Coluna do Luiz Orlando Carneiro (15/02/2009)

Hypnotist Sounds

In the festival everything is Jazz, of Ouro Preto, in 2005, an auditorium of more than 500 people - formed for demanding jazzófilos, neophytes and adepts of prog rock - vibrated with the hypnotist inventions musical (and sonic), between in and out, of the trio Jacob Fred Odyssey Jazz.
In the occasion, the group born in Tulsa (Oklahoma), in 1994, was a newness, and finishes to launch, for the stamp indie Kufala, the COMPACT DISC Slow breath, silent mind. Reed Mathis (low acoustic with pedal, capable to raise in two eighth above-normal a noise of the instrument), Brian Haas (acoustic piano) and Jason Smart (battery) were then the integrant ones of the trio, almost so hiperativo as the Bad Plus, “even so more composicional”, over all in the recriações of classics of the modern jazz, as Fables of Faubus (Charles Mingus), Naima (John Coltrane) and minor Off (Thelonious Monk).

The JFJO turned quartet, in middle of the passed year, with Josh Raymer in the place of Smart, Matt Hayes in the one of Mathis and the addition of the guitarist Chris Combs. But, before this, in March, it recorded in studio the virtual album Winterwood, that can be downloaded, of favour, in the site of the group (www.jfjo.com), that it makes question to keep the surrealist name of Jacob Fred - nickname invented for Haas for proper itself when it was adolescent. One is about a gift of the pianista-leader, commemorative of the 15 years of the JFJO. E also marks the farewell of the bonanza Reed Mathis, that signs six of the 13 bands of the “record” and arranges Song of the vipers (Louis Armstrong), beyond touching its basses developed, banjo and guitars (also lap steel, that hawaiian guitar-board, generally of six ropes).

The initial band, Dove's army of love (6m15), of Mathis, indicates the predominant climate of the session, with the subject kept in ostinato for the acoustic piano of Haas, while the stock exchange operator-guitarist and the drummer-percussionist raise, to the few, the rhythmic-sonic temperature of the environment, brightened up here and there for interludes of the pianist. It is difficult to need, accurately, where and when the improvisation prevails on the arranged parts.

Song of vipers (5m40) is one of the most attractive moments of the album, over all for the contrast second enters the rhythm line of brass bands of New Orleans and backbeat insolente (with shining exclamações of plates and címbalos) created by Josh Raymer. It and Haas are also the prominences in the metamorphosis of the part of Ellington (6m40), in which he seems to have parts in overdub. Old love, new love (5m58) and bird (6m13), both of the pianista-composer-arranjador, are melodicamente insinuantes, with delicate bachianas variations of Haas in this last one, developing in way the discrete electronic punctuations and interventions of the guitar of Mathis. This, in turn, is the star of The slip (7m15), also of its cultivates. Crazy fingers (4m48), from Jerry Garci'a, receives from the JFJO a beautiful treatment, good bluesy, and brings long and delicate a ground of Haas in the acoustic piano.

The JFJO produces a type of emotional acoustic-electronic jazz at the same time and intellectual, to the times until camerístico, without rejecting the roots of they mainstream, mainly most popular, as if it can hear in Earl Hines (4m15), of Mathis. The group is not considered to compete with the hiperenergético trio The Bad Plus (Ethan Iverson, piano; David King, battery; Reid Anderson, low). Transformed into quarteto, the JFJO left in long turnê (sold out) for the United States, leaving in the Internet, to the disposal of its fans, the last register of the happy Haas-Mathis association.