by Nick DeRiso
Luis Bonilla’s “I Talking Now” (NJCO/Planet Arts), from the first bristling blast of trombone on the title track, is dashing down a busy city street.
It’s difficult to tell, at first, if he’s running away from or toward something. Whatever the apprehensions, you are quickly surrounded by all of the nervy beauty and the exhilarating clatter we’ve come to associate with urban life — and with jazz. Bonilla knows this town, the alley ways and broken sidewalks, the best back booths at the greasiest little bandstands, the forgotten diners and the friendliest waitresses and (perhaps just as importantly) he knows his way back.
He takes us along on this kaleidoscope adventure through the full breadth of the trombone tradition, even while he pushes his own voice into the conversation. “I Talking Now!” breathlessly, thrillingly combines disparate influences — there is swing and free jazz, avant-garde and whispered memories from movie soundtracks, ballads and rock — in way that makes it both gritty and cerebral.
“Uh, uh, uh” guides you out of a cacophony of traffic and noise, down into a cool, free-form basement jazz club. Then you’re rocking along with “No Looking Back,” swishing a drink around with the funky beat. Back on the sidewalk, “Fifty Eight” pushes you into the world again like street parade.
This is the fourth album as leader for the California-based, Costa Rica-born Bonilla, who boasts an impressive resume of sideman stints alongside Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie of Art Ensemble fame, McCoy Tyner, Tom Harrell, Tony Bennett and Freddie Hubbard. He won a Grammy in 2009, too, as a member of the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, under the direction of Arturo O’Farrill, who appears on “I Talking Now!” at the piano.
A teacher by day — he is on the faculty at Temple University and the Manhattan School of Music — Bonilla perhaps unsurprisingly does a remarkable job of bringing out the best in those around him. Bonilla’s sophisticated yet unshowy group is rounded out by saxophonist Ivan Renta, bassist Andy McKee and drummer John Riley.
They provide contrasts, other ideas, but they don’t talk over Bonilla — a player with such a clear vision for the instrument, but one who also never lets go of his memory of this music’s lore and how that has informed his own life.
The city of jazz surrounds Bonilla, and he absorbs all of it.
As night gathers, and street lights flicker to life, the ballad “Closer Still” (inspired by Bob Brookmeyer’s “First Love Song”) and then “Triumph” (a poignant tribute to athlete/activist Arthur Ashe) convey a sensitivity and depth of feeling that many of Bonilla’s playing ability so often seem to lack.
That versatility within so many different textures and contexts makes the case for each of these moments — not as genre, but as American music now bubbling over the edge of a melting pot.
Bonilla, circling back toward the house now, closes with the swinging “Luminescence” and an enchanting waltz called “Elis,” dedicated to his daughter. And of course, there’s the title of the album itself — a memory from childhood of Bonilla’s father’s definitive admonition in the loud clatter of voices around a dinner table: “You chattup! I talking now!”
Shoes off, and top coat on a hook, Bonilla closes the door on this journey, tucked away again inside the comforts of home. He has returned, with new stories to tell.
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