Artist: Alina Bzhezhinska & HipHarpCollective
Album: Reflections
Genre: Spiritual Jazz, Avant-Garde Jazz
Label: BBE Music
Released: 2022
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
- Soul Vibration (Evans) - 4:18
- For Carrol (Bzhezhinska) - 6:40
- Fire (Coltrane-Henderson) - 7:12
- Reflections (Bzhezhinska) - 3:46
- Afro Blue (Santamaria) - 5:28
- Alabama (Coltrane) - 6:06
- African Flower (Ellington) - 5:01
- Paris sur le toit (instrumental) (Bzhezhinska) - 3:47
- Sans End (Montolli) - 5:40
- Action Line (Ashby) - 5:04
- Paris sur le toit (feat. Sanity & Tom They/Them) (Bzhezhinska) - 3:48
- Meditation (Bzhezhinska) - 6:08
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For several years Alina Bzhezhinska, a Ukraine-born, Warsaw Conservatoire-trained, London-based harpist and composer, has been evangelizing the harp as a perfect frontline instrument for jazz given its wide timbral, textural, and color palettes. Bzhezhinska and a quartet evidenced her argument on 2018's excellent Inspiration. Reflection marks the debut of her HipHarpCollective. Over a dozen tracks, she celebrates the jazz harp by interpreting modal music, building on the primary influences of jazz harp innovators Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby. Bzhezhinska integrates their contributions in a modern sound rife with the sonic and rhythmic adventurousness of London's 21st century jazz scene. Her band includes saxophonist Tony Kofi, trumpeter Jay Phelps, bassists Mikele Montolli and Julie Walkington, violinist Ying Xue, drummer Adam Teixeira, and percussionist Joel Prime.
The set opens with a bumping, steamy version of Ashby's "Soul Vibrations" led by a rumbling, funk bassline and frontline violin, buoyed by sweeping illuminating harp. Framed by drummer and percussionist, she begins soloing on the melody, then returns for a head-to-head with the violin. The original "For Carrol" commences impressionistically before Phelps adds bluesy trumpet to a silky, funky shuffle by Teixeira. The harpist bridges, contrasts, and juxtaposes their conversation with hovering colors, sweeping asides and hip fills as an electric bassline cooks underneath. "Fire," co-composed by Joe Henderson and Coltrane, first appeared on 1974's The Elements. Kofi's tenor is punchy in the swinging head with Phelps in this Afro-Latin groover. The tenor exchanges lines with Bzhezhinska in a flowing conversation underscored by massive chords and poignant arpeggios framed by wrangling bass, hand percussion, and drums. The title cut is a lush, temperate ballad with Debussy-ian overtones. A reading of Mongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue" features a guest vocal by Vimala Rowe that rivals Dee Dee Bridgewater's 1974 version. The improvisational interplay between singer, Prime, and harpist unfolds organically yet mysteriously before the horns interject a tough, swinging, hard bop theme. The HipHarpCollective dig into John Coltrane's modal bag with a drifting, somber read of "Alabama," featuring Kofi's moaning tenor above cymbal washes and resonant, crystalline harp fills. The spirit of Duke Ellington's "African Flower" remains intact, yet Bzhezhinska expands its harmonic palette with Kofi's soprano, whispering percussion, and her harp in place of a piano. While the instrumental version of "Paris Sur le Toit" illustrates the band's masterful injection of hip-hop and trip-hop beats inside post-bop, the vocal take with rappers Lady Sanity and Tom TheyThem brings the heat with the harp's rhythmic accents and the violin's atmospheric tension. "Action Line" makes use of blues and spidery, funky neo-soul. Bzhezhinska's gutbucket theme and tight, canny solo hang above the rumbling rhythm section's interplay -- complete with Teixeira's killer cowbell. (Cadet arrangers/producers Richard Evans and Charles Stepney likely grinned in heaven after hearing it.) Reflections is a seamless whole. Bzhezhinska and her band craft a music equating timeless tradition and future vision without sacrificing emotion or taste.
Review by Thom Jurek