Manhattan Vibes - Christos Rafalides

Aug

2

Manhattan Vibes - Christos Rafalides

≡ Category: 2000s, Jazz Funk, Latin Jazz, Recommended, Reviews, World Fusion |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING

Rating:

These days, young jazz musicians often signal the seriousness of their intentions by creating music that is very dense, harmonically challenging, dissonant and with very dark instrumental colors. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes a release like Manhattan Vibes refreshing. It’s been a long time now, but in the 1940s, jazz was popular music. It was bright, it was cheerful, and you could dance to it. Obviously, Manhattan Vibes sounds nothing like the swing bands of the 40s, but in spirit, it’s a bit of a throwback.

Christos Rafalides (vibes) has come up with a very interesting mix for Manhattan Vibes. There’s afrocuban, latin, hiphop, jazz, and a touch of rock, always with the sparkly sound of Rafalides’ vibraphones glittering on top of it all. Rafalides also eschews the dry sound studio sound preferred by serious jazz cats these days in favor of a slick production sound.

Rafalides’ rhythm section of John Benitez (bass) and Steve Haas (drums) make the music rock, groove or swing, as required. Guest musicians Randy Brecker (trumpet), Vinny Valentino (guitar), Luisito Quintero (percussionist), and Mary Wormworth (vocals) allow Rafalides a lot of flexibility in his sonic pallette, in terms of arrangements.

Randy Brecker impresses as usual on his featured solo spots, but the main soloist on Manhattan Vibes is Christos Rafalides. He is always tasteful, his solos swing, he is not uninteresting in his note choices, but he doesn’t quite blow me away. I guess I would prefer a more adventurous approach to harmony in his solos. Rafalides is a little mainstream for my tastes. He’ll dip a toe outside the harmonies during his improvisations, but that’s about it.

I’m a little more excited about his arrangements. I especially enjoyed the afrocuban lilt of Flamingo Strut, the hiphop jazz of Pocket, and the stop and go rhythms of C.R.@.S.H. I was less of a fan of the arrangement of Fool On The Hill by Joe Locke, which places emphasis on a number of pedal points in an effort to bring the Lennon/McCartney tune up to date and make it feel more modern. It’s a bit of a square peg in a round hole, if you ask me. Christos Rafalides has better luck with Caravan, which has been overplayed to such an extent that you’d better have something new to say if you want to ask listeners to sit through one more rendition. Rafalides achieves this by imagining Caravan in a number of rhythmic configurations, from swing to funk to polyrhythms. It all works, pretty much.

In any case, Christos Rafalides doesn’t play it safe with his arrangements and tune choices. It’s all pretty listenable, nothing stinks up the joint, and there’s a number of surprises. It seems churlish to demand any more than that.