v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Our Recent Addition- Camila

On the 23rd of this month my son and his wife welcomed Camila into their life. Here are some photos from Camila's new life:

Vallejo Nocturno 2022-Welcome Camila

Best Music of the Year 2022- Marta Sanchez

 

I've always been captivated by Sanchez' music-her compositions, her piano style, and her talented groups. Her groups evolve and her music sinuous pathways elaborate melodies and rhythms I come to associate my on past. Her most recent work continues this fruitful trend into a land that begins to incorporate more solidly the New York roots that have begun to take hold.

From New York Times:

When Marta Sánchez’s mother died unexpectedly in late 2020, the pianist was at a loss. But Sánchez knew, almost instinctively, where she could process her grief: at the piano, pen and paper in hand, sounding out new music for her quintet.

In the decade since she moved to New York from Madrid, the quintet has been Sánchez’s main creative outlet. And since the release of its strong 2015 debut, “Partenika,” it has made itself known as one of the most consistently satisfying bands in contemporary jazz — largely thanks to the well-ordered complexity and openhearted energy of Sánchez’s tunes, which blur the divide between lead melody and accompaniment, steady pulse and unruly drift.

The group’s personnel rotates often, but the format has never shifted: a pair of saxophones out front, often in high contrast with one another; a bassist; a drummer; and the tension-raising technique of Sánchez’s piano.

As a composer, she culls a lot of her inspiration from life experience, and no matter how technical her music gets, it retains an unpretentious, poignant appeal. (On “Partenika” the deftly sculpted tunes often had prosaic names, like “Patella Dislocation” — yes, inspired by a knee injury Sánchez suffered — or simply “Yayyyy.”) So it’s no surprise that the quintet’s fourth album, “SAAM (Spanish American Art Museum),” is both musically complex and emotionally direct, managing to convey the raw, implacable pain of loss.

 

From Downbeat:

A fine pianist who is a particularly inventive arranger-composer, Marta Sanchez has led a quintet since 2015, one that has recorded four albums so far. A constant has been Roman Filiú who played alto on the other quintet recordings but for this project switches to tenor. Altoist Alex LoRe is a major asset, often sounding quite relaxed and laid-back even while improvising over the most dissonant backgrounds.

The opener, “The Unconquered Vulnerable Areas,” has a soothing theme before it builds in suspense and tension. LoRe shows that he can hit high notes with ease while Filiú has a stormy and stirring tradeoff with Sanchez.

“Dear Worthiness” is a thoughtful and dark piece about self-doubt that includes a fluent alto solo and some pretty expressive playing by the leader.

“SAAM” is filled with dissonance and the assertive drums of Allan Mednard, while the harmonized horns on the ballad “The Eternal Stillness” are memorable, as is arguably the best piano playing of the set.

“Marivi” was written as a message to Sanchez’s mother, whom she was not able to visit in Spain during her last days because of COVID-19 travel restrictions. The emotional piece features singer Camila Meza and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire as guests.

Of Sanchez’s other originals, “If You Could Create It” is relatively playful yet purposeful, Filiú and bassist Rashaan Carter star on a somber “The Hard Balance,” “December 11th” has a tango feel and a sparkling piano solo, and the closer “When Dreaming Is The Only” is highlighted by the interplay of the saxophonists.

From Jazz Trail:

The pianist/composer Marta Sanchez was born in Madrid and works in New York, where she has already demonstrated bold compositional skills with contemporary jazz pieces that adhere to form and structure. The quintet has been her preferred format since 2015, but on this new outing, SAAM (Spanish American Art Museum), she recycles the lineup with new musical partners. She maintains the Cuban saxophonist Roman Filiu in the frontline - here surprisingly playing tenor only - and welcomes Alex LoRe, whose blustery alto statements are an excellent match. The group is complemented by a zestful rhythm section in which Sanchez teams up with bassist Rashaan Carter and drummer Allan Mednard. 

As the title implies, this recording mixes elements of her Spanish and American experiences, but its central piece, “Marivi” - a tribute to Sanchez’s mother who passed during lockdown - falls outside the predominant mood as she abdicates from the saxophone players to feature the guest vocalist/guitarist Camila Meza, who sings in Spanish, and the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, who sails serenely with a mix of keening and brightness.

