 Stay tuned for The Small Hours, Andrea's new CD. Song selections include new discoveries and standards, Rodgers and Hart to Van Morrison, and her own arrangements and original compositions. Todd Barkan produced, with personnel including Ron Affif (guitar) and Ken Filiano (bass), plus Victor Lewis (drums), Jamey Haddad (drums, percussion), and special guests Lou Marini (flute) and Frank London, (trumpet/flugelhorn). The Small Hours Revised April 2, 2005 
Ed. note: A few weeks ago, I wrote a review-in-progress of
The Small Hours, on OCNS, and on The Geeze, about Andrea's (and Cole Porter's)
You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To.
I've had a chance to hear the album 20 times since then, and what I said, I'm stickin' to.
As I update the review, I would focus some on the live jazz story and explaining the sessions; from e-conversations we've carried on over the years that match up with the music and musicianship... 
Writing from and for the hip... My first impression. A first rough draft...
What a beginning, middle and end of a story telling Jazz adventure The Small Hours brings to us! Does her husband know we meet this way? The Small Hours is a beautiful intimate sharing of Andrea Wolper. The fact that her husband Ken Filiano is on the record makes it all the more interesting - what they have done is Kind of Blue or Chico Hamiltonian (with Charles Lloyd) ensemblesque. The guitar work of Ron Affif and Andrea's interaction, not so much as a vocalist, but that too, with her voice as one of the "instruments", the band picks up from where the old Blue Note Jazz groups (and Miles with Bill Evans), and Chico and Coltrane left off in the 1960s... I so much miss the old Jazz. I am more than tickled about this album! The Andrea Wolper and the band did some very courageous stuff and chance-taking here. Particularly I am speaking of the Dancing on the Ceiling and the You and the Night and the Music tracks, and as in Moanin' there is some tender confessin' here too ... as intimate as Andrea chose to be in establishing their sound. You and the Night and the Music introduces us to Lou Marini on flute and if you listen closely you can hear Frank London on trumpet laying-in bass-like notes between the bass and guitar notes and Andrea's word-notes. The very soul of American Jazz is African, everyone knows, and more North African, Mediterranean and Carribean than most people know. The History of the Blues is played out every time a Jazz musician utters an intentional note - if they just play, thinking about what came before or spontaneously. Sometimes during these transports you don't know if they know where they're at. That's part of the thrill of a live performance. [the live jazz story] [explaining the sessions] This recording band is a world traveler, and from the comfort of my own space, the Hi-Fi carries me to Morocco, and New York. The Small Hours is such a sweet ticket. Singing in the shower. Speaking of the intimacy - not all that often does the audience (listener) gets to be right in the tub with the singer, even closer than the easy Brooklyn trumpet echo from down the hallway somewhere. No studio to it. It feels live. It feels "bootleg" like we talk about from time to time. Andrea's selection and the recording of Crazy Love and Today fits in perfectly with just hangin' out on a Saturday morning and listening to some sounds. These aren't likely tunes we'd have heard unless she'd performed them for THIS Saturday morning, as the band plays those "Listen to this part..." and she sings those "Listen to her voice 'here'" parts. I was so happy to hear Andrea's rendering of Cathi Walkup's Litt' Suzy's Humming. The Cathi Walkup influence elsewhere on the album, even on the Moanin' cut, both in musical chopsy and playfulness, makes me think their live performances together - that I've only heard about in the summertimes - they must be something else again, speaking of ensemble. Not Sleeping in Your Arms sez it too, and I Like you, You're Nice. Not Sleeping in Your Arms features the band at it's best being the band at it's best saying this is who we are and this's what we do with one another and with you or the recording engineer or off the walls of down the hallway in this beginning, middle and end of a storytelling adventure in pure Jazz as The Blues, or is it the other way around? So much for the right-brain algebric equations at the heart of any Jazz worth listining to. Small Day Tomorrowis such a big song for such a little girl to sing and still have some time for the doings... Certainly the kind of time to share with, in this case a bass player and a guitar player, and if you listen closely you'll hear there is a drummer (in the studio) too in this band's make up and because of how Andrea has worked out each of these arrangements, he's only there it seems to keep the tunes moving on into their next moment together. As throughout the album, on Today, Andrea accentuates her notes leaving space for whichever other musician happens to be there in time to fill out where they're going with the tune. In writing a review of The Small Hours, I would call it a "Tribute to Jazz" and a couple of Jazz singers I love (Ella and Nancy Wilson), with the many moods and voices to match of Andrea Wolper - in her own voice and in (some of) her own words. Gray, Not Blue is American Jazz song writing, and showcases this band in an extraordinary way, say real... Say, "real" again... Extraordinary is a good word for The Small Hours - for both in terms of stunning performances on the part of the band, and for the engineering balances; the level of difficulty in picking up the voice as an instrument, and the bass like a wind or a percussion instrument, however was appropriate for the moment - sometimes Art Blakey, sometimes in the tradition and tonal and lyrical quality of Scotty LaFaro - there are moments when the voice, bass and guitar each stay separate as their sound is blended together. The Rendezvous in Providence poem "works" well as a duo-piece. These kinds of works surface from time to time but rarely catch on and allow themselves to develop even between the regular fare into what hip-hop has become. And what's that? Simply, understood to be while someone had the courage of bringing to production a record that is neither safely conventional nor easily understood to be about as avant garde as the edge of the (near-experimental Musicians' music) envelope allows. Shoot! These people know The (tribute) Blues. Dues paid. There, they're makin' their own History of Jazz With the Night Time Was My Mother and Moanin', Andrea has established her vocal signature. I won't bother to use the spell-check on these. -- dxm |
LiveJazz
