http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/life/story.html?id=93f30e13-dda7-49d5-ad8d-26a239ac8f62
October 9, 2008
BRUCE FREEDMAN AFRICAN GROOVE BAND
Live at the Cellar
NOW Orchestra Records/Cellar Live
AFRICAN GROOVE BAND EXEMPLIFIES JAZZ TREND
With all due respect to Toronto and Montreal, Vancouver is the jazz centre of Canada, a city where veterans of the scene continue to hone their craft with newcomers, many of the latter coming from the region's top-notch music schools.
The Bruce Freedman African Groove Band exemplifies this trend. Bandleader and saxophonist Freedman has been hard at it for decades, and here he shares the stage with a sextet of able musicians, including the young accordionist Tyson Naylor, On Live at the Cellar (NOW Orchestra Records/Cellar Live), recorded at Vancouver's premier jazz club, the band performs four lengthy improvisations. The band lives up to its name on the opening Little Melody in F, a flowing 6/8 number with a terrific soprano sax solo by the leader. Oasis opens in free time before settling into a groove reminiscent of John Coltrane's great quartet from the 1960's, where the sax solo follows an ascending arc to a peak. Double bassists Tommy Babin and Dave Chokroun begin Zen Death Poem with a lengthy dialogue, and Freedman performs a call-and-response exercise with himself. Drummer Dan Gaucher and percussionist Russell Shumsky dominate the Queen's Drone, which ends, oddly, with a fadeout. Naylor adds colour to each of the songs.