Most of the pieces have relatively short themes, and “The Unconquered Vulnerable Areas” ushers in a stimulating rhythmic drive, having the expeditious LoRe delivering gracious ideas. After that, there's a shared soloing moment in which Sanchez and Filiu articulate a nice musical conversation. Displaying more reflective tones are the following: “Dear Worthiness”, a ballad with a three time feel in direct relation to an onerous sense of insecurity; “The Eternal Stillness”, a pool of gorgeous effulgence; and “The Hard Balance”, a delicate chamber-like number with horn polyphony and polyrhythmic feel that spotlights the group’s atmospheric strengths. The latter two pieces feature bass improvisations.

Best Music of the Year 2022- Beth Orton

 

A slight revelation for me. Like a jazz album it evolves as the theme is repeated and refined as it progresses. The music changes like the weather but it is the same day. An incredibly capturing set of songs and Orton's voice with her grainy filter makes it just right. Lovely.

From Pop Matters:

Yet Weather Alive is a fascinating creature, one that belies easy categorization. Working with jazz drummer Tom Skinner and sax player Alabaster dePlume, Orton self-produced a record of deep atmosphere and warm tones; it sounds like morning fog receding from a beach aglow in the morning dawn. Its jazz players only give jazzy overtones to songs that don’t quite exist in the realm of folk or pop or rock. The eight tracks on Weather Alive sound like Beth Orton songs, which is a rare treat.

“I was so embarrassed to play these songs to people at first because I know how they are all just kind of strung together,” notes Orton during her interview with The Line of Best Fit. “I know that some of my processes in the editing were really rudimentary. I mean, it was mostly done in my shed.” While the album was born of several stops and false starts, it’s clear that all of Weather Alive‘s songs come from the same relaxed place, all rolling out at their own casual pace (which is why the record’s shortest number clocks in at just under 4:30).

Opening with the atmospheric title track, Orton’s voice is the first thing that jumps out of the mix. Unafraid to represent herself plainly, her ever-distinct pipes are lightly weathered now, a coarseness baked into her inflection with some tones even halting and stuttering. While her last album (the still-underrated electro experiment that was 2016’s Kidsticks) was awash in bedroom electro styles and sounds, her voice was often run through filters and echoes, which makes her so bluntly showing the state of her vocals on Weather Alive that much more pointed. Orton is not hiding behind studio tricks this time out: she’s emotionally naked at every turn. “It was just excruciating to listen to in front of other people,” she says during that Line of Best Fit interview. “Every bit of it was personal and exposing.”

From The Line of Best Fit:

On her eighth and newest album, Weather Alive, Orton sounds freer and more comfortable than she has at any other point in her career. Inspired by a soot-filled, second-hand piano - and aided by the newfound freetime Orton had while her children were in school - it is a warm, immersive LP whose wisdom unfolds gradually over repeat listens. It is her first self-produced album and, through no coincidence, happens to be far and away her best.

The title track is the album’s most definitive statement - a transcendent, percussive, 7+ minute epic grounded by Orton’s cracked, aching voice. Backed up by a full band, Orton’s musings on the everyday beauty of nature take on otherworldly significance. Towards the song’s end, Orton repeats the words “coming alive” almost half-a-dozen times, her voice gradually becoming buried under the song’s sublime arrangements; almost mirroring the feeling of going outside on a wet and windy day and feeling overcome by the elements.

Weather Alive isn’t just Orton’s best album, it’s also one that could have only come at this juncture in her life - as she nears the 26th anniversary of her breakthrough Trailer Park. There’s so much wisdom to be had listening to Orton’s eighth LP. On it, she alternates between mystifying poetry that evokes the bewilderment of the late David Berman’s lyricism (“Thought about living with nothing to lose / With windows to see them before they see you”) and straightforward confessionals and dialogue (“Why I feel like shit for what I didn’t do wrong?”). On “Haunted Satellite”, Orton pens the album’s most incisive line, in the form of a rich, evocative metaphor that speaks to the sense of displacement that swirls throughout Weather Alive (“I have lived as a satellite / I’ve saddled up, I’ve settled up, I don’t sit right”).

