23845: (news) Hermantin-New York Times Review Blues in Red (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


NYT MUSIC REVIEW

CRITIC'S CHOICE
New CD's
By BEN RATLIFF



'Blues in Red'

Buyu Ambroise (Justin Time)

The Haitian-born jazz saxophonist Alix (Buyu) Ambroise, who has lived in
America for the last 35 years, has made a remarkable record connecting jazz
with the music of his home country. Mr. Ambroise has a strong, swaggering
sound on tenor saxophone, and "Blues in Red" puts you a little bit in mind
of David Murray's recent albums, connecting with Senegalese, Guadeloupean
and Cuban musicians, but in contradistinction to Mr. Murray's virtuosity,
Mr. Ambroise is a modest player. He's more interested in letting the
carnival rhythms and melodies speak for themselves.
With a standard jazz quintet including a trombonist, he has taken pieces
from jazz and from traditional Haitian music and put them together,
sometimes in the same song. The fast, chugging Haitian rara rhythm anchors
"One Note Rara," an exercise based on the Jobim song "One Note Samba"; the
same rhythm is used in a version of Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol's
"Caravan." And his arrangement of "Konbit Zaka," an old Haitian song, is
especially stirring; a guest drummer, James Jean-Baptiste, sings the melody
in a strange, stirring harmonic relationship to Frederic Las Fargeas's piano
chords.