ILYA RASSKAZOV / MUSIC JOURNALIST – DJ / JAZZIST / JULY 10, 2021 / four 1/2 stars
“Detroit pianist and composer Kelvin Sholar recorded an album of jazz interpretations of Igor Stravinsky’s music, referring to the most famous works of the classics – the ballets “The Rite of Spring” and “The Firebird”. This story is amazing to say the least, especially in light of Sholar’s background and the circumstances of the album’s creation. A hereditary musician in the fourth generation, Sholar has, over thirty years of his career, played with a huge number of outstanding people on both sides of the Atlantic – from Marcus Belgrave and Roy Hargrove to Q-Tip and Moritz von Oswald. Jazz, funk, hip-hop, techno – he’s not afraid of anything; a truly versatile performer. The new album only fixes him in this status.
It is widely believed that Stravinsky is one of the most beloved classical composers of the 20th century by jazzmen. Igor Fedorovich himself was no stranger to jazz. At the beginning of his emigration, he was inspired by ragtime – however, it was during the First World War. Later, he was sympathetic to bebop, and in 1945 wrote Ebony Concerto for the Woody Herman Orchestra, the only work of his in which prominent elements of jazz were deliberately and clearly introduced. But the writings from which Kelvin Sholar is based were written in the 1910s. And, the fact that this music and plot, deeply rooted in the national Russian tradition, emerge more than a hundred years later in a jazz reading in Detroit, remains surprising.
As Sholar himself admits, Stravinsky’s impressionism struck him down at his first audition, while still in a music college. “On that day, I learned one of the most important lessons of my life: music is limited only by the imagination of the composer, performer and audience,” he recalls. After that, Sholar repeatedly approached the work of the classic and included his canonical works in his repertoire. The pianist had been planning to record a whole album “based on” Stravinsky for a long time. It so happened that in the process of creating it, the musician almost died of a heart attack, having suffered clinical death and waking up in a hospital bed after a two-day coma. Both works by Stravinsky are in one way or another devoted to the phenomenon of death and resurrection, and “Rites of Fire” became an even more personal project for Sholar than before.
This is probably why Sholar tried to take on as many roles as possible in the trio of his name. He is responsible for all keyboards, percussion and drum machines, with Jonathan Robinson playing double bass and clarinet and Jaimeo Brown playing drums. Greg Osby’s alto saxophone also appears on a number of compositions. The last, but not the least, participant of the project is the Detroit techno veteran Carl Craig, with whom Sholar has been fruitfully cooperating since the mid-2000s. Craig was in charge of the electronic parts played with the Doepfer A-100 analog modular synthesizer, adding a lot of drama to the album.
Nobody even hides that the author and the interpreters are inhabitants of completely different worlds. But these worlds nevertheless intersect, and there is a harmonious logic in the combination of folk music, classical music and jazz. Sholar’s music, like its original source, exists outside of space and time. This is the feeling that outstanding moments of the album leave such as “The Infernal Dance of the Kashcheyev Kingdom”, the final theme from “The Firebird” or “Round Dance of Princesses”… The trio and guests use blues harmonies, swing rhythm and jazz improvisations, which are organically combined with Stravinsky’s experiments with rhythmic structures and harmonies. Sholar uses the possibilities of a wide variety of genres: not only jazz and folk, but also blues, funk, experimental minimalism, aleatorics, cinematic music, electronics, even techno. All compositions are played in the same key as the original versions. In some numbers Sholar directly quotes Stravinsky, in others he allows himself and his musicians to go in their own direction, using the original music as a source of inspiration and a launching pad for improvisation. Most of the compositions are acoustical, but sometimes the sound of synthesizers, electronic effects and noise generators is added to it. Carl Craig, whose name on the cover, is definitely uplifting The Sacrifice, Ritual of Abduction and Adoration of the Earth.
Despite the bold cross-cultural and cross-genre intersections, the music of this album is not as outrageously complex as it might seem at first. On the contrary, the disc sounds soothingly simple: according to the author’s idea, the music should be available to any listener. And the creators of the album coped with this task masterfully.”
We got to know his talent from up close a few days ago, when he played in drummer Bruce Cox’s band, the celebrated Quintet X. And over the next few days, American pianist Kelvin Sholar will continue to play – with his own band, Esoterica – but with sounds that are entirely different, and although the pretext may well be jazz, it is elements of funk, soul, hip hop and the music of the Caribbean that truly characterise it.
In his short visit to our country he’s been impressed with the way audiences approach jazz: “It is really strange when you play in Greece in comparison to other European countries that have a tradition in this music. While in London and Paris people respond on the basis of technique, here people function more on feelings. And I think that has a lot to do with the powerful ties you have with your traditional music.