Never before have we been gifted with such multidimensional songwriting from Orton. Her parents - who both died when she was a teen - are given voice on the hauntingly desolate “Lonely”. After listing all the reasons she’s supposedly unloveable (“I’m a whore / I’m too exposed”), Orton repeats the titular word a devastating fifteen times - conjuring up all the horror and isolation of grief in the process. The following “Arms Around a Memory”, by contrast, is perhaps the loveliest song Orton has ever recorded. ”Didn’t we make a beautiful life / In your eighth floor walk-up that night”, she declares. Like PJ Harvey’s “You Said Something”, it captures the magic of love’s most intense moments - how it puts the rest of the world on pause and makes even the least remarkable of settings glow. Yet, rather than succumb wholly to nostalgia, Orton reflects with the benefit of hindsight - dissecting both the faulty nature of memories, as well as their ability to immortalise the purest moments of our lives. Here, the song gains real bite, as she snaps back at the song’s other protagonist: “And I've come to questioning my credibility / Like you’re the reliable witness to what I feel”, she snarls.

 

From Uncut:

Stormy psychic and physical weather buffeted Beth Orton as she made this record. When long-standing health issues were correctly diagnosed and medicated in 2014, the ground perversely shifted beneath her feet. Meanwhile, 2016 saw the release of Kidsticks, the most electronic album of a career which has eased between her pioneering ’90s folktronica’s polar extremes. But as this personal flux continued, the organic sound of a battered, stand-up piano in her garden shed became her anchor. Playing this unfamiliar instrument recalled picking up a guitar to write songs in the ’90s, returning Orton to first principles.

Relying on simple, modal patterns, she then began to sculpt homemade soundscapes using her midi setup. In the process, vivid memories rose up, ranging from old affairs in New York to the loss of her friend Andy Weatherall, becoming the nascent album’s flickering heart. “I kept reliving these fragments of past lives,” Orton recalls, “and putting them in music was like putting them in amber. A moment would be there like light on a wall, it didn’t hang around long, and I’d write around that.” These sensual visions were then rigorously honed into songs, as Orton tested if “something so fallible and amorphous” could hold compositional weight.

Eventually, Orton invited The Smile and Sons Of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner to add to her homemade palette. He was joined by other often jazz-minded collaborators, such as the ecstatic poet-saxophonist Alabaster dePlume, suiting Orton’s fascination with Alice Coltrane’s spiritual jazz, alongside ambient vistas from Talk Talk to Springsteen’s stark Nebraska. Thrown further back on her own resources by lockdown, Orton self-produced Weather Alive, a project which began with her identity in crisis ending as her most personal statement.

Best Music of the Year 2022- Abdullah Ibrahim

 

 

Been many years that I've listened to this master of the piano and jazz. His group work in the 80's helped transform jazz from a large ensemble into a lightweight group that had similar coloration and soul. His solo piano works from the 70's was a strong alternative to Jarrett's and whose African lyricism gave it a distinctive flavor. The solo work that Ibrahim is generating today is more compact and classical. And that is the wonderful work he is doing today.

From All About Jazz:

Solotude is neatly titled, with its aching sense of seclusion and repose. The record was made at Hirzinger Hall in east Germany, during the 2020 lockdown, with no audience beyond a technical crew. If anything, this format works better as each piece is left framed by brief silence rather than applause. The only background noise is actually supplied by Ibrahim with his occasional grunts and gasps of concentrated pleasure. Just possibly they could be groans of annoyance at a fluffed note, inaudible to any but himself. But more probably Ibrahim was captivated in the moment at his piano, just as the listeners are left enrapt.

The opening cut, "Mindif," is one of several which he revisits from a stellar career. Shorn of its previous orchestration, the track's blend of mystic light and golden silence sets a tone; also the album's most spectral cut, it echoes some of Espen Eriksen's noirish turns. "Trieste My Love," reworked from Dream Time (Enja Records, 2019) conveys a sweet sense of longing, while the playful rolls and jabs of "Nisa" are distinct from the brassy rendering on The Balance (Gearbox Records, 2019).

