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| Brian Lynch & Eddie Palmieri at the Iridium Thursday, November 16 Brian Lynch & Eddie Palmieri will celebrate the release of their new album Simpatico (Artist Share) at The Iridium Jazz Club, New York. "I've wanted to do this since I began working with Eddie 19 years ago, " states Lynch. "Not just a collaboration, but also my take on what his music means to me. This recording is the culmination of everything I've learned with Eddie and what that music represents." That Palmieri agreed to participate in his first truly collaborative project since the '60s, when he made the classic LPs El Sonido Nuevo: The New Soul Sound and Bamboleate with vibraphonist Cal Tjader, is ample testimony that the feeling is mutual. "Brian is an extraordinary talent, " Palmieri says. "He's one of the greatest trumpet players I've ever met, and very well known in the jazz world. He also has a deep comprehension of Latin idioms, and that's difficult to do." "Eddie gave me so much on Simpatico, " says Lynch, who co- wrote "Shekere Agent Man" on Palmieri's La Perfecta II (Concord, 2002), and inspired Palmieri's pathbreaking early '90s Afro-Caribbean Octet that recorded the explosive albums Vortex, Palmas, and Arete. "It gave me a lot of confidence that he gave me this go-ahead. Working with him over the years has taught me how he puts music together and the essence of his idiom. So as I wrote my own compositions for Simpatico, I kept his singular style in mind." In full control of his materials, Lynch draws on the past and present of both jazz and Latin styles. There are collaborative reimaginations of Palmieri classics "Azucar" and "Paginas De Mujer, " the latter sung by Mexican chanteuse Lila Downs. The tunes are both hard-charging and lush, the charts replete with striking melodies, intoxicating rhythms, and Lynch's signature voicings and chord progressions. Towards the end of "pulling together everything I've done since the late '80s with some of the most important people I've worked with, " Lynch recruited as a special guest master alto saxophonist Phil Woods, a frequent employer since 1992, who, like Palmieri, regards Lynch as more of a collaborator than a sideman. "It's an interesting dynamic to go back and forth between Eddie and Phil, " Lynch says. "This balance is emblematic of the way I approach music, and my own music meets those elements in the middle, so to speak. "When I joined Eddie, I felt it was not only one of the great Latin gigs, but one of the great jazz gigs. He mixes the real Latin music with a jazz aesthetic. There's the freedom to do your own thing and impart your own sound, but it also obligates you to have fidelity to a tradition. I spent time assimilating the great Latin soloists on my instrument, li ke Felix Chappotin and Chocolate Armenteros, so that I don't just play jazz over Afro-Caribbean rhythm. When you work with the masters, like Eddie or Phil or Art Blakey, you're linked to the whole history of the music they play." Lynch himself is an instantly recognizable trumpet stylist. His tone burnished, his articulation crisp, his ideas efflorescent, he tells compelling, nuanced stories on each solo, projecting an emotional range as capacious as his formidable instrumental command. Matching him is an all-star cast, primarily long-time Lynch and Palmieri associates, who execute immaculately and solo at grand heights of instrumental derring-do. Propelling them are extraordinary rhythm sections with such world class Latin and Cuban drummers as trapsetters Dafnis Prieto and Robby Ameen, congueros Giovanni Hidalgo and Pedro Martinez, and percussionists Pete Rodriguez, Little Johnny Rivero, and Marvin Diz, and bassists Boris Kozlov, Ruben Rodriguez, and Luques Curtis. The brass and reed players--Woods, Donald Harrison, Gregory Tardy, Conrad Herwig, Mario Rivera, and Yosvany Terry--all navigate both genres proficiently, as do pianist-organist Edsel Gomez, a regular with David Sanchez and Don Byron and a Palmieri disciple, and guitar virtuoso Adam Rogers. Lynch decided to release Simpatico on ArtistShare, the first jazz label that allows fans to view online and download video, musical sketches and scores, process journals, and interviews discussing the recording and composing process. It's tailor-made for Lynch's expansive approach. "I wanted to pull out all the stops on this one, " Lynch says. "I gave myself the gift of doing whatever I wanted. I began working on this more than a year ago, and you can imagine how exciting this is for me after all the time I've put in since its inception." A true 21st century musician who creates his music without borders or boundaries, Lynch sees Simpatico as another step towards realizing his ideal of fusing diverse musical dialects. "My ideal is to join with musicians who play convincingly in a range of idioms and impart the same kind of vision to all of it, " he says. "It's not so much about Latin or bebop, but about making music that integrates everything into a whole, and for the players to integrate in the same way. Working with Eddie on Simpatico brought me closer to that ideal." write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Jazz News :: home page |