AAJ Review: Django Bates, Tenacity

[jkelman]

My review of Django Bates' Tenacity, today at All About Jazz.

It's been a long time since that late May, 2013 week in Luleå, Sweden, where pianist Django Bates and his Belovèd Trio first collaborated with the renowned Norrbotten Big Band. Fully documented in the All About Jazz article [url=https://www.allaboutjazz.com/django-bates- from-zero-to-sixty-in-five-days-django-bates]Django Bates: From Zero to Sixty in Five Days(/url], Bates, bassist Petter Eldh and drummer Peter Bruun, along with other non-Norrbotteners, including guitarist Markus Pesonen, tubaist Daniel Herskedal and trombonist/vocalist Ashley Slater, made the lengthy trek to this small coastal town, located just 100 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle (and already experiencing 22 hours of daylight), to collaborate with Norrbotten for an appearance at the first edition of Luleå's New Music Festival. The objective was for Bates and his band mates to bring a brand new book of music to life, the pianist largely expanding arrangements of Belovèd's existing repertoire, but also including a commissioned new work from the festival.

The pianist was commissioned to compose what would become "The Study of Touch," but, in order to come up with a full set of music, Bates also adapted music culled from Belovèd Trio's two recordings for the pianist's Lost Marble imprint: 2010's Belovèd Bird and 2012's Confirmation. The trio's albums mixed Bates originals with significantly re-imagined material either written or made popular by the late bebop progenitor, altoist Charlie Parker.

After five days of rehearsal and a premiere performance at the New Music Festival on June 1, 2013, Bates' Belovèd Trio, along with the Norrbotten Big Band and added musicians, went into Studio Acusticum, located in nearby Piteå, to document the music they'd made in the more controlled environment of a recording studio. But it was to take over seven more years before the finished recording would see the light of day as Tenacity.

Continue reading here...

[Polypet]

I always love Django. He's intriguing at all times. Thanks for the excellent review, as usual

[jkelman]

I always love Django. He's intriguing at all times. Thanks for the excellent review, as usual

My pleasure! Thanks for reading it! It was a nice break from all things Crimson, though I'm currently eyeball deep in preparing for the 1969 box review. Four days of intensive listening after weeks of listening less deeply but getting familiar with the music. Start writing tomorrow, hope to finish end of weekend and then it'll run 10/30.

Like the Jakszyk article published today, the 1969 box review will also appear in the Crimson Book I'm working on.

And, in fact, once I'm done the 1969 box, it's back to th box in a big way, as I lost a month to a serious bacterial infection (pretty much all of September).

Cheers!
J