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A different kind of cabaret

Old jazz meets nu in a compelling collaboration
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
May 7th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Conquest's vocals put a smoky luster on new music written by jazz veteran Burrell.
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Dave Burrell and Leena Conquest


When: Tuesday, May 13, at 8
Where: Salon Philharmonia (Krocínova 1, Prague 1-Old Town)
Tickets: 300 Kč, available through Ticketpro, Ticketstream and at the door

In an intimate meeting of old and nu jazz generations, the veteran jazz pianist and composer Dave Burrell will be in Prague next week accompanied by up-and-coming vocalist Leena Conquest for their project “Leena Conquest Sings the Songs of Dave Burrell.”
From the mid to late 1960s, Burrell was at the center of the furious New York City jazz scene, playing with the most devoted disciples of John Coltrane — the roaring tenor saxophonists on Impulse Records, notably Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp.   
Burrell was mainly a sideman on piano, unlike the most famous free jazz pianist of that era, Cecil Taylor. Even so, Burrell’s 1969 album Echo (on BYG/Actuel) has the No. 1 ranking in the “Top Ten From the Free Underground” list compiled by Thurston Moore (guitarist of Sonic Youth), who described the recording this way: “From the first groove, it sounds like an acoustic tidal wave exploding into shards of dynamite.”
In 1972, Burrell played on two of Shepp’s most spiritual recordings, capturing the angry political spirit and social conscience of the times better than any atonal free jazz. Shepp’s Attica Blues album is closer to a gospel-and-soul Sunday-morning church session, combining big-band swing, blues and funk with some toned-down avant-garde excursions and down-home groove. Burrell’s contribution on this record, “Steam Pts. 1 & 2,” is a melodic, slowly swinging lullaby with some sting, sung by the deep blues-voiced Joe Lee Wilson.
“When we were in the Attica Blues session, it was especially intense, because we had played in the prison right after the riots,” recalls Burrell, referring to the Attica prison uprising of September 1971.
On a later 1972 recording with Shepp, The Cry of My People, Burrell is credited with arranging and conducting the song “African Drum Suite, Pts. 1 & 2.” On this cut, Burrell lays down a cascade of chords, off- and on-key, accompanying Shepp’s departures over a female choir and a bed of deep African percussion, making this track (which is unique on the album) a seminal modern groove as down as any recent nu-jazz remixes.
After those heady-times, Burrell (born in 1940 in Ohio, though raised in New York and mostly in Hawaii), lived abroad in Japan and Europe, residing in Paris for many years. Based in Philadelphia since 1985, he has been recording for the Philly-based label High Tone since 2003, releasing Expansion (2004) with bassist William Parker and drummer Andrew Cyrille, and Momentum (2006). This is contemporary jazz of a different sort — complex compositions made by free jazz veterans just flirting with their atonal roots, keeping the music in a groove, in slightly off-key or off-chord melodies. In 2006, Burrell also released a blazing free-jazz live duet set with Billy Martin (drummer of Medeski, Martin, & Wood).
Conquest offers a contrasting style with her smoky nu-jazz vocals on Parov Stelar’s recent album, Seven and Storm (from Linz, Austria). For her appearance in Prague, she will be singing an original music cabaret written by Burrell and the lyricist Monika Larsson (Burrell’s Swedish wife).
“I met Leena Conquest at the first Curtis Mayfield rehearsal,” says Burrell, referring to his project The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield. “She has an astonishing voice and warmth.”
Burrell’s music for this project is also surprisingly lyrical and warm, at times like classical and modern jazz standards, or lounge love ballads. But there are also compositions where Burrell lets loose with improvisations, as Conquest impressively matches the maestro’s outside meanderings. In terms of free-jazz singing, she is for real.  
Burrell and Conquest are planning to record their music, and Prague is one of the stops on their European tour to promote the project. “I’m very excited to come to Prague for the first time,” says Burrell. “And I think the cabaret setting is good for our personal performance.”

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (7/05/2008):

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