More geeky fun can be had with hearing "District 6" retain its funky swagger from the vibrant African Magic album (Enja Records, 2002). Elsewhere, a stark version of "Sotho Blue" supremely mimics the original's haunting sax and flute parts. Trying to unravel Ibrahim's sonic secrets is probably futile, though his fingertip sensitivity and use of sustain are evident on the romantic contemplations of "Blue Bolero" and "Once Upon A Midnight." Further, several short fragments, such as "Peace," "Blues For A Hip King" and "Tokai," echo a philosophical quality found in Franz Liszt's more intimate works.

From Jazz Times:

When it comes to stately beauty, it’s damn near impossible to surpass an Abdullah Ibrahim solo piano set. The 87-year-old NEA Jazz Master and South African cultural icon has continually returned to this format over the decades, exploring and deepening a lifelong romance with rumination while epitomizing grace and wisdom. Oftentimes, as with the performance captured for 2019’s Dream Time, an audience is in attendance at Ibrahim’s recitals, giving him the opportunity to commune with company. But for Solotude, as the title implies, the seats were empty.

Forgoing a standing birthday concert out of necessity due to COVID-19 lockdown measures in the fall of 2020, Ibrahim still managed to make the most of the moment by substituting a recording session in its place. The music he conjured for the occasion, as with several other late-career solo ventures, has a certain gravitas yet remains remarkably weightless. In short, it’s pensive perfection drawing on a lifetime of cultivation and pruning.

Ibrahim’s signature touch, appreciation for space and abiding love for encapsulatedcommunication(s) are all on display as he explores one memorable melody after another. There’s the haunting “Mindiff,” lingering in midair; a quick glance at “Blues for a Hip King,” offering gospel-like comforts; the stirring “Tokai,” delivered as a rickety and righteous fragment for all times; and a gorgeously subdued trip down the aisle for “The Wedding.” More than a dozen other compositions appear—some projected as passing thoughts lasting less than a minute, others fairly compact but fully realized—and each adds substance without any accompanying heft. Using spare lines that demonstrate the art of restraint while simultaneously giving of himself completely, Abdullah Ibrahim proves to be both the model of good taste and a freehearted storyteller.

 

My Grandfather's Burial

These are two photos from my grandfather's burial in Lima (Callao) back in the mid-60's. The pallbearers include all my uncles and my father. I was in the US during this time and have a very hazy memory that he had died. Seeing these photos I get a sense that he had lots of people ho knew and appreciated him as the founder of the first Methodist churches in Peru. Let's see hat else can we tell from these photos . . .

Gracias Messi

 

 

From Clarin:

Gracias Messi. Gracias por ostentar familia antes que lujo, gracias por enseñarnos que tipos con fama y guita también pueden tener aspiraciones normales, familias que no sean un quilombo, vidas que no transcurran en las redes, esposas con alegrías, miradas y sueños, pero que también son mujeres con brillo propio cuando juegan sus fichas, y pochoclo sobre la falda cuando les toca ser madres.

Gracias, Messi, porque necesitamos referentes que puedan ser ejemplos, y no excepciones, porque necesitamos la normalidad de las tardes en familia, del trabajo con disciplina, de la pasión por lo que se hace, y si algo tuvieron tus goles fue el valor de que millones de miradas se posaran sobre alguien que seguramente tiene despelotes, angustias, incertidumbres, metas, rollos, complejos, y todo eso que nos convierte en humanos.

Gracias, porque no das envidia sino que marcás un camino; gracias porque tu humildad tapa con creces esa vida tan especial que te tocó en suerte y que cada día tenés que manejar para que el entorno no te degluta con sus halagos y te robe la esencia del origen.

Gracias por no ser un renegado, ni un desclasado, ni un imbécil al que se le sube el ídolo a la cabeza. Gracias porque puedo hablar de vos con mis hijos sin tener que ocultar los aspectos tortuosos de un alma sin destino.

Y finalmente gracias por ser un crack en la vida antes que en el fútbol y porque seguramente si repartieras pizza, o fueras ferretero, o vendieras camisetas en el Once, también serías grande como Messi, porque al fin y al cabo sos Messi. Ah… me olvidaba, gracias también a tus viejos porque algo hicieron, a Antonella que siempre está, y a los pibes, que algún día también entenderán lo difícil que fue ser Messi.

