JAZZARIUM: Reviews of Arturo Stable's 'Notes on Canvas' and Ryan Cohan's 'One Sky'

Arturo Stabile
Notes on Canvas
Origen Records

A rich Latin jazz Pictures at an Exhibition,Notes on Canvas transports us into a synesthetic realization of some of percussionist/composer Stabile's favorite works of art. Other musicians include Paquito D'Rivera on clarinet, David Sanchez and George Garzone on tenor sax, drummers Danfis Prieto and Francisco Mela, bassist Esperanza Spalding, pianist Aruan Ortiz, and Victor Mendoza on marimba, with Stable's congas, bongos, and other sounds offering calibrated, quirky, but never simply show-offy hues and brush strokes. The Cuban-born New Yorker renders Wilfred Lam's La Jungla (The Jungle), Picasso's Guernica, Monet's Impression/Sunrise, Frida Kahlo's Self Portrait, Da Vinci's Gioconda, Van Gogh's Self Portrait, La Ventana Magica (The Magical Window) by Stabile's father, Arturo Sr.,Kandinsky's Composition No. 8, and Dali's Clock Explosion.

La Jungla is rhythmically lush with Sanchez's tenor sax carrying the main branch-swaying theme. Guernica is a sad fractured being featuring Garzone's mournful, bewildered tenor. Impression/Sunrise has Ortiz on a quiet chordal trek with Peter Slavov's agile bass and Stable's Cuban-box twitches giving the number a crazed-woodpecker tension. Kahlo is celebrated with the gentle gliding vocals of Esperanza Spaulding intertwined with Fernando Huergo's silky octave-leaping bass. In Gioconda, Da Vinci meets a Miles Davis kind of muted riff from Barry Ries's moody trumpet. Van Gogh's given a textured treatment undergirded by Francisco Mela's drums and Stable's restless congas. Stable Sr. is serenaded by D'Rivera's elegant clarinet--at once free and utterly precise--and Rene Izquierdo's delicate guitar. Composition #8 is stealthy and linear,and in Clock Explosion, time, under the spell of Stable's congas, is indeed combustible.

Upcoming for Stabile is a quartet album off the repertoire of pianist Frank Emilio Flynn, and trio and duet combos of Stabile's work. Give this imaginative album a listen and I think you'll join me in eagerly anticipating those projects.

Ryan Cohan
One Sky
Motema Music