Chasing Comets
By Dan Ouellette
Brazil-born, Los Angeles-based singer Luciana Souza discusses her first-time collaboration with the renowned Trio Corrente. It’s a monumental shift sweetened with Brazilian classics and originals in the samba spirit. Cometa on Sunnyside Records translates from Portuguese into the English word comet — a rare fascination of celestial fire and ice and awe of the falling star with a long tail orbiting the sun in an elliptical path.
By Josef Woodard
By Ken Miccalef
By Phillip Lutz
By John Murph
Fortunate and few are the jazz headliners with options like guitar maestro Bill Frisell, who can choose to lead various bands simultaneously and tour as a featured sideman as well (with drummer Andrew Cyrille). His current choices? The bass-less Bill Frisell FOUR (with saxophonist Greg Tardy, pianist Gerald Clayton and drummer Johnathan Blake) and his double-trio FIVE (with bassists Thomas Morgan and Tony Scherr, and drummers Rudy Royston and Kenny Wollesen), with both groups revealing an expansive musical vision. They share Frisell’s understated, melody-driven sound, and both allow their performances to develop and deepen at their own pace, one tune leading to the next with no pause for applause, maintaining mood and melodic flow. On the first day of this year’s North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, before he performed with Cyrille’s quartet and then later with his FOUR lineup, Frisell participated in a live Blindfold Test as part of the festival’s “Talking Jazz” series, choosing not to rate any of the music using DownBeat’s traditional 5-star system.
