Mark Lyn­der­say

It was the start of some­thing, to be sure, and the crowds that filled the Lit­tle Carib The­atre last Thurs­day were keen to wit­ness it.

It's rare for a lo­cal jazz con­cert to claim stand­ing room on­ly sta­tus, but the mu­si­cians of the Trini­Jazz Project earned it for their first pub­lic out­ing per­form­ing at the launch of their epony­mous new al­bum.

The con­cert start­ed prompt­ly with bassist Rod­ney Alexan­der at cen­tre stage for his com­po­si­tion Musiq. Right from the start it was clear this wasn't go­ing to be a straight read­ing of the al­bum, and the call and re­sponse pas­sage by Alexan­der's bass and An­tho­ny Woodroffe's sax­o­phone felt sharp­er and more pas­sion­ate than it was on the record­ing.

Woodroffe's song, I'm in­to you, fol­lowed with a lot more verve and lilt in­fus­ing the live ver­sion of the beat back­ing the com­pos­er's del­i­cate flute lead. A slash­ing per­cus­sion so­lo by Mod­upe Onilu pushed the song along even hard­er, coax­ing the flautist to jam even hard­er when he re­turned to lead the song.

There was a de­light­ful mo­ment as gui­tarist Dean Williams leaned in close on the tips of his toes dur­ing a roar­ing jam to lis­ten to Woodroffe's play­ing as they eased off the solo­ing to re­join the melody.

Dean Williams' Li Jwe Gi­ta (He plays gui­tar) fol­lowed with far more fire than he record­ed for the al­bum. Williams showed some fas­ci­nat­ing strum­ming tech­nique on the num­ber, push­ing out­ward from the ghet­to of beat em­bell­ish­ment to which rhythm gui­tarists have been con­signed for most of the so­ca era. The re­sult was a gui­tar lead that start­ed like just that sort of play­ing be­fore push­ing out­ward with lay­ered mul­ti-chordal strum­ming and a deft fin­ger­ing tech­nique that some­times felt like just a lit­tle too much fire­works for the melody.

Fol­low­ing the track list of the CD close­ly, Mod­upe Onilu's Awon Omo Ti O Ti came next, the per­cus­sion­ist of­fer­ing a the­atri­cal in­tro­duc­tion to the song with his ar­ray of mu­sic and ef­fects gen­er­at­ing gear be­fore lead­ing the song on a small xy­lo­phone, the first I've seen in a T&T con­cert since the days when An­dre Tanker used one for his sets at the Hilton.

An in­spired trad­ing of riffs be­tween Williams and Woodroffe took the Onilu's song soar­ing be­fore the gui­tarist's dense bar­rage of notes took it to es­cape ve­loc­i­ty.

Every se­ri­ous singer should have a song that they own, and Vaugnette Big­ford has found hers with her read­ing of Mer­chant's One Su­per­pow­er for this al­bum. When she took the stage with her back­up singers a re­spect­ful hush de­scend­ed on the row­dy boys who had been romp­ing on the stage just mo­ments be­fore.

The live per­for­mance was even more con­tained than it was on the al­bum, backed by a lush, gen­tly swoop­ing mu­sic bed led by a sus­tained chorale by her back­up singers and Low Chew Tung's syn­the­sised or­gan.

Big­ford would al­so per­form Mem­o­ry of your smile, lift­ed some­what by a gen­tle bass so­lo from Alexan­der that sug­gest­ed puls­ing heart­beats and would re­turn for the sec­ond to last song of the set with a lagniappe num­ber, a sur­pris­ing­ly ten­ta­tive ver­sion of Valenti­no's Birds Fly­ing High.

Woodroofe's Yeah, No, Maybe got an en­er­gised makeover from a band em­bold­ened an over­whelm­ing­ly strong re­sponse from the au­di­ence and a grow­ing com­fort with their con­fi­dent in­ter­play.

Rod­ney Alexan­der starts the wild­ness off with a Hen­drix-style so­lo played with his teeth, sur­pris­ing Dean Williams who moved quick­ly to take up the chal­lenge.

The two trad­ed fierce so­lo runs be­fore Woodroffe part­ed the two like a smooth sax peace­mak­er, which then brought Onilu run­ning to the fray with a re­al­ly tiny drum from which he coaxed some gen­tle moans.

"These guys just won't be­have," laughed Woodroffe af­ter the num­ber, "and it's my song!"

Dean Williams in­tro­duced his sec­ond song A Woman's Sweet­ness, de­clin­ing with a sheep­ish smile to ex­plain the song's in­spi­ra­tion. While the song starts well, Williams be­gan to over­play it, los­ing the del­i­ca­cy of the record­ed ver­sion of the num­ber in a shim­mer­ing cas­cade of ef­fects and so­lo jam smarts.

The con­cert end­ed as it be­gan, book­end­ed by a Rod­ney Alexan­der com­po­si­tion, Coun­try. By then the Trini­Jazz Project was sound­ing less like an art­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion of like-mind­ed play­ers and more like an all-star band.

Alexan­der's song of­fers many op­por­tu­ni­ties for solo­ing and in­ter­play, and they were en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly mined by ca­pa­ble play­ers whose com­fort with each oth­er's abil­i­ties filled the room with deft play­ing and con­fi­dent vamp­ing on the sweet, laid back beat.

