Mini-Suoni per il Popolo

The mammoth Suoni per il Popolo festival occurs only in June, but three consecutive evenings of primo avant jazz, plus an afternoon workshop, merits a mini-Suoni tag. Or maybe mini-Guelph, since all performers also appear at the Guelph Jazz Festival this week. While jazz threads through each evening, the contexts vary, including elements of rock, world, noise and electro-acoustics. Like the main Suoni fest, acts hail from all over the globe, in this case South America and both coasts of North America.


São Paulo Underground

The mammoth Suoni per il Popolo festival occurs only in June, but three consecutive evenings of primo avant jazz, plus an afternoon workshop, merits a mini-Suoni tag. Or maybe mini-Guelph, since all performers also appear at the Guelph Jazz Festival this week. While jazz threads through each evening, the contexts vary, including elements of rock, world, noise and electroacoustics. Like the main Suoni fest, acts hail from all over the globe, in this case South America and both coasts of North America.

Kicking off on Sunday is New York duo Matthew Shipp and Darius Jones. Pianist Shipp’s roots are in the American free jazz continuum, carrying the usual influences (Duke Ellington to Cecil Taylor), there is an instantly recognizable architectural logic to his style.

Jones is a relative newcomer, having landed in New York in 2005. He’s participated in everything from classical chamber music to multimedia electroacoustic events, his sax playing consistently providing a rich soulful presence.  The duo released a CD of short tracks in 2011 that revealed a mastery of diverse free jazz strategies, but given their versatility we will just have to see what they have in store this time around.

Monday evening brings in a double bill from Vancouver. Gordon Grdina is best known as a guitarist, but plays the Iraqi oud exclusively in his Haram project. The tentet includes six West Coast improvisers, clarinetist François Houle among them, and two percussionists and one vocalist schooled in Arabic traditions. They will bridge traditional music from Egypt and Iraq with modern jazz, sticking closely to Middle Eastern melodies from composers like Farid Al-Atrache, Abdul Wahab, and Oum Kalthoum.  For more details about this project, see this week’s Haram write-up in Today’s Sounds.

Two members of Haram, JP Carter on trumpet and Jesse Zubot on violin, join guitarist Stephen Lyons in the jazz-influenced, post-rock textured octet Fond of Tigers. Recording for the Drip Audio label, their 2011 CD Continent and Western earned the Juno award for best instrumental album.

On Tuesday, it’s the São Paulo Underground. Led by trumpeter Rob Mazurek, the group redefines world music to be simultaneously influenced by all the music in the world (or almost). Starting from complex Brazilian tropical street rhythms, they create dense layers of textured noise using sound sources as diverse as laptop, the cavaquinho (a South American mini-guitar), percussion and keyboards, over which Mazurek often solos.  Leader of numerous genre-bending U.S. ensembles since the 1980s and strongly influenced by Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis, Mazurek moved to Brazil 12 years ago. São Paulo guitarist Mauricio Takara and keyboardist Guilherme Granado round out the group.

The Underground also offers a workshop, São Paulo now: A look at current happenings in the world of sound in São Paulo, Brazil.  It covers both the popular and avant garde music history of the city, explaining the sources of their own unique contribution. ■

Matthew Shipp & Darius Jones play la Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent) on Sunday, Sept. 9, 8:30 p.m., $14-$16.

Haram play with Fond of Tigers at la Sala Rossa on Monday, Sept. 10, 8:30 p.m., $10–$12.

São Paulo Underground at the Casa del Popolo, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 8:30 p.m., $12-$14. Workshop at the Casa at 1 p.m., free.

 

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