Delighted to share the full recording of Dave Burrell's stunning OTO show from last year. 'Overlooked' implicates Burrell in a jostle for positioning which he likely isn't bothered with - he's been happily writing and recording as a composer in residence at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia for well over a decade, and has worked with his wife, poet and librettist Monika Larsson, to tell the complex stories found in the archive there for years. No one in the room at OTO failed to notice his sense of deliberate ease and total elegance as he struck up two forty-five minute sets to thunderous applause, blending his earlier music with his later projects.
Both sets hinge on one of Burrell's more contemporary works - 'The Paradox of Freedom’, as it weaves its way in and around the earlier ‘Black Robert’ and his most recent piece, 'Full Blown Rhapsody'. 'The Paradox of Freedom' imagines contradictions felt by freed slaves as they migrated north. “I use a boogie line that my mother used to play; there was a dance that went with it called 'Truckin’. I decided to use that line and try to do something with my right hand that would give the idea of migration and maybe an overreaction to freedom. The paradox is what kind of freedom are we talking about?”
A luminous second set opens with 'Margy Pargy'. Burrell traces its edges, open faced, sonorous and laden with swing, and then adds a gradual ringing, repeating slow dripped melody. He strides from Jelly-esque stompers into 'Expansion' and 'Full Blown Rhapsody' before looping back to 'Paradox'. 'Lush Life', Burrell's deconstructed tribute to Billy Strayhorn, closes the evening to a hollering room. An understated master. We wish wholeheartedly for his return.
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"Rough-hewn, strongly structured, then more distant before dropping in hints of recognisable melody. Rare excursions deep in to the bass register reinforced the sonorous resonance of OTO's Yamaha, drawn out by judicious use of pedals. Dense, chordal clusters gave way to the relentless rhythms of the railroad, cut short suddenly by a subdued sense of peace. A blink of boogie-woogie, and a warm 12-bar blues which gradually self-destructed with virtuosic invention. Dancing with Monika, considered and contained, closely followed by a spring-loaded Red Summer March, composed in the company of Steve Swallow one freezing winter, a spikey blues morphing in to a solid beat with a crafted melody strung over it, summoning up the spirit of Ellington." - London Jazz News
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Dave Burrell / piano
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Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Thursday 1st November 2018, by James Dunn. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. All material Dave Burrell-Lanikai Sounds Publishing Company, BMI. Photo by Fabio Lugaro.
