# New music by Pat Metheny, Marta Sanchez, Ben Williams, Avram Fefer and more: Videos, Photos, Sound

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2019/11/18/new-music-by-pat-metheny-marta-sanchez-ben-williams-avram-fefer-and-more-videos-photos-sound/
- Published: 2019-11-18T15:16:16+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Pat Metheny, “America Undefined”**

The wheels never stop turning for Pat Metheny. While keeping up a global tour regimen
unsurpassed by any jazz musician, this guitarist-composer is also constantly developing
new ideas — in terms of concept and execution, instrumentation and color. All of
which factors into his new album, From This Place, which Nonesuch will release on
Feb. 21.

![Pat Metheny's next album, releasing in February, is 'From This Place.'](https://
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The album builds on the core of a well-traveled band, with Metheny on guitars and
keyboards, Gwilym Simcock on piano, Linda May Han Oh on bass, and Antonio Sanchez
on drums. But it also features the Hollywood Studio Symphony — in orchestrations
by Alan Broadbent and Gil Goldstein that run more billowy than bombastic, with an
American character that reflects the Metheny sound-world. That’s certainly the case
with its overture.

“America Undefined” stretches to more than 13 minutes, with enough of an episodic
feeling to suggest a mini-suite. Its melody appears at the outset, first via Oh’s
arco bass line and then in Metheny’s hands. There’s a lot of detail to absorb here,
in the countermelodies assigned to bass and piano, and in the way Sanchez pilots
the tempo like a skiff in choppy waters. Simcock’s solo is a brisk and silvery thing,
and then Metheny steps in with a statement at once expressive and measured.

The orchestral arrangement on the track is by Goldstein, and for the most part it’s
extremely subtle, operating as an intensifier. (Serving much the same purpose, impeccably,
is percussionist Luis Conte.) The piece seems to wind down around 8:00, but Metheny
has other designs: its last five minutes nudge into more cinematic territory, complete
with sound effects.

There’s a likely metaphor in the track’s locomotive motif — the clang of crossing
bells, the huff and chug of the engine — but Metheny doesn’t spell it out. Just 
as the piece’s title feels intended as a conversation starter, its musical details
set a course for the journey ahead.

**Ben Williams, “If You Hear Me”**

Among the many distinguished Pat Metheny associates, past and present, is bassist
Ben Williams, who just announced his third album, I Am A Man._ _As you can probably
infer, it’s a sociopolitical statement, rooted both in the historic civil rights
movement and in its continuing struggle today. (Cornetist Ron Miles has a recent
album by the same title, a slogan from the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike.)

Williams not only composed the songs on the album; he also wrote lyrics, for guests
including Kendra Foster and Muhsinah. On the lead single, “If You Hear Me,” he smoothly
handles lead vocals himself.

Williams also plays electric bass on the track, of course, and wrote the arrangement
for string quartet. He’s joined by a heavy group of peers, including Kris Bowers
on piano and keyboards, Anne Drummond on flute and Jamire Williams on drums. The
short-but-sweet trumpet solo, starting just before 3:00, is by Keyon Harrold; the
tenor saxophone solo, from 5:40 into the fade out, is by Marcus Strickland.

**Marta Sanchez, “El Cambio”**

Spanish pianist Marta Sanchez has shown steady evolution as a small-group composer
and bandleader over the last several years — and El Rayo de Luz, her new album, 
holds to that trend. Due out on Fresh Sound New Talent this Friday, it’s a sophisticated
outing that capitalizes on a two-saxophone frontline, and on the considerable talents
of those saxophonists, Chris Cheek and Román Filiú.

[[

“El Cambio,” which has its premiere here, is a case in point, with a melody scored
in such a way that Filiú and Cheek both sound as if they’re playing on their tiptoes.
The song has a deceptively simple rhythmic cadence, expertly handled by bassist 
Rick Rosato and drummer Daniel Dor, with Sanchez providing choice chordal accents.
Her piano solo begins around 3:30 and accrues momentum as it goes: the picture of
composerly self-assurance.

**Avram Fefer Quartet, “Testament”**

_Testament, _the new album by saxophonist Avram Fefer, could reasonably be pegged
as an avant-garde all-star project. Along with Fefer, it features guitarist Marc
Ribot, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Chad Taylor — improvisers adept at turning
any digression into an epic. But the resulting musical summit doesn’t feel like 
a collision of forces (or egos) so much as a melding of voices (and minds).

[[

The album’s title track bears a dedication to Ornette Coleman, whose spirit lurks
therein (alongside that of another incantatory phantom, Albert Ayler). There’s molten
fire in Fefer’s delivery, though even he can’t outshine Ribot in this mode; the 
guitar solo on the track is an instant classic of its kind, before a terrific bass-
and-drums bramble that leads back to the theme.

**Julia** **Hülsmann** **Quartet****, “This Is Not America”**

We opened this Take Five with a Pat Metheny composition that invokes America in 
the title, to troubled effect. We’ll close the same way, via German pianist Julia
Hülsmann, who covers “This Is Not America” on her ECM release Not Far From Here.

“This Is Not America” was composed by Metheny, Lyle Mays and David Bowie, for the
1985 spy thriller _The Falcon and the Snowman. _The song has recently come back 
into active circulation — Camila Meza sings it on her 2019 album _Ámbar — _both 
as a grace note for Bowie and a comment on our current political state. Hülsmann’s
arrangement assigns the melody to her bassist, Marc Muellbauer, before setting the
stage for an impassioned tenor saxophone solo by Uli Kempendorff. The song follows
an arc from mournful stoicism to uncorked fury, which feels about right.

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