RECAP: Abdullah Ibrahim / Sandhi Trio @ The Egg (Swyer Theatre), 11/17/2024

Recap by Bob Donald.

The legendary jazz pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim came to the Egg‘s Swyer Theatre in Albany, NY this past Sunday as part of the Egg’s “Resonance Series”. His trio, with Cleave Guyton (alto flute, piccolo, and clarinet) and Noah Jackson (cello and bass), offered a meditative and elegiac performance that ruminated on the whole of his seven-decade career.

Ibrahim’s set opened with a lilting and bluesy bass and flute duo take on Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood,” with a tempo, and gutsy, bravura flute soloing that emphasized the sunny side of fond memories, rather than the melancholic approach often taken to this classic ballad.

Next came John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” with the bass/woodwind duo once again stating the theme and running a couple of choruses alone, before pausing for the first of the evening’s many solo piano interludes.

Ibrahim didn’t so much “solo” (in the usual jazz sense of improvising over a set of chord changes) as pose a set of musical questions on the song at hand, and each tune’s relation to his own history as an artist, and the history of jazz. By inserting, repeating, and connecting themes and melodies in a wide range of stylistic settings, he illuminated a deeply personal and insightful musical viewpoint, almost as if creating some sort of ever-morphing sonic diorama.

Here the pattern was set for the rest of the evening, with the bass/flute duo offering extended, virtuosic passages, both composed and improvised, before turning the flow back to the solo piano. Ibrahim returned repeatedly to a single, simple theme (evoking to my ear his anti-apartheid anthem “Mannenberg”), which he expanded, twisted, deconstructed, and reharmonized, shining fresh sonic light into unexpected nooks and crannies.

His playing was mostly understated, sliding effortlessly through genres and techniques from stride to bebop to Cape Jazz to post-modern classical. All the while making it sound completely natural and unforced. He judiciously deployed bursts of volume in forceful, jagged chord clusters, providing a turbulent counterpoint that put the more ruminative passages into stark relief.

All in all, it was a real privilege to see and hear this lion of jazz – one to check off the bucket-list.

The evening opened with a set from the Sandhi Trio, presenting world-jazz of the highest order. Featuring Yacouba Sissoko on kora, and Arun Ramamurthy on violin, they performed both original compositions, and traditional songs from diverse backgrounds.

Their first tune, composed by Sissoko, was in the distinct Malian style of Ali Farka Toure or Salif Keita (among many others). Both the violin and kora were featured on extended improvisations over a joyfully infectious, loping groove maintained by the group’s percussionist. After the kora set the rhythm, Ramamurthy’s South Asian-style violin slithered around a wonderfully sly solo that wove in and out of all the “in-between” notes that are mostly forbidden in Western musical notation. Sissoko’s following kora improvisation was breathtakingly virtuosic, with a speed and complexity made all the more impressive by the kora technique of plucking its unfretted strings using only two thumbs. High point of the evening for me.

An ancient traditional raga – an appeal to the Hindu deity Krishna – was next on the agenda. The violin took center stage in this slower, less frenetic composition, laying out a reasonable yet pitiable entreaty that no god could fail to respond to. Sissoko displayed his considerable range, somehow blending the kora seamlessly into the long, sustained notes of the violin, despite the complete absence of sustain available from the plucked strings of the kora.

Their last number featured their percussionist, who this reviewer regretfully failed to identify. He set up a driving rhythm on a thin, Tuareg-style metal tambourine, then deployed chops from tapping to thumb rolls as he was given room to unleash an expressive solo.

Kudos to the Egg and their Resonance Series for combining such seemingly disparate genres into a thought-provoking cross-cultural musical evening. The series concludes Sunday, December 8, 2024 with Veena and Devesh Chandra presenting an interactive Raga workshop