Linda May Han Oh and Fabian Almazan At The MAC

Linda May Han Oh & Fabian Almazan
The MAC
Belfast, N. Ireland
22 June, 2023

Partners on stage and partners off stage, Malaysian-born, Perth-raised bassist Linda May Han Oh, and Cuban-born, Miami-raised pianist Fabian Almazan, have been making music together for 17 years. More than just deeply-rooted empathy and intuition, the basis of their music is love—a potent elixir. That the duo had brought their two-year-old son with them on this nine-date Irish tour and still had a blast was further proof of that.

Though this was their first time in Ireland as a duo, neither was a stranger to these shores. Almazan played Dublin in 2017 with the Mark Guiliana Jazz Quartet, while Oh played Dublin and Belfast with Pat Metheny the same year. For the last night of this Music Network tour, (with Moving On Music handling the Belfast date) the audience was treated to a performance of lyricism, passion and evolving dynamics.

Rhapsodic piano, Oh's ethereal wordless vocal and bowed bass introduced "Hacia El Aire" from Almazan's Rhizome (Blue Note/ArtistShare, 2014). The neo-classical opening ceded ground to a more robust dialogue characterized by the contrast between Almazan's animated pianism and Oh's measured swing. A sprinkling of electronic bleeps punctuated the swell, like lightning contained within storm clouds, but such effects were worn lightly.

The 90-minute set introduced several new tunes from Oh's fifth album as a leader, The Glass Hours (Biophilia Records, 2023). "The Imperative," a tempestuous burner, featured tight unison lines and striking individualism—intricate yet flowing. "The Other Side" morphed from poetic lyricism built upon wordless vocal and echo-drenched piano, to knottier improvisation, with Oh's richly earthy bass to the fore.

Oh switched to electric bass on "The Everglades," an episodic journey from haunting elegy to tempestuous release and back again. Almazan's dazzling play combined quicksilver glissandi with bold rhythmic contours in a bravura performance brimming with emotive energy.

Oh's funky, Malay-inspired "Ikan Billis" bled into the rhythmically vital "Hatchlings," where tape applied to sections of the piano's strings induced a pizzicato percussive accent. Almazan's quasi-West African aesthetic, combined with Oh's modulating bass pulses, occupied a hypnotic middle ground somewhere between Hauschka and Nik Bärtsch's Ronin.

Much of the duo's music was rooted in cultural and political soil—the beauty of nature, the threat to the environment and Indigenous tribes. "Jaula," inspired by Almazan's visit to an apartheid museum in South Africa, paid tribute to Nelson Mandela; lyrical and stormy in turn, the duo's neo-classical dialogue spoke to Mandela's unbreakable spirit.

A formidable bass ostinato introduced an untitled new composition, Oh's fiery bass groove working the spaces between Almazan's choppy chords and flashing runs. After seventy or so minutes of lively exchanges, the meditative "Mea Culpa" invited a collective drawing of breath with its somber, baroque undertones.

The duo cracked the whip once more on Almazan's "The Vicarious Life," a pulsating maelstrom of overlapping rhythms—piano and bass intermittently coupling in perfect sync—drama and passion. Oh worked her bass strings feverishly, bouncing on her toes like a boxer, as Almazan punched choppy right-hand lines and dark left-hand counterpoint. An absorbing concert ended on the gentlest of notes with "Sol del Mar," a ballad of Satie-esque allure, crowned by another handsome bass solo from Oh.

A riveting encounter, delivered from the heart by two musicians with a shared musical soul.

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