Oh, Linda Oh!

The Harlem in the Himalayas nights at the Rubin Museum of Art are amongst the most innovative and enjoyable events in New York. They take place at irregular intervals on Friday evenings every couple of months, which is probably good. It would be nice to have them more often, but this way the quality and freshness of the music can be guaranteed.

On the first Friday of this month I headed there to catch a rising star in the jazz world, Linda Oh, whom I had read about but whose music I had never heard. The ground floor café space—spacious yet intimate—was slowly filling up and an extra cash bar had been set up in a corner, but many of the patrons were still browsing in the museum shop that, faithful to the museum’s theme, displays a comprehensive collection of works focusing on Buddhism and other Eastern cultural topics.

As always, the concert took place in the basement concert hall, which is not set up as your usual concert hall. While the stage is rather large and elevated like in a traditional theater, the chairs are arranged so as to allow for small tables in between for the audience to place their drinks on. When the doors opened just before 7 pm, a fair proportion of the people in the bookstore and lounge moved down to hear the concert. The audience was mixed in age, gender and ethnicity, which to me is always a great plus in itself.

Linda Oh presented her trio consisting of Ambrose Akinmusire on trumpet, Tommy Crane on drums and the leader herself on the bass. She began the concert with a bass solo turning into a vamp that the two other musicians joined in. The band settled into an easy slow groove that immediately grabbed the audience with it. We would hear 1.5 hours of contemporary jazz played on purely acoustic instruments, with interesting harmonies and complex, ever-changing rhythms. Yet, this was music that people could easily relate to.

The Malaysian-born, Australian-raised composer-musician writes music that is both innovative and beautiful, often an elusive goal for contemporary musicians. Linda Oh hasn’t followed the usual path through Berklee College of Music that so many young jazz musicians now emerge from. Instead, she studied at the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts. She then moved to the US and completed a master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music, where she now teaches the bass. Her Aussie accent, albeit moderated by the stay in New York, was still audible as the sympathetic young lady introduced the music in between pieces.




Apart from being a technically and musically skilled bassist, what attracted me was her composing. Her tunes have beautiful melodies that appear deceivingly simple. The trio, with no instrument playing the chords, might appear somewhat limiting harmonically. Then again, the set chord changes played by a piano or guitar can also in themselves become a restriction for the musicians to venture outside. Consequently, many modern jazz players—from Gerry Mulligan and Ornette Coleman to Dave Holland and Joshua Redman—have chosen the more open format. In this case, the Linda Oh Trio was in many ways having the best of both worlds. While they created ample space for adventurousness, there was also structure and harmony in the music. The melodies were often played by the trumpet and the bass together or alternately, in unison or in harmonies. In addition, Linda Oh herself would frequently use double-stops on her bass to create chords. When she soloed, Akinmusire would add long notes or punctuations to back her up like a piano paper might do.

Tommy Crane whose long hair covered his facial expressions for much of the evening proved himself a creative drummer in tune with the other musicians. He used the full arsenal of his small drum kit in a sensitive, albeit at times a bit busy way, alternating between the sticks and the brushes. From my vantage point sitting at the front slightly behind him, I could observe his dexterity and I in particular admired his use of the bass drum to accentuate the meandering music. The rhythms would move between free-flowing rubatos, straight rides and taut hi-hat beats (à la Jack de Johnette), often within the confines of the same song.

Linda Oh’s pieces are tightly structured and written through, largely avoiding the traditional theme-solos-theme structure. It was a pleasure to observe the tiny cues—a slight nod or simple eye contact—that signaled the change of pace or mood or the entry of another theme to be played by the trumpet and the bass in between improvisational passages.

Ambrose Akinmusire played some of the most enjoyable and original solos of the evening. Much of the time, he played modestly, in low register, with a soft but broad tone reminiscent of a flugelhorn, only to burst into sparkling solos in a bright broad trumpet sound. His use of the horn’s possibilities by way of tone and nuances was startlingly original and outright fun.

Apart from supplying the great material for the concert and leading the trio with a solid hand, Linda Oh also proved to be a bassist to be taken seriously. She has a fluid technique and beautiful natural sound. She used the whole range of the instrument reaching for the low tones above her head, while her solos and melodies often made her bend over to push the strings on the upper reaches of the fretboard.


