When alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa was considered a "rising star" among jazz bookers and critics, and not quite a full-blown headliner, he led a very good quartet. It featured pianist Vijay Iyer before he, too, found himself on magazine covers; its engine was propelled by a classic combination of double bass and drums.
Since the last quartet record in 2006, Mahanthappa has toured with a lot of different bands: They have names like the Dakshina Ensemble, and the Indo-Pak Coalition, and Samdhi, and Apex, and the Jack DeJohnette Group. All of those experiences seem to be stuffed into his new quartet album, Gamak.
It's a somewhat different quartet. Filling the piano chair is guitarist Dave Fiuczynski, a colleague from Jack DeJohnette's band who's also done deep studies of non-Western systems; he once founded a band called Screaming Headless Torsos, if that tells you anything.
But it also returns Francois Moutin (acoustic bass) and Dan Weiss (drums) from the previous band, and as dynamic as they get, the foundations and sonorities they generate are of anchoring comfort, especially in music as complex as this. The sum effect is of surfing on an information overload without drowning in it.
Read more: http://www.npr.org/2013/01/20/169520467/first-listen-rudresh-mahanthappa-gamak?ft=3&f=126134671&sc=nl&cc=jn-20130127
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