streaming on NPR for a very limited time only.

NYMag: Village Vanguard Tales

My annotated slide-show, "A Brief and Colorful History of the Village Vanguard", is now up on nymag.com. It chronicles 13 events from the club's 75 years, from its beginnings as a hangout for lefty booze-hound poets to its present as jazz's most prestigious venue (with some Charles Mingus history/folklore and an account of Bill Evans's famous Sunday thrown in for good measure).

Fred Hersch = LeBron James?

Fred at the piano is like LeBron James on the basketball court. He’s perfection.
– Jason Moran

David Hajdu's recent New York Times Magazine profile of pianist Fred Hersch is an odd amalgam of hyperbolic praise (above), made-up trends ("A new movement in jazz has surfaced over the past few years—a wave of highly expressive music more concerned with emotion than with craft or virtuosity"), and out-of-the-blue pot-shots ("Fred's ego is enormous.") That said, there's a pretty moving story here about a really excellent musician making a name for himself, facing death, and returning triumphantly to the scene.

I've been a fan of Hersch's music for a long time—a duo gig he did several years ago with Joe Lovano at the Jazz Standard was one of the more magical shows I've been to—and I've heard first-hand stories of his kindness—he recorded a tape of solo piano for a close friend of my mother's while she was awaiting a bone-marrow transplant (they had mutual friends but had never met). I just wish Hajdu didn't feel the need to dress Hersch's journey with the trappings of story: the exaggeration of Hersch's musical importance, the thinly backed-up claims of his arrogant "artistic temperament", and the pop-psychoanalytical discussion of how Hersch's sexuality relates to his lyricism.

Brad Mehldau rides again

When Brad Mehldau released Largo in 2002, I remember thinking it was high-time the era's greatest jazz pianist ventured beyond his comfy acoustic trio. Since signing a deal with the now-defunct Warner Jazz at the tender age of 24, Mehldau had released six piano trio records with the same personnel (Larry Grenadier on bass, Jorge Rossy on drums) and one rambling and occasionally brilliant solo date, Elegaic Cycles. Largo didn't sound like anything Mehldau had done before—it was poppy, heavily produced, and played up Jon Brion's arranging chops at the expense of Mehldau's instrumental virtuosity—and it sounds like nothing Mehldau has done since.

I have friends, like the Argentine producer Fer Isella, who consider Largo Mehldau's best album. I do not. Viewed nearly eight years after its release, it seems like a necessary experiment that helped Mehldau grow as a composer and improviser, but it's a frustratingly hodge-podge album. That's why I'm anticipating Mehldau's upcoming release, Highway Rider (March 16), with guarded enthusiasm. Highway Rider reunites Mehldau and Brion in a heavily-produced orchestral affair, although this time around there are more promising signs: most notably, the presence of saxophonist Joshua Redman. Nonesuch has released an EPK to promote Highway Rider, and while it doesn't give away much of the music, the little it does, leaves me optimistic:

(via Nate Chinen, Nextbop, and Nonesuch)