(USE AL­BUM COV­ER HERE)

�2 Many hands make light work

The Trini­Jazz Project

Par­lemu­sic Pro­duc­tions

Al­bum re­view by Mark Lyn­der­say

The Trini­Jazz Project is sev­er­al things all hap­pen­ing to­geth­er on a sin­gle CD.

Pro­duc­er Michael Low Chew Tung, bet­ter known in the com­mu­ni­ty of jazz mu­si­cians as Ming, gath­ered a group of young jazz mu­si­cians who had nev­er record­ed be­fore to make an al­bum.

The re­sult is a col­lec­tion of eight orig­i­nal in­stru­men­tal works and two cov­ers that push gen­tly at the bound­aries of the easy lis­ten­ing jazz that finds the largest au­di­ences in T&T.

Each of the par­tic­i­pat­ing mu­si­cians is rep­re­sent­ed by two songs on the disc, pro­vid­ing a small but in­trigu­ing in­sight in­to the cre­ative think­ing of bassist Rod­ney Alexan­der, gui­tarist Dean Williams, sax­o­phon­ist An­tho­ny Woodroffe, per­cus­sion­ist Mod­upe Onilu and vo­cal­ist Vaugnette Big­ford.

Mikhail Sal­cedo guests on tenor pan, drum­mer Richard Joseph does dou­ble du­ty as the al­bum's de­sign­er while Ming plays key­boards and runs the show.

The stand­out num­ber on the al­bum is Big­ford's sepul­chral read­ing of Mer­chant's One Su­per­pow­er, an arrange­ment that turns the song in­to an som­bre in­dict­ment of man's am­bi­tions and hubris.

Com­pared to that tour de force work, her next song, a straight­for­ward read­ing of Ray Hol­man's Mem­o­ry of your smile fal­ters. It sim­ply isn't in the same class of per­for­mance op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Bassist Rod­ney Alexan­der emerges as the al­bum's strongest song­writer, his bass dri­ven songs Musiq and Coun­try pro­vid­ing ex­pan­sive land­scapes for the group's pro­cliv­i­ty for solo­ing and en­gag­ing in all too brief, though fiery ex­changes.

These are al­so the songs that feel deep­est root­ed in a ca­lyp­so style of com­pos­ing, Coun­try in par­tic­u­lar feel­ing like a lost lavway from the fifties while Musiq reach­es back to the funk-ca­lyp­so ex­per­i­ments of the 60's and 70's that pre­dat­ed the for­mal­is­ing of the so­ca beat and so strong­ly in­flu­enced the com­po­si­tions of Ralph Mc­Don­ald.

Which isn't to dis­miss the work of the oth­er mu­si­cians at all. Onilu's work, Awon Omo Ti O Ti, spends its first full minute ex­plor­ing the mu­si­cian's col­lec­tion of per­cus­sion based ef­fects to cre­ate a per­sua­sive­ly pri­mal at­mos­phere be­fore rac­ing in­to a nim­ble num­ber led by his xy­lo­phone play­ing.

On Ques­tions Unan­swered, the mu­sic swirls in­trigu­ing­ly with­out find­ing dra­mat­ic res­o­lu­tion. But there was no such un­cer­tain­ty on Dean Williams'A Woman's Sweet­ness, which lopes along like swing of a woman's hips, flush with the con­fi­dence of its at­trac­tive­ness. On Li Jwe Gi­ta, the fret­work is flashier but el­e­gant, lay­ered over a boun­cy beat that flirts with both sam­ba and the Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion.

An­tho­ny Woodroffe's songs, I'm in­to you and Yeah, No, Maybe both play to his strengths on the flute and sax­o­phone but nei­ther feels ful­ly formed on the al­bum. Even his col­leagues play po­lite­ly and re­spect­ful­ly and not even the usu­al­ly in­cen­di­ary pres­ence of Mikhail Sal­cedo on Yeah, No, Maybe can rouse the song from its po­lite pac­ing.

Col­lec­tive­ly, the al­bum is a strong and em­i­nent­ly lis­ten­able col­lec­tion of lo­cal mu­sic. Hard­core jazz buffs won't find much to sur­prise them here, but the far larg­er au­di­ence of mu­sic lovers will find a lot to en­joy in this ac­com­plished col­lec­tion of lo­cal ad­di­tions to the T&T song­book.

Ming has done a re­mark­able job of plant­i­ng seeds on this al­bum, record­ing five very promis­ing mu­si­cians ear­ly in their ca­reers and giv­ing them a chance to ex­plore the evo­lu­tion of this al­bum to­geth­er.

This is def­i­nite­ly one of those "stick a pin here" record­ings and it's go­ing to be in­ter­est­ing to see where these mu­si­cians go from here.

The Trini­Jazz Project

Vaugnette Big­ford - Vo­cals

An­tho­ny Woodroffe - Sax­o­phone, flute

Dean Williams - Gui­tar

Rod­ney Alexan­der - Bass

Mod­upe Onilu - Per­cus­sion

Ad­di­tion­al mu­si­cians

Michael Low Chew Tung - Key­boards

Richard Joseph - Drums

Afiya Althill - Vo­cals

Mikhail Sal­cedo - Tenor pan