The Orchestre National de Jazz, nine men and one woman strong, proved that mind-bending music can not only be entertaining, but also charming. Last Friday, on the last gig of a week-long, three-date tour, these fearless and sophisticated French musicians transformed the songs of English rock eccentric Robert Wyatt into the elegant, the alarming and the surprising.
It was the second winning Tri-C JazzFest show in as many days, following Trombone Shorty’s knockout gig at the House of Blues.
The Orchestre graced the 160-seat theater at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, drawing about 130. Bracketed by pianist/vocalist Eve Risser and electronics/keyboardist Vincent Lafont, the band performed 10 long tunes, capping a set of more than an hour and a half with “Poor Little Alphie” and “Te Recuerdo Amanda,” a “double espresso” encore, as musical director Daniel Yvinec put it.
Project-driven, as Yvinec said, the Orchestre has released reworkings of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. Its latest effort is Shut up and Dance, a collaboration with the similarly adventurous John Hollenbeck, an avant-garde New York drummer who writes for various formats, including the wondrous Claudia Quartet.
At the Rock Hall, the Orchestre featured most of the music from its CD, Around Robert Wyatt, a recasting of determinedly diverse tunes by Wyatt, the spirit of Soft Machine, an early-'70s British group that stirred jazz, trance and rock into a brew as psychedelic, if not as commercial, as contemporaries Pink Floyd.
The most distinctive feature of the presentation was building arrangements around Wyatt’s prerecorded voice. “I think his music… left a lot of spaces to make something different with it,” Yvinec said. “Robert Wyatt is going to be here as a ghost. He’s not dead.”
Packed tight onto the stage of the Rock Hall’s fourth-floor theater, the band played tunes by Wyatt (the wistful, wacky “O Caroline” and the brooding “Vandalusia”), new wave guitar pioneer Peter Blegvad (“The Song”) and Chilean poet/political activist Victor Jara (the final encore tune, “Te Recuerdo Amanda,” featuring the remarkable and eligible Matthieu Metzger on vocal/saxophone/electronics). For the pop-hungry, there was Elvis Costello’s “Shipbuilding.” For relaxation, there was Wyatt’s “Alifib,” a haunting lullaby.
Risser wreaked memorable havoc during her long solo, playing her piano inside and out. Texture was key to this concert, spanning sepulchral, highly processed vocals, the fatback drums of Yoann Sera, unusual wind-and-brass blends, and Lafont’s sweeping, unpredictable keyboard electronics. There was no line between the natural and the synthetic.
While the music was largely composed, with little improvisation, playfulness ruled and the virtuosity was unmistakable. The sounds were all about nuance, accent and dynamics; the voicings largely dependent on contrast rather than accumulation. This was not about power, though tunes like “Rangers in the Night,” Risser’s volcanic piano solo, and “Just As You Are,” certainly rocked. The concert, which blended rock, jazz and a singular brand of lysergic folk, was fascinating.
In addition to Wyatt, vocals were handled by Risser and Metzger. Risser was the most orthodox vocalist, Metzger the strangest – he occasionally sang through a kind of electronic wind instrument, a modern-day Vocoder – and Wyatt the most remote. Others handled various instruments in tunes ranging from the creamy to the spiky. The Orchestre – disciplined, engaged and passionate – transmitted the idea of a timeless, otherworldly musical community.
