Search - George Cartwright :: Memphis Years

As founder of Curlew, saxophonist George Cartwright can lay claim to one of the downtown New York jazz scenes' greatest creations. With the late cellist Tom Cora, Cartwright made Curlew a quilt of influence, from funk to bop to rock. It was all adamantly populist, driven by clean, sharp rhythms and memorable melodies. For his second collaboration with Amy Denio, Cartwright again has scripted music to accompany lyrics written by poet, librettist, and all-around hipster Paul Haines. Like Curlew's A Beautiful Western Saddle, Memphis Years sticks because Denio's voice flaunts abstract distance while sounding like a floating camera taking motion pictures. She captures Haines's oblique texts while Cartwright and a cast of Memphis players blow a rhythmically decentralized series of tunes around the words. The music features Cartwright's soulful adoption of some Pharoah Sanders-isms and some soulful, big tones in general. This is a much more avant-jazz project than other Cartwright ventures, with great flügelhorn, trumpet, and piano. Denio and Haines make the music warm but never easy, fluid but never watery. --Andrew Bartlett