| AUM037 – ROY NATHANSON..Sotto Voce. ....Reviews |
CD $13
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1
..By The Page
4.24
(RealAudio Stream)
2 ..Sunny 4.16
(RealAudio Stream)
3 ..Kidnapped 3.45
4 ..London Story 6.30
5 ..The Inflated Tear 6.17
(RealAudio Stream)
6 ..Sunrise, Sunset 4.40
7 ..Shake 9.05
8 ..Home 5.15
(RealAudio Stream)
9 ..It's Alright 5.46
(RealAudio Stream)
Sam Bardfeld: violin & vocals
Curtis Fowlkes: trombone & vocals
Tim Kiah: bass & vocals
Napoleon Maddox: human beatbox & vocals
Recorded by Hugo Dwyer on November 13, 2005
at Systems Two Studio, Brooklyn.
Mixed and Mastered by Hugo out back where the horse used to live.
"
In a world of useless shouting things, Roy Nathanson's
Sotto Voce is sane, funny, beautiful and intimate."
-Elvis Costello
Sotto
Voce is the brand new concept/group/album from the extraordinarily
gifted and wide-open mind of saxophonist/composer/songwriter Roy Nathanson.
The group features his fellow Jazz Passengers Curtis Fowlkes and
Sam Bardfeld, along with singing bassist Tim Kiah and human
beat-box/singer Napolean Maddox of the Cincinnati hip-hop/jazz outfit Iswhat?! The album features six infectious new songs and/or stories by Nathanson, as well as an interpolation of Bobby Hebb’s mid-60s R&B/pop smash “Sunny” and a gorgeous reading of great Jazz composer Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “The Inflated Tear”
with new lyrics by Roy Nathanson.
Over the last two years, Roy has been workshopping this new group/work
at (O.V.! supa-fine) Brooklyn club Barbès:
Bassist Tim
Kiah studied with Ron Carter and also has the distinctively
un-Jewish background of having gone to National Catholic Choir School.
Tim is able to sing complicated vocal parts while playing the bass in
odd time signatures – precisely the kind of skill that has helped
this form come alive. By utilizing the violin of Sam Bardfeld,
the band increased it’s lyricism as well as allowing for the violin
double stops to be the only chordal sound. With the arrival of Napoleon Maddox the sound was finally complete. Napoleon is a marvelously gifted vocalist who is equally at home with “beat–boxing” hip hop and jazz as he is at singing. By actually singing the rhythm parts, Napoleon functions as a bridge between words and music, allowing the stories to sing and the music to speak. The final exuberant result is, as any elementary education specialist would describe, a “whole language approach”. Enjoy! - SJ+RN
The Sotto Voce Band! portrait by Charna Meyers
