Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Ted Nash & Odeon: La Espada De La Noche
Ted Nash & Odeon: La Espada De La Noche
ByThis is no small achievement. Tango, within its founding Argentinian tradition, is not exactly laugh-and-the-world-laughs-with-you music. It deals with heartache, grinding poverty, gender warfare, political oppression, and knife fights, sometimes all in the course of the same song. As Astor Piazzolla observed, "you will not find one note of happiness within it." Nash clearly has real love and respect for tango, and has put some serious conservatoire and field research into the Odeon project, but he also finds humor in the music's intensely dramatic rhythms and melodiesand is not afraid at times to play it, if not for laughs, then at least for smiles.
We like smiles, and La Espada De La Noche, Odeon's second album after '01's Sidewalk Meeting, is a delight from start to finish, thoughtfully and gorgeously arranged and infectiously performed, as much fun to listen to as it must have been to conceive. Varying degrees of tango run throughout the setmore or less straightfaced in the passionate "La Espada De La Noche" ("the sword of the night," phallus or phlick knife? or both?), and cheerfully romantic "Sebago"; more impishly in the delicately wrought "A Night In Tunisia," a far cry from the sweating urgency seminalists Diz 'n' Bird and Dexter Gordon brought to the tune. And Nash's sense of humor extends beyond tangoficationto the fleet-fingered violin and clarinet-led reading of the Latin evergreen "Tico Tico" and indeed to the very inclusion of "Walk This Way," another tune in which violinist Nathalie Bonin makes a big and joyful impression.
There is also some fresh and seriously resonating music in Nash's arrangements of Rodrigo's Concierto De Aranjuez. "Movement 11: Adagio" is entirely liberated from the template created by Miles and Gil Evans (no mean achievement again) and is, upon its smaller canvas, as shimmeringly beautiful, from Clark Gayton's dirty tailgating trombone to Nash's soulful saxophone.
A real pleasure, vibrantly recorded (by Matt Balitsaris) to boot.
Visit Ted Nash on the web.
Track Listing
A Night In Tunisia; Sebago; Tico Tico; La Espada De La Noche; Concierto De Aranjuez, Movement 1, Allegro; Concierto De Aranjuez, Movement 11, Adagio; Walk This Way.
Personnel
Ted Nash
saxophoneTed Nash, tenor and alto saxophones, clarinet, bass clarinet, alto flute; Nathalie Bonin, violin; Clark Gayton, tuba, trombone, baritone horn; Bill Schimmel, accordion; Matt Wilson, drums.
Album information
Title: La Espada De La Noche | Year Released: 2005 | Record Label: Palmetto Records