Happy Christmas/holidays everybody....but especially Leonardo MoonJune Pavkovic & Dewa Budjana; my review of the guitarist's career-defining Zentuary, featuring Gary Husband, Tony Levin & Jack DeJohnette and a host of guests, today at All About Jazz. Far East organically meets near west on this stellar collection of epic pan-cultural music and top drawer performances.
In retrospect, all paths have truly led to this. Four increasingly impressive recordings for Moonjune Records have brought Dewa Budjana together with a variety of high profile, top-drawer jazz musicians from the American west and east coasts. Each successive album, from 2013's Dawai in Paradise through to 2015's Hasta Karma , have found the Indonesian guitarist raising an already high bar with challenging yet eminently accessible compositions that, once the initial tracks were recorded, Budjana subsequently expanded in post-production with contributions by additional musicians from his native country and beyond, in addition to layering his own additional guitars and soundscapes.
Still, while the expansive breadth and depth of Zentuary may have seemed somehow inevitable, nothing could have prepared even the most ardent fan for this impressive collection of twelve new Budjana compositions, delivered by an exceptional core group featuring keyboardist/drummer Gary Husband, bassist Tony Levin and drummer Jack DeJohnette, in addition to the guitarist's largest cast of guests yet. It may be too early to call any album released so recently a masterpiece, but there's little denying earmarks that should, if there's any justice, result in Zentuary being regarded as not just a career high point for a guitarist who demonstrates that great musicianship and vision can be found anywhere in the world...but a true classic in the making.
Budjana's compositions are as detailed, finely honed and richly designed as ever, but Zentuary also features some of his most open-ended work to date. The easygoing groove and singable theme to "Uncle Jack," for example, deceptively bookends an 11-minute collective blowout, where DeJohnette puts down his drum sticks and, bolstered by Husband's equally inimitable kit work, moves to piano for the flat-out freest track of the set. Ebbing and flowing with a chemistry all the more remarkable for a core group of musicians--well-known names all--who have never played together before in any permutation or combination, it's a clear demonstration of Budjana's increasing comfort in such improv-heavy environs.
Still, Budjana--a star in his homeland as a member of Gigi, the rock/pop band together now for more than a quarter century--continues to demonstrate a particular strength in conceptualizing music on a grander scale. Its basic tracks were laid down in Woodstock, NY's Dreamland Studios in January, 2016, but were completed, over the ensuing months, in studio locales from the United States and United Kingdom to Indonesia and the Czech Republic.
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