Programming a CD of jazz classics can be a mug’s game, especially if the compositions have a familiar resonance for many people. Play them too close to the originals and they sounds like imitations; make them too different and they sound like parodies. This brand-new CD by a Mediterranean trio attempt to overcome the challenge. Although impressive, it is not 100 percent satisfying. POMO to the Nth extreme, Trinkle Trio is supposed to be an example of “minimalistic repetitive patterns” — according to the booklet notes — but instead appears to be a heavy metal take on the music of Thelonious Monk. No jazz composition is sacrosanct, yet, while the band lead by Sicilian guitarist Paolo Sorge understands Monk’s idiosyncrasies, the members often miss the craft that underlined even his more astringent compositions. A touring unit, the Trinkle Trio laid down these 13 tracks — prologue, epilogue and 11 Monk tunes — in 2002. To some it may seem that the majority of pieces are played too uptempo and with too conventional rhythm. Nevertheless hard thought obviously went into the interpretations. It’s just that while the trio has come up with a solution on how to deal with familiar tunes, the solution is unfortunately almost the same for each one. A ringer — he’s French, the other two Italian — tuba player Michel Godard has insight into these sort of projects, having restructured ancient and/or atmospheric music in period or POMO settings with the likes of French cellist Vincent Courtois and sympathetic Italians like trumpeter Pino Minafra and percussionist Tiziano Tononi. Percussionist Francisco Cusa, who like leader Sorge was born in Catania, but now lives in Bologna, has worked with Sicilian avant players like saxist Gianni Gebbia and created a solo sound track for a Buster Keaton film. Yet here his rhythm sounds as if its inspiration is more from Alex Van Halen and Iron Maiden’s Clive Burr than Monk favorites Art Blakey and Art Taylor. Part of the disconnect may come from Sorge, who teaches, plays jazz and works on TV, radio and film projects. During his schooling he took master classes from John Scofield, Joe Pass and Joe Diorio among others and throughout he seems to be trying to force the pieces into a guitar mold, rather than adopting his guitar playing to Monk’s vision. As early as “I Mean You” — with the theme carried by Godard’s tuba — the tune seems to have mutated into a shuffle featuring Hawaiian guitar slides. Later, the tubaist’s digressions on the theme almost wilt beneath Sorge’s distorted reverb and effects pedal, so that the result is more “Telstar” than “Thelonious”. This Hawaiian reverb reappears on “Monk’s Mood”, with its balladic tone heavy with delay from the guitar’s bass strings. Although it shows one of the few examples of his brushwork, Cusa treats the piece as exotic nightclub fodder, with punished woodblock thwacks, whirl drum expressions and Afro-Cuban percussion. What could be African junkeroo percussion, chunka-chunka rhythm guitar beats and an extended tuba ostinato makes its appearance on “Bye-Ya” as well. As the drummer continues hitting his cowbell, Sorge involves himself in Hard Rock-style, razor-sharp flat picking and slurred staccato riffs extended with effects pedal distortion. It’s a glimpse into what would happen if Al DiMeola and Billy Cobham ever decide to play Monk. Putting aside the overdone arena rock guitar rasping, tremolo distortions and the time the drummer seems to suture a reggae backbeat onto another tune, the only other real disappointment is “Crepuscule with Nellie,” a tender tune Monk wrote for his wife. Using a wah-wah pedal to project slurred feedback and repetitive tones, Sorge seems to encourage Cusa to thrash different parts of his extended kit, and symbolically goose Godard’s tuba line enough so that the Frenchman appears to be taking some undignified hops away from the melody. Reverb from the guitar seems to suggest that Nellie’s twilight is in the 1960s in Haight-Ashbury with Quicksilver Messenger Service, not the 1950s in San Juan Hill with Monk. Some experiments are more memorable, though. “Friday the 13th” works as crackling, low-pitched thematic variation, bisected by slap tonguing issuing from Godard. Cusa adds speedy paradiddles and Sorge gives up chicken scratching and reverb distortion to double the tubaist’s thematic line. “Little Rootie Tootie” is looped with some tremolo knob effects that keep the melody spiky, although the vaudeville-style drumbeats could be been lost. “Evidence” gains an expansion of time and volume as Cusa plays half-step percussion, Sorge’s volume knob distorts the undertow, and Godard vaults to his top range to squeal out grace notes. Though unique, Trinkle Trio works less well, since at times reconstitution of the compositions seems to negate their original intent. With this lesson internalized and his obvious technique intact, perhaps Sorge will score more unequivocally another time out with less distinct source material.
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