This review appears in the April 2009 issue of All About Jazz-New York.
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Claudia Acuña
En Este Momento (Marsalis Music)
David R. Adler
It’s been roughly five years since Chilean vocalist Claudia Acuña gave us Luna (MaxJazz), a brilliantly conceived meeting of minds with pianist/co-producer/co-composer Jason Lindner, her strong ally coming up in the Smalls scene of the 1990s. In the interim, Acuña made In These Shoes, an overtly Latin-pop collaboration with Arturo O’Farrill, plus inspired guest appearances on David Gilmore’s Unified Presence and Joey Calderazzo’s Amanecer. En Este Momento represents a long-awaited return to the jazz spotlight and an auspicious move to Marsalis Music (Calderazzo’s label as well).
The CD features a streamlined quintet with Lindner, once again, at the core, layering lush atmosphere on piano, Rhodes, organ and Mellotron. The producer this time is Branford Marsalis, who gets the best from Acuña’s punchy, live-sounding band, with Omer Avital of Israel (another longtime Smalls colleague) on bass, Juancho Herrera of Venezuela on guitar and Clarence Penn of Detroit on drums. From any given standpoint — jazz, international pop —En Este Momento rises to the level of Luna in its tuneful appeal, exacting ensemble sound and expressive potency.
In adapting three songs by Víctor Jara, brutally murdered in Chile’s 1973 coup, Acuña strikes something of a political note, which shouldn’t go unremarked in these first months of the Obama administration. While Jara’s anthemic paean to Ho Chi Minh (“El Derecho de Vivir en Paz”) is hard to swallow lyrically, the slow and solemn arrangement works well. As if to turn the page on hopeless times, Acuña also includes Ruben Rada’s “Sueño Contigo,” a stirring example of Uruguayan candombe, and Jara’s “El Cigarrito” — both irrepressibly happy, immaculately played, demanding repeat listens. Songs from Cuba, Mexico and Argentina extend the disc’s idiomatic reach. Acuña’s “Tulum” and “That’s What They Say,” co-written Herrera and Lindner respectively, work a distinctive sort of magic as well — keening legato melodies, dramatic releases of tension, an emotive outline that will come to be widely recognized as Acuña’s signature.
Acuña and her band play Dizzy’s from April 15-19.
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