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raphe
malik 26 July
1997 malik trumpet 1. dominant
predicate (11:11) jazziz
magazine critics' picks top ten recordings 1999 "Raphe puts his technical mastery of the trumpet to bravura use throughout Con Sequence, pushing off from the initial structure established by the tunes into those extremes of expression where he is so at home. His sound is huge -- just one note tells you that -- but there's more to his playing than a big tone. Raphe has mastered the whole jazz vocabulary of the instrument. He can nail ridiculously high notes, execute the fastest lines with absolute clarity, and manipulate menacing growls, shrieks of anger and cries of joy with absolute precision. . . . His methodology is another way of doing what improvisers have done in America since the turn of the century: express the exhiliration of freedom and capture the joy that lies as deep within us as sorrow." --ed hazell, liner notes "Once when Duke Ellington was asked to explain why he didn't deem his music 'swing,' he said he thought it was 'more kind of poignant.' Poignant is a good word for this music, too. The horns tangle & cajole & boast, but listening collectively is never abandoned. To hear these bravura technicians take time to be intimate & cooperative is more than poignant, actually. It's a blueprint for emotional honesty." --ben watson, jazziz "ConSequences already sounds like one of the vital creative documents of our era." cadence |
