Umoja Orchestra blew the roof off of Common Grounds this past Saturday night. The roughly 15 piece Gainesville-native latin/afro-cuban ensemble mingled some afro-cuban, dub, and traditional straight latin together with a youthful energy and pleasingly clean-cut hipster aesthetic to create a musical environment rife with positivity.
This group quickly becoming, if not already, a local favorite gathered a diverse audience. Teens, twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, seniors, white, black, hispanic, and every other music appreciating demographic seemed to come out in droves to watch Umoja Orchestra go wild. Warming up slowly throughout, talented, pleasing music and a well-paced setlist had the crowd hot like wildfire by night's end, with a majority of the stereotypical head-bobbing crowd shaking their hips and moving their feet for the last few numbers.
Their sound can be raucous and blasty. Traditional old-fogey music elitists may be offended by a noisy presentation at times. However, the sound songwriting and instrumental abilities of the group drastically outweigh their noisy tangents. The sound tech in the booth may also have played a big role in balance issues and technical fault. My personal favorite thing about the Umoja Orchestra is their powerful aura of positivity, good energy, and fun. The band obviously enjoying themselves on stage really helped fuel the audience.
Umoja is embarking on an east-coast tour, up to Brooklyn and back down the coast. Dates can be found on their Myspace page as well as an audio taste of their music. Note, though, that this is the type of band best seen live, their recordings don't do their live performance proper justice.
______________
The skinny:
Pros: good energy, talented instrumentalists, fun
Cons: balance issues, improper sound-boothing, technical problems
Make an Assessment:
Go see the Umoja Orchestra if you can. They're a relatively low-profile, independent band, but their live show is fun and entertaining. They bring a taste of world-beat music not highly visible in our current mainstream youth culture that acts like a breath of fresh air for jaded ears.
Overall Review Score:
Grade: A
Score: 97%
If it were a movie: ★★★★★
My Feelings: "I think I just baile'd with a seventy year-old man."
Showing posts with label concerts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label concerts. Show all posts
4.10.2010
Little Jake Mitchell and The Soul Searchers - Common Grounds 4/09
The highlight of the evening was without a doubt Little Jake Mitchell and The Soul Searchers (Facebook, myspace). This R&B group brings the noise, and keeps it funky. I can't say that I've seen a solid Soul act in a long while, so I was happily surprised.
This Gainesville based 8-piece brought bluesy, funky, legit soul to Common Grounds, the likes of which I didn't know existed in our small town. They seemed like a fun-loving, high energy, motley bunch of guys brought together by the groove. I am really curious to see these guys perform again, as they may be my new favorite current Gainesville band.
You can check them out next weekend (Sunday, April 18th) at the 5th Ave. Arts Festival. The festival will be going Saturday and Sunday so come out and enjoy some real Gainesville culture, but be sure to catch Little Jake.
Before ending this brief review/plug I'll also give due recognition to Heavy Petty. I'm not a fan of cover bands in general, but every once in a while a group comes together right, and that's what Heavy Petty had going tonight. They definitely had fun, and the crowd was really digging them. I'll be busting out Damn the Torpedoes tomorrow along with my dusty soul/funk catalogue.
______________
The skinny:
* Pros: great music
* Cons: expensive drinks
Make an Assessment:
*This review needs no assessment or scores, just go see Little Jake and the Soul Searchers and kick it with a tasty groove.
Overall Review Scores:
see above assessment
* My Feelings: "If you feel good say 'yeah!'--'yeeeeaaaaahhhhh!'"
3.21.2010
The Paul Sikivie Trio - Gainesville, FL 03/17/2010
Paul Sikivie is an amazing bass player. As the Gainesville Sun article (in the post link) explains, Sikivie has a great jazz education and a lot of experience under his belt for such a young musician. The Gainesville Friends of Jazz and The Thomas Center were recently lucky enough to host an evening with Sikivie and two other extremely talented young musicans, creatively dubbed "The Paul Sikivie Trio."
The New York City based Paul Sikivie Trio consists of Sikivie on bass, Aaron Diehl on piano, and Lawrence Leathers on drums. Individually these three are each very talented, but together they are a more than the sum of their parts. The combination is a handsome, young, energetic, and tight ensemble.
The setting for the show was very mellow. There was a small crowd nestled in the cozy atrium of The Thomas Center. It could easily have been billed as "An intimate evening with The Paul Sikivie Trio." I didn't make it to the show in time for any introduction, but as soon as I took my seat it was readily apparent that the talent of this group was much larger than the audience there to support them.
From the first note to the last, the most pronounced features of the music were a strong sense of whimsy and superlative individual talent from each member. The whimsical quality came out numerous times, bringing a humorous tone into the songs which pulled the audience closer to the music in a much more gratifying way than predictable passages based solely on technical skill. The solos weren't a dizzying flurry of fingers and drumsticks, but ranged from simple to highly technical while providing a great depth of rhythm and melody. Dynamic swells and subtle shifts in style from phrase to phrase made literally every solo worth clapping for.
The group succeeded in making music that not only displayed their ability to play with a level of skill that is rare, but also in making truly entertaining music that engaged their audience. Going into the performance one fear of mine was that either the group would present an extremely avant-garde session, completely inaccessible to the small-town audience, or that they would play watered-down elevator jazz standards meant to entertain a group of totally naive listeners, like scientists playing nursery rhymes for a room full of orangutans.
