Muted horn atmospheres are in contemporary jazz fashion, and Tony Guerrero’s Mysterie (NuGroove Records NUG-3001; 45:14) plays to the trend, with his smoky trumpet and fluegelhorn leads mining what is fast becoming familiar territory. Mysterie’s arrangements are so clouded with heavy synthesizer atmospheres and overused boudoir grooves (“All Night Long”) that listeners may not even notice Guerrero’s misty, nicely executed leads. There are nice flashes-like Guerrero’s creeping, layered lead-in on “The Vibe”-but the slap tracks must go. Guerrero gets his best chance to sing out on the touching melody “Beautiful,” in a simple duet with graceful piano. No obtrusive tracking, just a reflective, melancholy melody.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro