Violinist Regina Carter was the first person to hold the jazz Artist-in-Residence position with San Francisco Performances (SFP), which she held between 1997 and 2001. Last night she returned to Herbst Theatre for her eleventh SFP appearance. The title of her program was taken from that of her latest recording, Reverse Thread, the product of what could be called a “personal ethnomusicology project” supported by funds from the MacArthur Fellowship she received in 2006.
Carter has emphasized that this effort was not envisioned as a “back to the African roots of jazz” project. The personal side involved her beginning with the musical influences she first encountered while growing up in Detroit. It turns out that she grew up near a Chaldean (Christian Arab) community with a rich musical heritage. This was the start of the “thread” which she then tried to trace “in reverse,” trying to tease out what influenced the influences, so to speak.
Like any good research project, this effort led Carter to unexpected sources. The most interesting of these was probably the music of the Abayudaya, the community of Jews living in Uganda. She also began to discover field recordings with revelations such as the position of the accordion as national instrument of Madagascar.
The “road to Madagascar” may have also resulted from Carter’s interest in exploring new instrumentation for a jazz combo. She came to the accordion and kora (a 21-string African harp) as melody instruments through her search for “quieter sound” (her words). This resulted in a quintet, led by Carter on violin along with Will Holshouser on accordion and Yacouba Sissoko on kora. Sissoko was particularly good at quickly retuning his instrument, allowing him to deal with the key changes across many of the pieces on last night’s program. The rhythm section for this group was then provided by Chris Lightcap on bass and Alvester Garnett on both drum set and additional percussion. (All of these musicians perform on the Reverse Thread recording.)
Beyond the diversity of sources that were presented last night (all of which were clearly explained by Carter and a few of which were preceded by field recordings), I have to say that the most salient quality of the group was their subtlety of dynamic range. Carter’s quest of “quieter sound” was both successful and well rewarded. While all the performers had microphones, it was clear that they were always listening to each other, leaving the responsibility of balance to their own awareness rather than relegating it to an engineer at a mixing board. Thus, the delicacy of Sissoko’s kora was never lost in a flood of decibels from the other instruments; and one could readily appreciate the unique stylistic voice that the kora contributed. Carter herself has a crystal-clear pianissimo that would be the envy of any violinist who prefers the classical repertoire; and this allowed her to draw more rhetorical depth from her melody lines than one usually encounters in folk sources. Holshouser completed this “melodic trio” with dexterous keyboard work (on both sides of his instrument) and the same sensitivity to the softer elements of the dynamic range. In the rhythm section Garnett supplemented his drum set with not only a variety of “folk” instruments but also a set of pitched drums, which he struck with timpani mallets and provided an evocative “timpani experience” without requiring room for those large kettledrums.
Whatever the source material may have been, there was no doubt that this was jazz. Each selection on the program provided rich opportunities for improvisation in both solo work and exchanges among the performers. The fact that almost all of these opportunities were taken without the usual hard-driving fortissimo made those improvisations all the more impressive. This was “chamber music by other means” in the most serious interpretation of that epithet; and it was an engaging reminder that jazz still has the potential to explore any number of new paths.
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