Tatopani

STBs
November 24, 2005

Robert Belgrade--saxes, bass clarinet, tabla
Christopher Hardy—percussion
Andy Bevan--soprano sax, flutes, didgeridoo, kalimba
Bruce Stark--piano, keyboard
with Masaru Shimizu --percussion

It certainly didn't seem like it had been two years since Tatopani played together live. They were so fired up and directed, it seemed like this was the end of a successful tour not the beginning. The band's CD release party for their third and latest recording, "Azure," packed the large space of STBs with a full crowd of fans who had obviously waited for a long time.

The evening started with the lovely title track. The quartet got off and running, their blood pumping on a tune with a quick pulse and sections that cascade on top of each other with harmonic beauty. The band knows each other's playing so well that you hear the full flow of energy as they must experience it themselves. From this first tune, everyone in the crowd dropped deeply and directly into the music. Through the rest of the evening, the music stayed energetic and intimate.

What this band does so well is personal, musical interaction of a warm and human kind. On "Nepali Bicycle Song," the piano set off Belgrade's bass clarinet and Bevan's thumb piano worked off of Robbie's gutsy sax.    
And Hardy's drums, of course, fit with everyone.

Each tune offered another facet of the group's multi-instrumental, multi-ethnic, multi-composer, multi-multi approach to music. "El Jinete," the only non-original tune, showed the group's lyrical and graceful delicacy at its finest command. It's a slow and pretty song with subtleties inside the smoothness. "Leap of Faith," too was elegant and calm, but with a stately power to it. "Eleven" worked with a tricky 11-beat rhythm. The back and forth shift of "Eleven's" energy kept everyone guessing, and for once in the evening, finding it hard to clap right on beat.

The fans already well knew the original three members, Belgrade, Hardy and Bevan, but the addition on "Azure" of pianist Bruce Stark made the music even more special. On both the recording, and in concert, Stark beautifully constructed solos that felt like complete melodies in themselves. On tunes like "The Nepali Bicycle Song," and "Azure" the piano chords filled out the acoustic sound of the original trio's earlier releases.

The second set went back to their earlier material, and then expanded out to any even greater diversity of sounds. The stripped-down sax and percussion of the original three was raw and direct. They keep a very primal feel, even as the sounds, complexities and subtleties are gradually layered on to the core.

This is a group of individuals that doesn't add anything unless it helps. There's no percussion for percussion's sake, no frilly extras unless it works. The didgeridoo from Bevan was perhaps the most exotic of the sounds, but even then, there was no sense of overplaying. The solos, too, whether on the Spanish flavored "Delgado" or the more open-ended jams from their earlier releases, were all nicely, and neatly, constructed.

Call this world music, but "universal music" might capture better their sense of and fullness and completeness and their broad point of view of music's ever-expanding potential.