Much of the repertoire this evening came from Linda Oh’s first CD, Entry, which features her compositions for the trio (while Akinmusire plays the trumpet on the record, the drummer is different, Obed Calvaire), but the band did perform some new music as well. Her second CD, Initial Here, is scheduled to be released in May and features a different set up, this time with piano and saxophone, and on one sonhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifg another original performer with Asian roots, Jen Shyu. And on the new album we’ll also hear Linda on the electric bass and bassoon, in addition to her big acoustic fiddle.

But this Friday evening we were treated to a varied set of acoustic trio pieces, such as the ‘Morning Sunset’, the rhythmically enticing ‘Fourth Limb’, the quietly beautiful ‘Patterns’, the complex ‘Gunners’, and the bopish uptempo crowd-pleaser ‘201’. When the concert was over and I left the hall, the party upstairs had picked up. The lounge was now full of people and a DJ was spinning records in one corner. I decided not to linger but stepped out into the rain on the 17th Street with a satisfied feeling about the state of music in the world.

Florent Ghys @ Noguchi Museum, 13 June 2010

As the rain was nearing, the performance was moved inside from the lovely sculpture garden. It was probably better for the music anyway.The main room with Isamu Noguchi’s works is wonderful in its own right. The Noguchi Museum is one of my favourite places in New York and it was the perfect setting for this afternoon’s concert with the French composer and bassist Florent Ghys. The young man was a new acquaintance to us, but being a part of the adventurous Bang on a Can collective was enough of a recommendation for Yoko and me to take the bus-subway combination to Queens. A decent sized crowd had gathered at the museum for the event, lounging on the floor between the sculptures.

Florent Ghys stood in the corner of the spacious room alone with his bass and laptop computer. The bass itself was a stripped down version of a double bass, electrically amplified without the wooden body. Florent, who is classically trained and has played with the Paris Opera Orchestra, would today play his own music, which combines elements from contemporary music, rock, jazz and electronic. For the following 70 minutes we, together with the entire audience, would sit transfixed by the enticing sounds of Florent Ghys.

While the bass was naturally in the leading role, the composer used it in a very interesting way. In many pieces, Florent Ghys would set up an ostinato or a pattern that he would play on the bass, either bowing or picking the strings, while recording it on the laptop. He would then let the computer repeat the recorded piece while he would lay over textures or a melody on top of it. Many of the melodies he created were truly beautiful. As a highly skilled bassist, he would play them high on the strings making the big instrument sound like a cello.

In between the pieces, all of which were clearly circumscribed and never extended beyond their predefined extent, Florent would communicate with the audience in a shy and friendly manner. He would tell a few words about the pieces and express his joy at playing in this beautiful place.

Not all of the music was instantly played and replayed on location. Some of the background tracks had been recorded in advance by the composer himself. They contained mainly percussion and some bits with guitar. On several tracks he used voice samples. These were mostly in French (for which he modestly apologized to the American audience) but one was in English and another one in Japanese. Apparently, he was not sure what the Japanese text was about, so he asked whether there was anyone in the audience who could tell. A Japanese woman with short spiked hair and big white-framed sunglasses said it was about bad news, which again brought out a ‘sorry’ from the composer. (According to Yoko it was actually about local elections, which may or may not be bad news.)

One of the best pieces included an American weather report as a voice track around which Ghys had composed the music. According to Florent himself, weather reports (alongside things like hair dryers, numbers, girls and blinkers) are amongst his interests. The melody he bowed on top of the music and the weather report had a melancholy beauty that was quintessentially French.

Perhaps the most interesting moment to me was rather early on in the concert. It was a composition built around a sampled French woman’s voice. In the middle of the piece when the woman continued speaking all other music stopped and Florent followed the melody and rhythm of her speech on the bow. The effect was unique and demonstrated both the tonality of the French language and Ghys’ impeccable ear.

There was a surprising variety to the music. Some tunes were rather avant-garde exploring the harmonies of the strings. Others had a pulse that made you want to tap your foot, even if the time was not always straightforward. One of the last pieces combined both. It was, the composer explained, the first piece ever in which he had sampled a speech that had a political message (as opposed to, say, a weather report). This one was about closing down of factories and consequent lay-offs plaguing France.

What a delightful event this was. The music was both captivating and innovative. Florent Ghys is a composer and musician whose explorations I am sure to follow in the future.

