Kalaparush and The Light

[blue lake]

7 p.m. Thursday, April 1st at Cafe Leonardo in Kendall College of Art and Design, downtown Grand Rapids. No admission charge. Celebrating the release of the new Delmark recording Morning Song.

[Nate Dorward]

Oh, that's funny, just got Morning Song yesterday. Um......I don't like it much, to be truthful. Are the group's other discs any better?

[blue lake]

What don't you like about it?

[Nate Dorward]

Well, McIntyre doesn't pay much attention to what the others are doing, so the whole thing comes off as weirdly disconnected, three people playing at each other rather than with each other. Momin's eager but messy, & Dulman simply doesn't seem to have figured out how to play a solo. Some of the tracks are terribly untogether (e.g. track 4, "Noon", where no-one seems to be on the same page), & when McIntyre sits out for one track there's 5 minutes of nothing much happening at all. There's some OK moments, including the brief solo sax piece, but I wouldn't call it a successful album. Is it especially typical of their work? I was expecting something rather better for a 3rd album by the same unit.

[Lazaro Vega]

I haven't heard the CIMP's, just the Entopy live recording and have to say I thougt this one was more focused, with listening occuring in a more genralized -- like, what is he going to do? -- way. That is, the tuba and drums will enter as things develop as opposed to some prescribed ok now we're going to play in four, one two three four, music...I think it's a good band, and will work to get them filmed by the local cable access station in Grand Rapids, GRTV, which is a fairly tricked out station for not a major broadcater, and have them recorded by Blue Lake for broadcast.

And, hopefully, have some of the West Michigan readers of the boards come on out to hear one of the founding members of the AACM live for FREE.!!!

[blue lake]

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release -- March 3, 2004

Delmark Records

4121 North Rockwell

Chicago, Illinois 60618

www.delmark.com

CONTACT: Publicity -- Michael Siniscalchi

(773) 539-5001 or bluesjazz@delmark.com

KALAPARUSH MAURICE McINTYRE & THE LIGHT TO CELEBRATE NEW DELMARK RELEASE AT

KENDALL COLLEGE

"This is a date with great respect for the AACM tradition, for Chicago jazz

in general, and with restlessness at its heart that offers new utterances

in the jazz idiom. Highly recommended." -- All Music Guide

The legendary tenor saxophonist Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre and his band

The Light will make a rare appearance at Kendall College of Art & Design's

Café Leonardo to celebrate the release of their new Delmark recording

"Morning Song." Details for the performance are as follows:

Thursday, April 1 -- 7 PM

Kendall College of Art & Design - Café Leonardo

17 Fountain Street

Grand Rapids, Michigan

(616) 235-6117

Kalaparush was a founding member of Chicago's historic music collective the

AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians). Often

described as soulful and lyrical, Kalaparush's phrasings have been topic

for nearly forty years since his historical appearance on Roscoe Mitchell's

"Sound," the AACM's 1966 debut recording.

Last year Brooklyn based Kalaparush & The Light came to Chicago to perform

at the 2003 Chicago Jazz Festival. While in town they recorded "Morning

Song" at the progressive music venue The Hungry Brain and Delmark's own

Riverside Studios. The All Music Guide raves,

Kalaparush & The Light is Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre (tenor saxophone),

Jesse Dulman (tuba), Ravish Momin (drums, percussion).

###

[randissimo]

Well, McIntyre doesn't pay much attention to what the others are doing, so the whole thing comes off as weirdly disconnected, three people playing at each other rather than with each other. Momin's eager but messy, & Dulman simply doesn't seem to have figured out how to play a solo. Some of the tracks are terribly untogether (e.g. track 4, "Noon", where no-one seems to be on the same page), & when McIntyre sits out for one track there's 5 minutes of nothing much happening at all. There's some OK moments, including the brief solo sax piece, but I wouldn't call it a successful album. Is it especially typical of their work? I was expecting something rather better for a 3rd album by the same unit.

This review piques my jaded interest.. I'll have to make a serious effort to attend this event.. B)

[Lazaro Vega]

The show is tonight. Hope to see you there. To be recorded for broadcast on Blue Lake Public Radio.

[blue lake]

Beautiful show, wonderful band, deep music -- the idea that they don't listen to each other is foolish. In concert, Kalaparush's sound is entrancing, and his use of shading and dynamics even more profound. Despite adjusting to a new mouth piece his playing last night was at a deep, deep level showing how his own playing evolved out of the example of Sonny Rollins solo organization and the lessons he took from Sam Rivers.

The late period John Coltrane left it's mark in the band's spiritual unity more than it's energy (who could keep up with late period Trane's energy level and remain as personal as Kalaparush?).

The band's music is organized on extended scales from which they build primarily through rhythm, and Ravish Momin, a student of Andrew Cyrille, is adept at many time feels from African influenced grooves to Indian/tabla type sounds and, of course, hard driving jazz. Jesse Dulman on tuba skirts the music's center, one minute a walking bass-line, the next minute a harmonic target, the next minute a textural floor, the next a unison partner with the saxophonist. The ensemble's concept of organization is fluid and seamless as they move between solo, duo and trio configurations.

