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a r t i s t : Daniele D'Agaro
t i t l e : Chicago Overtones-.Hat Hut.
d a t e : 2005
l a b e l : Hat Hut Records (hatOLOGY 613)
g e n r e : Jazz
r l s. d a t e : May/2005
t r a c k s : 09
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 69,2 MB
_______________________________________________________________________
Amphibious Music
In his autobiography "Music Is My Mistress" Duke Ellington
takes a bold time warp: "I suspect that if Shakespeare were
alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself - he'd appreciate
the combination of team spirit and informality, of academic
knowledge and humor." We find this very combination in the
music of Daniele D'Agaro, too. (The fact that his repertory
always seems to include pieces by Ellington is thus not
completely accidental!) With this new release by the "Dutch
Italian" D'Agaro, hatOLOGY presents another musician - after
Englishman Tony Coe (several recordings with Franz Koglmann) -
who has developed a style that transfers the swinging optimism
and the both sturdy and sophisticated sound universe of
"pre-bebop jazz" with lightness to the here and now, and that
not only on the jazz instrument par excellence, the tenor
saxophone, but also on the clarinet, which is rather out of
date in modern jazz. (Apropos clarinet: other hatOLOGY
releases, for instance by Jimmy Giuffre and Theo Jorgensmann,
prove that this instrument was, or is, used very creatively by
a few musicians in post-war jazz.)
The microwave is one of the fetish appliances of a generation
that has grown used to consuming convenience food. In the
realms of art, warming up prepared stuff also seems to have
become standard practice. Such creations are as a rule
palatable but hardly ever delicious. This applies to all the
different retro-trends in jazz, too. Daniele D'Agaro's albums
for hatOLOGY also include pieces which were written before he
was born or when he was still a little boy (including some by
Ellington). So does that make it "microwave music"? Not by any
means!
D'Agaro thinks that older pieces are not part of a
self-contained tradition you can reconstruct down to the
smallest detail (you simply can't put an Ellington into the
microwave!) He knows, "When you come too close to those
pieces, you are too far away from them." Critic Marcello Piras
says D'Agaro is "one of today's musicians who have inwardly
re-experienced history. In his inflections and phrases he
expresses a historical culture of jazz that is not erudition
but simply love" (Liner Notes: 'Hidden Treasure: The
unpublished Compositions of Don Byas', Nota CD 2.93, recorded
1996). As a matter of fact, D'Agaro's style of playing is
characterised by an overpowering passion, his tenor sax
oscillating between lascivious elegance and gritty gruffness,
the energetic caprioles of his clarinet invoking masters from
Barney Bigard to John Carter. Rather than draw his inspiration
from quotations or resort to mimicry he sets an osmotic
process going which guarantees that the music will sound
neither nostalgic nor stylish but authentic. D'Agaro's way of
playing is very natural, even earthy at times, since instinct
and intuition seem to be more important to him than
sophisticated concepts. Even where he employs unconventional
techniques, as on the graphically notated "Ultramarine", the
result is organic rather than abstract, appealing first to the
senses and then to the mind. Thus D'Agaro's version of the
movement "Sweet Zurzday" from "Suite Thursday", which was
co-written by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn and
commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1960, sounds
completely different from the one Franz Koglmann provided for
his highly idiosyncratic homage to Ellington, We Thought About
Duke (hatOLOGY 543), in 1994. Whereas Koglmann reassembles the
composition with a Cubist sweep, D'Agaro's rendition is more
like an Expressionist sketch.
D'Agaro also demonstrates his undogmatic openness in a
simultaneity of non-simultaneous elements and thus arrives at
an exciting mix, following for instance a turbulent collective
improvisation with a piece by the legendary folk singer
Leadbelly. When he was in his teens, not only did reading
Pasolini, Musil and Joyce provide a liberating epiphany, but
listening to free jazz as well; D'Agaro discovered the older
jazz styles later. For him a dividing line between traditional
jazz and modern jazz with all its ramifications does not
exist: "I keep the door open!" In this respect, heÆs in line
with such different musicians as Charles Mingus, Steve Lacy,
Roswell Rudd or Archie Shepp, whose oeuvres are characterised
by an ambiguity that draws attention to the new in the old and
the old in the new. D'Agaro says he's interested in moulding
separate fields into one amphibious form. Just as an amphibian
feels at ease both on land and in water, D'Agaro is, for
instance, as intrigued by Ben Webster as he is by Albert
Ayler: little wonder that he plays one of his childhood tunes,
"L'ago Freschio", a folk song from the Carnic Alps, as if it
were one of Ayler's rubato hymns.