Ben Allison & Medicine Wheel @ The Jazz Standard on Election Night, November 4, 2008

In the early evening there was a lot of tension in the air. Despite the polls predicting a landslide, the first results were less than assuring. The red state of Kentucky was going to McCain and when votes from only the southern precincts of Virginia were counted they were hugely tilted towards the Republicans. The pundit duo following the count closely on their Mac laptops and commenting on stage at regular intervals could not fully agree which way the race was going. The journalist Fred Kaplan was confident and upbeat, while NPR’s Brooke Gladstone was clearly more nervous about the outcome. I told Suzanne sitting across from me that, although as a non-citizen I couldn’t vote, I felt I had a huge stake in the election. She agreed: the whole world had a huge stake in this election.

We were at the Jazz Standard, my favourite club in New York. Apart from the pundits, the stage was occupied by Ben Allison & Medicine Wheel. This whole idea of jazz and politics on the election night was the brainchild of Ben and his wife Suzanne who is a director at the Asia Society. It had attracted a full house to this cellar club in the Murray Hill neighbourhood.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to mention that Ben and Suzanne have been my good friends for many years. Still, objectively, Ben Allison is one of the most innovative and successful contemporary jazz composers of recent years. This year he was rated highly both as composer and acoustic bass player in the prestigious Down Beat magazine critics’ poll. The equally esteemed Billboard magazine raved about his new album, Little Things Run the World: “Hands down, this bassist/composer's newest is the primo jazz release of 2008 so far and promises to stand tall as one of the year's best.” His compositions, often wrapped around a bass hook, achieve the rare combination of simple, yet novel melodies and harmonies, with steady beats accentuated with surprising twists. Don’t get me wrong: there’s no gimmickry, just plain good writing.

Ben is also a politically aware person. In fact, his current band, Man Size Safe, is sarcastically named after the outgoing (finally!) Vice-President Dick Cheney who was last year revealed by the Washington Post as having a man-sized safe in his office to prevent his papers from leaking and his sinister machinations from ending up in the National Archives.

Tonight, however, it was Ben’s old band, Medicine Wheel, which had been brought back together for the event after several years of inactivity. The frontline consisted of two of the best young saxophone players, Michael Blake and Ted Nash, with the guest addition of Jenny Scheinman on violin. A strong jazz artist in her own right, Jenny Scheinman had joined the band only for tonight. As usual, Frank Kimbrough on piano and Michael Sarin on drums completed the set-up. Referring to the theme of the evening, the leader hinted that the titles of the pieces they’d play had gained new and additional political meaning.

So the first tune, ‘Spy,’ originally referred to a club where Ben and Michael Blake used to play years ago, but today its title could be interpreted differently. The performance immediately lifted the mood in the club. Following the catchy lead theme played by the two sax men on tenors, Ted Nash made a splash with a crisp solo on his curved soprano sax. This old piece already showed Ben Allison’s sense of nuance and dynamism. After the feisty saxophone, the band quieted to a pianissimo string moment with a sweet combination of violin and bass joined by Kimbrough plucking the strings of the grand piano with his fingers.

‘Green Al’ had been originally written as a tribute to Al Green, but had lately gained other obvious connotations. The laidback tune started with the composer’s funky bass backed by Michael Sarin’s sensitive and subtle groove that created a tangible tension to the music. Against this backdrop, Michael Blake blew the lyrical melody with his lush tenor sax. Adding to the sensual mood was Jenny Scheinman’s smooth and sexy violin.

The music continued interrupted only by the updates by Gladstone and Kaplan. Next came the forceful ‘Riding the Nuclear Tiger’ (which until now has been pronounced ‘nookulear’). Then a cover of Herbie Nichols’ sweet ‘Love is Proximity’ on which Sheinman’s violin and Nash’ soprano provided a beautiful background to Blake’s tenor.

‘Blabbermouth’ showcased a sturdier side of Michael Sarin. The drummer demonstrated without any doubt that he is a master of a strong groove. This piece, like every other one heard tonight, also highlighted the remarkable orchestration skills of Ben Allison. With only two saxophones, violin and the rhythm section he created such harmonies that the listener would think that there was a large orchestra on stage.

At this time of the evening, the mood was reaching the ceiling and glasses were raised to cheers. Not only was the music extraordinary, the reports of the election results were becoming increasingly hopeful. After all, we wouldn’t have to wait until late night before the real celebrations could start. There would be historic change!