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Review

Rodrigo Amado

Searching For Adam

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by Tim Owen

April 05, 2011

/ ALBUM

A session with immediate impact that pays dividends on every subsequent hearing.

Rodrigo Amado

Searching For Adam”

(Not Two)

Rodrigo Amado is a Portuguese saxophonist who has built up a tempting discography over the last decade or so. “Searching For Adam”, released in 2010, is his latest title; two others preceded it in 2009, both released on the European Echoes label, which I believe Amado runs himself. Of these earlier titles, “Motion Trio” featured his compatriots Miguel Mira (cello) and Gabriel Ferrandini (drums), while “The Abstract Truth” was his second recording with Jazz Mann favourites Paal Nilssen-Love and Kent Kessler. Amado is obviously drawn to string players: dates that feature violin, double bass, and/or cello are prominent in his catalogue. For this date, however, he has drawn support from a top-notch trio of New York jazz musicians: the blooded bass/drums partnership of John Hébert and Gerald Cleaver, and the dynamic cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum.

Amado’s website, http://www.rodrigoamado.com, puts his interest in photography on an equal footing with his music, and “Searching For Adam” is nicely packaged in a sturdy, gatefold card sleeve adorned by text in a suitably blocky, urban typeface and Amado’s own street photography, in style or conception perhaps inspired Philip-Lorca di Corcia. The presentation gives some sense of Amado’s New York state of mind, but only hints at the boldness and originality of the music it adorns.

While Hébert and Cleaver are well represented here, in a date that features all the artists on more or less an equal footing, it’s the frequent, extended dialogues between Amado and Bynum that nevertheless give the session a distinctively discursive flavour. It’s a session with immediate impact that pays dividends on every subsequent hearing. The saxophonist (here on tenor and baritone) and cornetist (occasionally switching to fluegelhorn) are an inspired match. Amado has a rich, soulful sound in the tradition of Coleman Hawkins thru Sonny Rollins, all bold sonorities, tempered power, and tender malleability. Bynum’s style, in marked contrast, is characterised by garrulous flurries of quasi-turntablist staccato alleviated by intervallic passages of luminous tonal clarity.

“Newman’s Informer” begins as a brief, forthright tussle between Amado and Bynum’s cornet, before being kicked fully into play by the dynamic bounce of the Hébert and Cleaver bass/drums partnership. The next eight minutes encapsulate the best of jazz, with free-form interplay married to an infectious rhythmic drive. It’s heady, absorbing stuff, and great fun into the bargain. Bynum blows brashly, and Cleaver responds in kind. Hébert’s bass is superb, and fulsomely rendered. Amado tempers and shapes their collective energies, guiding the number to an emotionally satisfying resolution.

In marked contrast to the urgency of “Newman’s Informer”, “Waiting for Andy” takes over twenty minutes to unfold, taking a ruminative trajectory to its brief concluding surge. It begins with a fine solo by Amado, but the piece is mainly characterised by thoughtfully modulated dialogues between the ensemble’s various subdivisions, ad-hoc partnerships trading musical gambits almost conversationally, a leisurely exchange of ideas with individuals dropping out once their points are made, and other voices with other insights taking the discussion forward. There are lots of eminently sequitur digressions made along the way, and the flow of invention is potentially endless; but what makes this track a real pleasure for the listener is the pleasure the players take in deep listening, and the space they allow for unhurried inquiry.

“Renee, Lost in Music” continues in much the same vein until a terrific drum solo at the midpoint ups the ante considerably, and the track is played out at a more urgent pace, a turbulent undercurrent being skilfully suppressed. Bynum mostly blows hard through a tight embouchure, for a sound that’s garrulous and flubbery in counterpoint to Amado’s forthright clarity, while beneath the front line Hébert and Cleaver brew up some fine, dancing rhythms. At less than five minutes in duration, the following track, “Sunday Break”, offers a sort of precis of the set so far. And then there’s a drum solo.

Gerald Cleaver’s “Pick Up Spot” is a fine, dynamic solo feature. What’s more, its placement in the track sequence is spot on, lifting the mood as it does, and clearing the decks for the relatively more conventional and exciting, though no less exacting set closer, “4th Avenue, Adam’s Block”. The main body of this thirteen-minute opus charts passages of freedom, post-bop, and deep swing, before ending with a fierce Bynum solo. There follows a coda of rueful-sounding bowed bass and mournful tenor sax, with which Bynum, re-entering at his most openly lyrical, blends superbly. Cleaver is barely audible at first, but slowly increases the emphasis of some light cymbal strikes until one last, plosive hit dissipates all the accumulated tension, leaving only silence.

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