D'Agaro's tone on "Melancholia", a rarely played composition
by Duke Ellington, can be seen to approach nearest to
Webster's exquisite artistry of breathing the notes; the only
other cover version I know of is by the trio with Swedish
pianist Bobo Stenson (War Orphans, ECM; recorded in 1997).
Ellington himself recorded the piece in 1953 for The Duke
Plays Ellington (Capitol), one of the few albums on which he
was only accompanied by bass (Wendell Marshall) and drums
(Butch Ballard). As a matter of fact, he played "Melancholia"
as well as two other pieces ("Retrospection" and "Reflections
in D") alongside Marshall only. The atmosphere, however, is
completely different from the famous duos with Jimmy Blanton.
To Eddie Lambert the former pieces are "of a quiet, reflective
nature - as if Ellington were musing in private at the piano -
and unusual in mood and texture." Stanley Dance's reaction is
as enthusiastic, if not more so: "Here is a ruminative
Ellington mood, one not often encountered, that evokes both
affection and sadness." Whereas Stenson comes very close to
this mood, D'Agaro's rendition of "Melancholia" sounds much
lighter, which is not only due to being played at a much
faster tempo. There is an explanation for this striking
difference: D'Agaro does not know the recording by Ellington,
the starting point for his version is a lead sheet which for
many years has been in the repertoire of a quartet he co-leads
with another tenor saxophonist, Tobias Delius.
The repertoire D'Agaro put together for his second hatOLOGY-CD
features two Outstanding figures of Afro-American music,
Huddie Ledbetter alias Leadbelly (1888{?}-1949) and Duke
Ellington (1899-1974), who stand for different aesthetic
positions: the singer and guitarist Leadbelly for the rural
archaism of the Afro-American folk music and blues of the
South; the pianist, composer and bandleader Ellington for the
urban sophistication of swing. Both were creative forces that
had a considerable influence on different forms of
Afro-American oral tradition. The loner Leadbelly accumulated
a rich treasure of songs. Ellington, who found his calling as
the primus inter pares among a sworn collective, collected
sounds, which he combined in an astounding tonal alchemy.
DÆAgaro has learned from both; as a cook he would probably be
a typical representative of the Italian cuisine, since it is
famous for its refined simplicity - and he would definitely
despise the microwave!
An Excursion into Leadbelly's Life
D'Agaro used the album These Are My Roots - a homage to
Leadbelly by Chicago-born tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan
from the year 1965 - as the basis for "Dick's Holler". (And
apropos roots: D'Agaro quotes Evan Parker's bon mot "My roots
are in my record-player" and has the quote followed by a
relieved laughter ...) However, the biography by Charles Wolfe
and Kip Lornell, "The Life and Legend of Leadbelly"
(HarperCollins, New York 1992), which reads like a gripping
novel, doesn't know a song with this title. Here's the answer
to the riddle: Leadbelly called it "Dicklicker's Holler". He
was first introduced to the song in the Sugarland prison camp
in Texas, where he served a sentence for murder. Wolfe and
Lornell write: "We have seen that the evidence for this was
very circumstantial and that a modern appeals court might well
have overturned the ruling." They also give an impressive
description of the prison: "Farther south than some towns in
Mexico, the Sugarland farm was muggy, oppressive, and bleak:
its very presence was designed to break the spirit of men."
Even for Leadbelly, whose body was used to hard physical work
(besides music he earned his living mainly from
cotton-picking), life in prison was sheer torture. After seven
years, in 1925, he was pardoned by Governor Pat Neff, who had
taken a fancy to Leadbelly and his musical talents, and above
all to a song dedicated to him. I suppose we would never have
heard this, had Leadbelly not again come into conflict with
the law five years later. After having wounded a white man in
the arm in a knifing, he was almost lynched by a mob, and
eventually ended up in a prison in Louisiana "that made
Sugarland look like easy time. (...) 'Intolerable', 'a swampy
hell', 'uninhabitable', and 'racist' are a handful of the more
polite descriptions that have been used to describe Angola
State Penitentiary", as Wolfe and Lornell report. In 1933 and
1934 the influential folklorist John Lomax visited him in
prison to make field recordings for the Library of Congress.
On his second visit Leadbelly came up with the "Governor O.K.
Allen" song, hoping that singing would once more set him free.
