Whatever "world music" is, or isn't, Texas oughtta be a part of it. So while the World Music Institute certainly isn't to be faulted for booking this show of harmolodic blues guitar set to a string quartet, the association seemingly was remote enough to leave half of the admittedly large Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, more than half empty.
If the world music crowd wasn't banging down the door for Ulmer's muddy, backwater blues, neither was his usual audience - presumably because the project presented is about a decade old (the program stuck pretty close to the 1993 DIW release Harmolodic Guitar with Strings. Still, both of the otherwise-engaged fandoms missed out.
Blood opened the set with five solo songs, culling material he's been using in a recent blues band with one-time Living Color guitarist Vernon Reid, playing standards such as and Howlin' Wolf's "Cool Drink of Water Blues" (also known as "I Asked for Water, She Gave Me Gasoline"), and, asking what city he was in, "Money (That's What I Want)". "Now that I know we're in New York and not Chicago, it's necessary for me to do this song," he explained.
Blood's solo blues was strong through his rough and blurry guitar lines, even despite the heavy buzz coming from his amp. And the man was dressed proper for uptown, in a black suit, white shirt and gray tie (with, of course, snakeskin boots). While his blues bands are easily the weakest of his various projects, as a solo bluesman he put his own imprint on well-trod ground.
After the brief solo set ("I'm finished with that. I've expressed myself."), Ulmer left the stage and Akua Dixon's Quartet Indigo played a piece of its own: a beautiful solo cello introduction followed by violins entering in unison flutters before developing into a full, four-part composition. Indigo aren't the most soulful ensemble, which makes for an odd pairing with Ulmer, who is nothi ng but. But they are talented and precise. If their one piece for the evening was a little light, they were more than competent backing up Blood.
The string parts for Ulmer's compositions run deeper than the quartet does on their own, and for that matter Ulmer played with more precision and more invention in the group pieces than in his opening set. He cued the quartet, running through the suite of short pieces, only stretching out the material on occasion.
Harmolodic Guitar with Strings is one of the more satisfying projects from a powerful musician who can miss about as often as he hits. Resurrections seem to suit Blood well. The revived Odyssey band was one of his more pleasant surprises in the last decade. If his electric blues bands aren't worth suffering through, at least be thankful he's got some worthy laurels on which to rest.
Comments and Feedback:
|