New Street

New String Star BEN POWELL Emerges with New Street, Including a Tribute to Stphane Grappelli with Gary Burton and Julian Lage Following in the footsteps of the great Stephane Grappelli, Ben Powell has developed a very personal inspired voice on the violin. His ideas flow freely with expression in every kind of music he's exploring. Bravo. - Joe Lovano Stphane Grappelli isn't on hand to pass the jazz violin torch to Ben Powell himself, but Gary Burton makes a fine stand-in for the late Hot Club pioneer. Among the numerous highlights on New Street, an album that showcases the British-born violinist's manifold musical gifts, there's the world premiere of Gary, a tune that Grappelli composed for Burton decades ago but that the vibes legend never recorded. A famously astute talent scout, Burton joins Powell on the eponymous track, along with the brilliant guitarist Julian Lage. New Street, a self-produced session slated for release on May 15, reflects the stylistically diverse sensibility of a musician who draws deeply from several distinct musical worlds. A classical prodigy who became obsessed with jazz as a young teenager, Powell plays swing with virtuosity and brio, while exploring various modern jazz currents with equal fluency. I have always wanted to do a tribute to Stphane in a special way, says Powell. I knew I wanted to dedicate some tracks on the CD to doing this, so with Gary and Julian's contribution this has been a very special tribute indeed. The album opens with Powell's ballad Judith, a warm, lovingly rendered tune that introduces his working quartet with pianist Tadataka Unno, bassist Aaron Darrell and drummer Devin Drobka (note the felicitous Bach reference in the final bars). He then kicks into high gear with the title track New Street, a steeplechase with alternating time signatures and intricate post-bop harmonies. As the title of Monk 4 Strings suggests, Powell evokes Thelonious' artful use of dissonance and cagey humor, layering the violin parts to create thicker textures. For sheer instrumental thrills, it's hard to beat Powell tearing through What Is This Thing Called Love with Gypsy guitarist Adrien Moignard, the most heralded young guitarist on the World Gypsy jazz scene. They're not at all stuck in the past, Powell says. All of them draw on so many contemporary influences to keep the music evolving. The projection of sound, and the tone quality they can create from their acoustic guitars is astonishing. I enjoy the parallels between that and good violin playing. Powell recently spent six months in Paris, performing widely with the Gypsy musicians and forging close friendships, Moignard being one of them. Gracefully displaying the ease with which he moves between jazz and classical realms, Powell follows with his quartet arrangement of Sea Shell, a classical piece for violin and piano written in the early 1900's. With his violin soaring over the rich harmonies, it's easy to forget that the piece is entirely notated. The violin's vast classical repertoire gives me the ability to explore these two idioms side by side. Being a classically trained violinist who plays jazz, I love blending these spheres and hope to encourage more violinists to do the same. Powell makes a compelling case for the compatibility of violin and voice on La Vie En Rose, an arrangement inspired by Wynton Marsalis featuring lissome Boston singer Linda Calise. The violin is widely thought of as the closest sound to the human voice. I don't often hear jazz violin and voice together, so I wanted to celebrate this combination. The album's centerpiece however is Gary, a tune that Grappelli wrote for Burton after their classic 1969 Atlantic album Paris Encounter. Grappelli sent the tune to Burton, who framed and hung it in his Berklee office. Introduced to Burton by fellow Berklee student Julian Lage, Powell mentioned that he was interested in recording a tribute to Grappelli. Gary said, 'It's funny you should mention this, because Stphane wrote a tune for me,' Powell says. But it had faded ove