FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
5 February 2001 |
Baikida Carroll walks a fine line
MARIONETTES ON A HIGH WIRE OFFERS A BALANCE OF GRACE, WIT, BEAUTY
BROOKLYN, NY — OmniTone leaps into 2001 with Marionettes on a High Wire (OmniTone 12101), a breathtaking new release from Baikida Carroll. His last highly acclaimed album, Door of the Cage (Soul Note), was likened by the press to Miles Davis' In a Silent Way. Marionettes uses virtually the same group, including Hudson Valley mystic Erica Lindsay (tenor saxophone), AACM-member Adegoke Steve Colson (piano), volcanic Pheeroan ak Laff (drums) and group newcomer and veteran musician Mike Formanek (bass).
In his first release as a leader in six years, the trumpeter and composer masterfully focuses his multi-disciplinary bent into a potent and lyrical pastiche of the artist teetering on the high wire of reality. His work for theater, dance and film colors Carroll's surefooted traverse across the interface between reality, memory and fantasy.
In harmonically rich, strikingly original pieces and in reworkings of his own compositions for Broadway, Carroll's fondness for crossing aesthetic boundaries, for mixing disciplines, is evident everywhere on Marionettes. This trust in creative freedom is the essence of true artistry, a trust that blossomed with Carroll's immersion in the mid-1960s as a seminal member of the influential, multi-disciplinary Black Artist Group.
BAG, St Louis' parallel to Chicago's groundbreaking AACM, encouraged artistic wide-ranging cross pollination and yielded such influential jazz artists as Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, Joseph and Lester Bowie, Bobo Shaw and Marty Ehrlich. (Marty Ehrlich Traveler's Tales' Malinke's Dance [OmniTone 12003] is named for Malinke Elliott, a well-known drama and poetry teacher at BAG and a good friend of Carroll's.)
"The idea is to vehemently and colorfully explore your imagination," explains Carroll. "To do this, one has to maintain an open sinuosity or a looseness." Highlights include:
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Several ensemble reinterpretations of pieces originally written for the stage: "Miss Julie," from the eponymous play by August Strindberg, and "Our Say" and "Cab" from Emily Mann's Broadway play Having Our Say. The latter piece here expands and contracts in under two minutes to romp, amazingly, through the history and vicissitudes of jazz from its turn-of-the-century strains to the post-bop era.
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"Griot's Last Dance" is Carroll's moving dedication to the late Don Cherry, a musician who embodied communication for its own sake. "He would go places and play with people, and would just speak with his horn. He was a griot — an Afro-American griot," reflects Carroll.
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The effervescent "Flamboye" — a brilliant snapshot of Julius Hemphill, Carroll's longtime collaborator and colleague in BAG. The tune rumbles, saunters, and struts in the flamboyant and silver lamé clad spirit of the man Carroll calls "a brother."
"Baikida is a multi-faceted gem, appreciated by unfortunately a too small handful of artists, poets, dramatists and fans — a situation we think Marionettes can help rectify" explains OmniTone founder and president Frank Tafuri who, during his years as US marketing director for Black Saint/Soul Note, came to better know Baikida and his work.
"Baikida is one of the genuinely, roundly talented individuals I and many others know. He has an exceptional spirit and outlook which exudes warmth and true artistic joie de vivre. His music bubbles forth with the kind of 'adventurous and listenable' nature which we've become known for at OmniTone."
Carroll's theater works include The Mighty Gents by Richard Wesley, Eugene Sheen by Malinke Elliott, Poem for a Revolutionary Night by Larry Neal, Coontown Bicentennial Memorial Service with Julius Hemphill, For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange, Miss Julie by August Strindberg, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, Legacies by Kermit Frasier and Shakespeare's King Lear. He also scored Betsey Brown, a musical by Ntozake Shange and Emily Mann.
As a musician, Carroll has performed and recorded with such artists as Dewey Redman, Oliver Nelson, Albert King, David Murray, Jay McShann, Amiri Baraka, Patti LaBelle, Little Milton, Michael Gregory, David Sancious, Charlie Haden, Roscoe Mitchell, Dr John and Anthony Braxton. He was a featured soloist on Julius Hemphill's first two albums, Dogon AD and Coon Bid'ness, on Oliver Lake's first album, NTU, on John Carter's classic Castles of Ghana, on Muhal Richard Abrams' 1983 Down Beat Record of the Year Blues Forever and on Jack DeJohnette's acclaimed Inflation Blues.
Complete information on Marionettes on a High Wire -- including liner notes, Baikida Carroll's biography and discography, and an extensive interview with the trumpeter/composer -- is available at the OmniTone website at http://www.omnitone.com/marionettes. For printed or soft copy versions of any information or to arrange an interview with Baikida Carroll, please contact Rob Thacher or Frank Tafuri at OmniTone.
OmniTone Inc, founded in 1999, is dedicated to releasing new recordings of "adventurous and listenable" jazz from today's foremost creative musicians. Through the label and through its on-line store, OmniTone offers "All the tones, all the shapes, all the time..."
Praise for OmniTone's impeccably high standards in artistry and production has come from all quarters. JazzTimes celebrated OmniTone's packaging and artwork as the best in the world of jazz in their "2000 Year in Review" issue; Amazon.com says "Leave it to folks at OmniTone to find thrillingly original talent"; and All About Jazz raves over OmniTone's "smart packaging, insightful liners and premium sound quality."
The current OmniTone catalog includes releases by Frank Kimbrough/Joe Locke, Ron Horton, Tom Varner, the Joe Morris Quartet, Equal Interest (Joseph Jarman, Leroy Jenkins and Myra Melford), Cuong Vu, Marty Ehrlich's Traveler's Tales, Oscar Noriega's Play Party, and Steve Slagle. OmniTone's Discovery series offers engaging new recordings of ingenious artists and groups, many debuting on the creative music scene. The Discovery Series includes releases by Michael Bisio, Mike Lee, the M.O.B. Trio (Matt Wilson, Ohad Talmor and Bob Bowen), Lynn Seaton and the debut of the Jim McNeely Tentet.
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