Guillermo Klein and Los Guachos at the Village Vanguard

[7/4]

June 17, 2006

Music Review

Guillermo Klein and Los Guachos at the Village Vanguard

By BEN RATLIFF, NYT

Guillermo Klein's Los Guachos, 11 musicians, are making unnameable music at the Village Vanguard this week, rich and sticky in rhythm and harmony. It doesn't have much to do with current trends in the rest of jazz, but only jazz musicians could be making it. It is not the only way or the true way; it is just one excellent, original way. Or maybe it is 11 ways: what makes the music more special is Mr. Klein's attention to the individual sound personalities of the group's members.

Mr. Klein, a pianist making his Vanguard debut, is not selling his audience jazz, per se — and not Argentine music either, though Argentina is his country, and some of the rhythms in Thursday's early set related back to the six-eight chacarera of its musical culture. The set included short, through-composed pieces with no solos; longer pieces with several solos, some unaccompanied; a lot of baroque counterpoint; a heartfelt song about a soccer player; imposing, layered rhythms built by Jeff Ballard on trap set and Richard Nant on the big, cylindrical Argentinian drum called the bombo; and a transcription of a famous, quiet, solemn piece of classical music from 1940.

Best of all, it was a tight, organized performance by a cohesive band serving the music. There was no dead space, no pointless soloing. One heard a reasonable amount of improvising from the three excellent saxophone soloists, Bill McHenry, Miguel Zenon, and Chris Cheek, but from other first-rate improvisers, including the guitarist Ben Monder and the trumpeter Diego Urcola, almost nothing. Each set looks to be entirely different.

Mr. Klein's disciplining of rhythm and harmony creates a stir in the body. When the band played something complex, like the 13-beat rhythm he wrote into "The Snake," or a similar one written by the band's trumpeter and percussionist Richard Nant in "Chucaro" (it could be heard as 13 but broke down more exactly into three, four and two threes), it felt purposeful, not just tricky, and the audience got behind it, cheering forcefully.

First in the set there was "Venga," a hard, loud, droning, chacarera- related piece, ending on an explosion of the tonic chord in which the horn players bore down hard, bringing grit into their long tones. Later there was "Con Brasil Adentro," its motion defined by a series of organlike chords held by the brass; then "Fuga X," a tangle of related contrapuntal lines based in a weird, invented clave; and a bit later again, "El Espejo," which moved forward with constant echoes of its short lines.

In an unaffected, husky voice, Mr. Klein sang "Va Román," a song of encouragement for the Argentinian soccer player Juan Román Riquelme (once of the Argentine team Boca Juniors, now of the Spanish team Villareal). As he sang, the band moved through a small handful of chords, widening its territory in the middle with Chris Cheek's powerful, slowly building baritone saxophone solo.

At the middle of the set, the band played the fifth movement of Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time." Bill McHenry took over the tensile melody, written for cello, on soprano saxophone, an instrument he doesn't normally play; he gave it a personal reading over the slowly tolling piano chords, a little less sure and steady than one would have gotten from either of the two saxophonists next to him, who both play it a lot. The Messiaen was originally marked by the composer as "infinitely slow, ecstatic," and in this set a piece like this didn't seem unusual: those are qualities compatible with various parts of Mr. Klein's work. More to the point, it was matched to the individual musical voices of the players on stage, which Mr. Klein seemed determined to draw out.

Guillermo Klein and Los Guachos continue through Sunday night at the Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village, (212) 255-4037.

[Guest youmustbe]

Who gives a S..T!!! Klein is still one of the many no talent musicians on the scene today.

[Trumpet Guy]

Who gives a S..T!!! Klein is still one of the many no talent musicians on the scene today.

Damn--you're bitter!

You are interesting & provacative, but...