Feature photo: Lenny Gonzales
When you hear Apura!, you’ll hear the meaning of this Filipino Tagalog word for “very urgent,” because there is urgency conveyed all over this upcoming, double-disc release by Filipino-American guitarist Karl Evangelista. He’s long been a fixture on the San Francisco Bay Area improv scene, leading an experimental, art-rock group called Grex and working with all the biggest jazz figures of the area like Ben Goldberg, Scott Amendola, Myra Melford and Wayne Wallace.
While still in his early 20s in 2008, Evangelista received a grant to conduct research on the Blue Notes, a group of exiled South African musicians, whose drummer was Louis Moholo-Moholo.
A dozen years after that paper Evangelista wrote, Moholo-Moholo is in the quartet that the guitarist put together for Apura!, as is British free-improv jazz forefather Trevor Watts. Another Brit, Alexander Hawkins (Taylor Ho Bynum, Harris Eisenstadt) is the pianist for Evangelista’s cross-generational free jazz supergroup.
As heard on the three tracks we’re premiering above, this supergroup exploits the advantages of combining old school free jazz with new school free jazz. Evangelista is often that guy from the 21st century crashing a circa 1966 ESP-Disk recording session, setting up a lot of intrigue that puts this music in a place all its own.
An old pro like Watts knows how to invest plenty of emotion into his playing so that his free playing sounds purposeful, and he does just that on “Apura!”. But Evangelista does the same on guitar, coming together with Watts as a spiritual brother.
Evangelista’s Carlos Santana guitar tone on “Utang Na Loob” contrasts nicely with Hawkins’s active comping on piano but it’s actually Moholo-Moholo who competes with him for lead space, and the old master can quickly surmise where they guitar is going and adjust to him in real time.
Hawkins’ piano with Moholo-Moholo’s lively snare open “FDT” as throwback to 60s’ free jazz but when Evangelista shows up with his Sonny Sharrock amorphisms, it takes on a character that’s really like little else; Watts’s alto sax becomes the tonal focal point but that doesn’t stop the guitarist tossing barbs to push the song outside the already wide boundaries.
Apura! is going to drop on May 22, 2020, from Astral Spirits.
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