He was actually released soon after, but "he did not really
sing his way out of Angola prison by writing a song to the
governor; he was due for 'double good time' release, got it,
and recognized the value of maintaining the story about it",
to again quote Wolfe and Lorne. After Leadbelly had been
released, he offered his services to Lomax and worked as his
chauffeur and attendant. Lomax made up for it by introducing
the singer to the New York music world. Leadbelly's background
and convict past provided the press with enough material for
sensationalist articles, which sometimes stretched the truth a
bit too far (one of the headlines read SWEET SINGER OF THE
SWAMPLANDS HERE TO DO A FEW TUNES BETWEEN HOMICIDES).
Leadbelly never got his big break, though. It was the Weavers
who hit the charts with their version of his most famous song,
"Irene" (also known as "Goodnight, Irene"), one year after his
death.
After a long period abroad - D'Agaro lived in Berlin before
moving to Amsterdam where he stayed through the 80s - he
returned to his hometown Udine in the Northeast of Italy in
1996 at the age of 38. This makes him the very epitome of an
artist with both local roots and a global network. His
activities are manifold: he's the leader of the Adriatics, an
orchestra which features Italian, Austrian and Slovenian
musicians; together with church organist Mauro Costantini heÆs
been working on a repertoire which includes post-Gregorian
music, pieces from the "Sacred Concerts" by Ellington and free
improvisations. His ties with the Amsterdam scene are still
very strong, as can be heard on his CD hatOLOGY 590,
Strandjutters, recorded with bassist Ernst Glerum and drummer
Han Bennink in June 2002. (The latter told D'Agaro that at one
time he almost would have been strangled by Ben Webster.
Bennink was touring with Webster and one evening made the
mistake to play in a duo with pianist Misha Mengelberg as
well. Webster wasn't at all pleased with their neo-Dada free
performance!) For a couple of years, D'Agaro has been
regularly boarding planes destined for Chicago - thanks to
John Corbett and Art Lange, whose good offices have sprouted
collaborations between European musicians and exponents of the
Chicago scene, which for about a decade has been bursting with
new activities: just think of Peter Brotzmann's Chicago
Tentet, for instance, or the collaboration of Swiss pianist
Irene Schweizer with drummer Hamid Drake and tenor saxophonist
Fred Anderson (and their concert at the Willisau Jazz Festival
in 2004).
It was Anderson who drew DÆAgaroÆs attention to drummer Robert
Barry by giving him the CD Duets 2001 (Thrill Jockey). D'Agaro
was enthralled by Barry's natural and soulful drumming right
away and definitely wanted to have him in his band for a gig
at the Empty Bottle Festival 2003 (previous shows of his
Chicago quartet featured Tim Daisy on drums). Barry was born
in Chicago in 1932 and is currently living a bit to the North,
in Skokie. He apparently has never felt very much like seeking
his fortune somewhere else. In 1952 Barry was persuaded to go
on tour with tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons. Since he couldn't
get used to the lifestyle on the road, he soon returned to
Chicago, where he met Sun Ra in 1954. He played with the Space
Trio, accompanying a number of obscure vocal ensembles, and
was among the founding members of the Arkestra. It is this
time at the side of one of the most enigmatic, dazzling and
controversial figures of Afro-American music (and not the many
unspectacular freelance jobs that followed) that made a new
generation of rebellious musicians turn their attention to
Barry in the 90s. Of course the omnipresent tenor saxophonist
Ken Vandermark was among those who enticed Barry away from his
semi-isolation. D'Agaro raves about Barry's unbroken
enthusiasm and adds, "He is original, his playing is
authentic. He is one of the guys, he was there." The other
members of D'Agaro's quartet, trombonist Jeb Bishop and
bassist Kent Kessler, are among the heavyweights of the
Chicago scene. Kessler has been working in close collaboration
with Vandermark for many years, playing with the Steelwood
Trio, Barrage Double Trio, DKV Trio, NRG Ensemble (led by
Vandermark after Hal Russell, who was discovered late, had
passed away in 1992), or with Vandermark 5, also featuring
Bishop. And since pianist Curtis Clark, with whom D'Agaro
often collaborated in Amsterdam and who wrote "Barry K", was
also born in the Windy City, the CD's title, Chicago
Overtones, is all the more justified.
Tom Gsteiger, translated by Friederike Kulcsar
_______________________________________________________________________
01-Chicago Beer Coaster [06:58]
02-Ultramarine #13 [07:27]
03-Zweet Zurzday [06:35]
04-L'ago Freschio [06:43]
05-Long Armed Woman [05:38]
06-Dog Nose In The Kitches [04:51]
07-Dick's Holler [04:54]
08-Barry K [05:16]
09-Melancholia [03:04]
-------
51:26 min