I'm not a very experienced jazz listener, so I'll be the first to admit that I can't fully appreciate much of what happens in good jazz. I can say though, that what the trio actually presented was probably somewhere in-between high-brow, inaccessible jazz and the "Jazz for Dummies" version. There weren't any sounds that could be described as really experimental, but they steered well clear of the elevator genre as well. I would have enjoyed perhaps a little more experiment with grooves and playing around with meter, more of a freestyle jam at times. I would love to hear what would come out of a jam session with these three musicians deep, like Mariana Trench deep, into a groove. However, remaining fairly straight, and away from a total jam wasn't necessarily a mistake because the arrangements were clean and good, never completely expected, and always fun. There were good, tight passages with substantial groove a number of times. Sikivie brought together a lively mix of well written arrangements that flowed well. I would love to hear a collection of jazz standards arranged by Sikivie and performed by this group.
______________
The skinny:
* Pros: Great Jazz, Cheap, Right here in Gainesville
* Cons: You missed it
Make an Assessment:
I am still very impressed by this performance. I haven't seen any good jazz ensembles in a couple years and this was a fantastic surprise for the Gainesville jazz scene. Thank you to Gainesville Friends of Jazz for pulling this together.
As The Paul Sikivie Trio is based in New York, be sure to try and check out Paul Sikivie, Aaron Diehl, or Lawrence Leathers if you're in the city. You will not be disappointed by any of these three awesome young musicians.
Overall Review Score (I haven't figured out how I want to do this yet):
* Grade: A
* Score: 95%
* If it were a movie: ★★★★★
* My Feelings: "I wish I had practiced more when I still had musical potential. These guys are awesome. I want to start a jazz jam. Where'd I stash all my Mingus LPs?"
Bonus points also to Mr. Sikivie for acknowledging his mother during the performance. It takes character to stand in front of a room full of people, a grown man, and thank your parents before playing a song specifically for your mom. Speaking as a true Mama's boy, I know my mom would have been proud.
The New York City based Paul Sikivie Trio consists of Sikivie on bass, Aaron Diehl on piano, and Lawrence Leathers on drums. Individually these three are each very talented, but together they are a more than the sum of their parts. The combination is a handsome, young, energetic, and tight ensemble.
The setting for the show was very mellow. There was a small crowd nestled in the cozy atrium of The Thomas Center. It could easily have been billed as "An intimate evening with The Paul Sikivie Trio." I didn't make it to the show in time for any introduction, but as soon as I took my seat it was readily apparent that the talent of this group was much larger than the audience there to support them.
From the first note to the last, the most pronounced features of the music were a strong sense of whimsy and superlative individual talent from each member. The whimsical quality came out numerous times, bringing a humorous tone into the songs which pulled the audience closer to the music in a much more gratifying way than predictable passages based solely on technical skill. The solos weren't a dizzying flurry of fingers and drumsticks, but ranged from simple to highly technical while providing a great depth of rhythm and melody. Dynamic swells and subtle shifts in style from phrase to phrase made literally every solo worth clapping for.
The group succeeded in making music that not only displayed their ability to play with a level of skill that is rare, but also in making truly entertaining music that engaged their audience. Going into the performance one fear of mine was that either the group would present an extremely avant-garde session, completely inaccessible to the small-town audience, or that they would play watered-down elevator jazz standards meant to entertain a group of totally naive listeners, like scientists playing nursery rhymes for a room full of orangutans.
I'm not a very experienced jazz listener, so I'll be the first to admit that I can't fully appreciate much of what happens in good jazz. I can say though, that what the trio actually presented was probably somewhere in-between high-brow, inaccessible jazz and the "Jazz for Dummies" version. There weren't any sounds that could be described as really experimental, but they steered well clear of the elevator genre as well. I would have enjoyed perhaps a little more experiment with grooves and playing around with meter, more of a freestyle jam at times. I would love to hear what would come out of a jam session with these three musicians deep, like Mariana Trench deep, into a groove. However, remaining fairly straight, and away from a total jam wasn't necessarily a mistake because the arrangements were clean and good, never completely expected, and always fun. There were good, tight passages with substantial groove a number of times. Sikivie brought together a lively mix of well written arrangements that flowed well. I would love to hear a collection of jazz standards arranged by Sikivie and performed by this group.
______________
The skinny:
* Pros: Great Jazz, Cheap, Right here in Gainesville
* Cons: You missed it
Make an Assessment:
I am still very impressed by this performance. I haven't seen any good jazz ensembles in a couple years and this was a fantastic surprise for the Gainesville jazz scene. Thank you to Gainesville Friends of Jazz for pulling this together.
As The Paul Sikivie Trio is based in New York, be sure to try and check out Paul Sikivie, Aaron Diehl, or Lawrence Leathers if you're in the city. You will not be disappointed by any of these three awesome young musicians.
Overall Review Score (I haven't figured out how I want to do this yet):
* Grade: A
* Score: 95%
* If it were a movie: ★★★★★
* My Feelings: "I wish I had practiced more when I still had musical potential. These guys are awesome. I want to start a jazz jam. Where'd I stash all my Mingus LPs?"
Bonus points also to Mr. Sikivie for acknowledging his mother during the performance. It takes character to stand in front of a room full of people, a grown man, and thank your parents before playing a song specifically for your mom. Speaking as a true Mama's boy, I know my mom would have been proud.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)