Best Music of the Year 2022- Ambarchi, Berthlin, Werliin

 

An impressive groove filled with flavor and agility. And this wasn't the only album for Ambarchi this year this prolific and creative musician makes a lot of music and I'm surprised it took me this long to realize it.

From Pitchfork:

On Ghosted, the groove reigns supreme. Recorded live at Stockholm’s Studio Rymden in late 2018, the album showcases a carefully stripped-down sound. Berthling plays acoustic double bass on all but the second track, where he opts for electric. Werliin favors a palette of shakers, toms, and glancing snares, sketching out the contours of the beat by tracing its crags and cavities. And while the timbre of Ambarchi’s guitar couldn’t be mistaken for any other instrument, he typically avoids strummed chords or picked melodic lines in favor of a wash of tone run through a Leslie cabinet. The three players fill this wide-open sound with ephemeral shapes that hint at a possible meaning behind the album’s title: The music swims with darting shapes, flickering traces of energy, that feel almost supernatural in origin.

Ghosted consists of just four tracks: three long, extended vamps and one atmospheric coda. The trio is joined on the first, “I,” by Christer Bothén, a Swedish multi-instrumentalist who collaborated with Don Cherry in the 1970s. Here, as on recordings like Cherry’s 1974 album Eternal Now, he plays donso n’goni, a lute-like West African instrument that pairs with Berthling’s bright plucking to create a sound that’s warm and luminous. It’s the most joyful and easygoing of the album’s four tracks, with a shuffling, circular groove and a loping two-note bassline that evoke the feel of a desert road arrowing endlessly toward the horizon. In tone and mood alike, it’s faintly reminiscent of Joshua Abrams and his group Natural Information Society, where the guimbri—a North African descendent of the n’goni—plays a similarly hypnotic role.

From Soundohm:

It was early in 2019 — no, November 2018! — that Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin met at Studio Rymden, in a quiet suburban district of Stockholm, to make the music that became Ghosted.

Rooting in the rich tonality and repeating figures of Johan’s acoustic (and sometimes electric) bass, the four tracks that make up Ghosted unspool themselves with the terse flow of krautrock jams — percussive riffs and repetitions that build continuously, with subtle shifts rippling across the stereo spectrum, captured in minute detail. Oren’s guitar sounds organ-like, with notes of fire and glass wafting over the percolation and permutation of Johan and Andreas’ rhythms, patiently evolving variations within a minimal framework.

On the first single, "II", Berthling’s chiming bass harmonics form the pattern and the pocket, Werliin’s kitwork explores the nuances within the groove, locating a thousand new accents within the time, and Ambarchi floats dreamily about, with keening, chittering signals that register both in and out of lead-instrument designation – both ambient and psychedelic. Transformative jams!

 

From The Quietus:

I’m walking with my headphones on. It’s not the best context to hear this music but needs must. What starts with a twinkly loop rapidly escalates. Andreas Werliin’s drums swirl while Johan Berthling’s bass hovers across the beat. Oren Ambarchi’s guitar shimmers ominously in the background, sounding like a fried Hammond organ rather than six strings. My stride quickens even though the bpm of ‘II’, the second track on the trio’s new album Ghosted, doesn’t. The music reaches towards an ever deferred crescendo. As my pace accelerates, I lose awareness of my surroundings. Ambarchi’s guitar suddenly snaps into focus. It rises into a squeal. The intensity ascends. And then… Nothing.

I’m back to reality with almost violent effect. The track wasn’t meant to stop. Something’s gone wrong and my ancient mp3 player has reset itself. An accident that brings into clarity that this album needs to play uninterrupted to really do its magic. The trio explore the relationship between repetition and difference that’s long been a fascination in exploratory music, creating something that, disorientatingly, sounds equal parts quantized and free-flowing.

The outline of a motorik pulse drives the first two tracks, but Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin unearth colourful fluctuations from rigid rhythms. As if they’re teasing at just how much they can shuffle within a precariously balanced structure before knocking it over. There’s hints of TNT-era Tortoise throughout as repetitive phrases dance through jazzy variation. But the trio feel more interested in embracing rather than relieving tension. The tracks come across like sonic Rubik’s cubes, exploring the possible permutations of a confined structure.