Here is the set list: Let Us All Relax from the new Delmark Cd; Composition 4000 which gave the tuba some tricky intervals to maneuver; Antoinette (for Kalaparush's wife); Trend (a work song varient). About 50 minutes of music. Small but very attentive crowd. Despite the coffee house atmosphere there was no talking. There was little space in the performance for applause, so when they ended it was to a good five minutes of sustained appreciation.

Randy where were you?

[Jim Alfredson]

Randy where were you?

I've been asking that all day! He's MIA!

[Lazaro Vega]

From today's Chicago Tribune:

Fearless musical experimenting pays dividends

>

>                    By Howard Reich

>                    Tribune arts critic

>                    Published April 5, 2000

To anyone who values new ideas in

sound, the past weekend proved indelible.

For on two of the city's most important stages, two generations of jazz innovators -- each rooted in the Chicago avant-garde -- produced brilliantly original improvisations that made no concessions to musical fashion or audience expectation.

      

On Saturday evening, a small but rapt group of listeners convened at HotHouse for a rare performance by Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre, a fiercely individualistic saxophonist who holds an esteemed position in the history of new music in Chicago, and beyond. As an emerging Chicago reedist in the early 1960s, McIntyre joined forces with similarly iconoclastic, South Side musicians who were inventing provocative new techniques for jazz improvisation.

By 1965, they formed the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an organization that helped rejuvenate a jazz world starved for substantial new ideas. McIntyre earned further distinction for his work as tenor saxophonist on Roscoe Mitchell's landmark, 1966 recording "Sound,"  the first to document AACM breakthroughs.

Nearly four decades later,McIntyre, who now lives in New York, returned to Chicago to celebrate the release of a revelatory new disc, "Morning Song" (on Chicago's Delmark Records). Leading a remarkably creative trio, which he calls Kalaparush and the Light, McIntyre distinguished himself as soloist, bandleader, composer and jazz visionary.

For starters, McIntyre remains an unapologetically idiosyncratic tenor saxophonist, his work far outside the "tough tenor" tradition that listeners often associate with the Chicago school. Unlike

muscular veterans such as Von Freeman, Johnny Griffin and Fred Anderson, McIntyre produces a comparatively light tone, his lithe phrasing, nimble technique and translucent timbre pointing to a player who has veered far afield from his more celebrated Chicago contemporaries.

The uniqueness of McIntyre's sound is matched by the fluidity of his thought, for he tends to unspool ideas faster than the ear can absorb them. If the speed of his delivery recalls the bebop era of his youth, his astringent harmonies, piquant dissonances and unusual melodic structures are utterly of today -- fresh, provocative,unpredictable, unexpected.

Certainly no one who experienced the avalanche of melodic ideas that McIntyre unleashed in the evening's first piece, "Trend," would have anticipated the profoundly

introspective, melancholic lines of his "Symphony #1." The sense of serenity and repose that McIntyre conveyed in this work represented the antithesis of the fire-breathing virtuosity of "Trend." Here was a soloist who cannot be pigeonholed in any style or idiom.

But McIntyre's contributions as bandleader proved equally impressive, for he has found kindred spirits in tuba virtuoso Jesse Dulman and drummer Ravish Momin. Each held his own in this exceptional band, a trio of equal parts if ever there were one. Listen to the sweet polyphony that these three players attained in "Mmahjae" -- McIntyre's beautifully sculpted lines dovetailing with Dulman's counterpoint on tuba and Momin's sublime brushwork on drums -- and you're hearing ensemble improvisation that's as alive and spontaneous as it gets.

The trio closed its set with the galvanic "Five #1," its hard-charging lines applying the headlong rhythmic momentum of bebop-era improvisation to some of McIntyre's most gnarly, intricate riffs. A stunning finale to a freewheeling, impossible-to-categorize set.

If McIntyre's Saturday night show reaffirmed the continued vitality of an elder statesman, saxophonist Doug Rosenberg's set Friday night at the Velvet Lounge placed the spotlight on a potentially important new artist.

Playing gloriously freewheeling duets with veteran drummer Bob Moses, Rosenberg showed a fearlessness of spirit and a robustness of tone that seem likely to win him a devoted

following in coming years.

That Rosenberg chose to play at the Velvet Lounge was apt, and not only because it long has been an epicenter of jazz experimentation in Chicago. More important, Rosenberg was playing in a club owned by Chicago tenor giant Anderson, whose work clearly has made a deep imprint on Rosenberg's.

You could hear as much in the outsize tone, the bebop

roots and the pervasively lyric quality of Rosenberg's work, even in rhythmically agitated passages. Like Anderson, Rosenberg takes pains to give his solos an unmistakable melodic arc, even as they veer far from straightforward themes and discernible chord changes.

Rosenberg accomplished some of his best work on soprano saxophone, his yearning, questing tone and ecstatic bursts of sound egged on by Moses' restlessly aggressive eruptions on drums.

In all, a landmark weekend for new music in Chicago.

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune