Powered by Google
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
News
Music
Movies
Food
Life
Arts + Books
Rec Room
Moonsigns
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Personals
Adult Personals
Classifieds
Adult Classifieds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
stuff@night
FNX Radio
Band Guide
MassWeb Printing
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Work For Us
Newsletter
RSS Feeds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Webmaster
Archives



sponsored links
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
PassionShop.com
Sex Toys - Adult  DVDs - Sexy  Lingerie


   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

Mingus meets dub
Club d’Elf’s floating musical crap game
BY JON GARELICK
More on this topic

The best of 2001: Best jam session.

When I reach bassist/bandleader Mike Rivard by phone, he’s on a break from his current "day job" playing in the pit band for The Lion King in Columbus, Ohio, where the touring production will be stationed until July 11 before coming to Boston. Rivard says his getting the job was a bit of a fluke: the show calls for acoustic double bass as well as electric, and enough classical chops to handle passages of bowing. A friend in New York recommended him to the tour’s contractor. "It’s cool. It’s definitely different from other stuff I’ve been doing, but as far as Broadway goes, it’s not too bad. There’s a lot of African 6/8 stuff in the show, and everybody’s really nice. And the costumes and sets are pretty stunning."

Rivard has been a utility player on the Boston scene for years, having gigged with, among others, the Either/Orchestra, the Indian-jazz hybrid Natraj, Mark Sandman–related projects like Morphine and the Hipnosonics, and Jonatha Brooke and the Story. But for the past few years around town, he’s been best known as the mastermind behind Club d’Elf, a kind of musical floating crap game with a revolving cast of characters who’ve been playing the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge every other Thursday on and off since 1998 and who come to the Museum of Fine Arts’ "Concerts in the Courtyard" series on Bastille Day.

Club d’Elf came together when the Lizard’s Billy Beard offered Rivard a night to do a night to do an "improv-groove-dub-bass-thing." Rivard drew on his wide association of friends. "I had this idea to create a situation where there would be a core group and we would have something of a loose book, some tunes that people would be vaguely familiar with, and I’d just have different people come in and kind of remix the tunes."

While Rivard held down a more-or-less constant rhythm section, a cool left-of-center all-star cast came in to jam: John Medeski, guitarists Reeves Gabrels and Duke Levine, DJ Logic, Joe and Mat Maneri, oud and percussion player Brahim Fribgane, keyboardist Alain Mallet of the Story. Loose jams are often better experienced live than on disc, but what’s remarkable about three new double-CD live recordings from Club d’Elf on the Kufala label (recorded on tours from 2000 to 2002, all available at www.kufalacom) is how compelling and varied they are from track to track. This is in part due to the inventiveness of the soloists, including John Medeski playing a variety of keyboards and violinist Mat Maneri conjuring guitar-like effects with his electric violin. But just as important is Rivard’s multi-lingual musical adaptability, as he creates one varied setting after another, drawing on Moroccan gnawan traditions (Fribgane’s contribution is crucial in this regard), West African, Indian, and funk. With that mix of settings and inspired soloists (Gabrels, Joe Maneri, Randy Roos, and turntablist Mister Rourke are also on the new discs), he avoids the jam-band trap of all-groove-no-content.

"I know what you mean about the jam thing," he acknowledges, "but it’s not like I say, ‘Let’s get up there and play an E-chord for 20 minutes.’ I try to make it a little more interesting. One of my big inspirations is Charles Mingus and the kind of relationship he had with [drummer] Dannie Richmond. When you listen to them play behind soloists, they shift things around. They go from a fast-walking section to a 6/8, they keep mixing it up." In shows, Rivard acts as a live mixmaster conductor, cueing players when to drop out or come back in, dub-reggae-style. Although rehearsals with Club d’Elf’s guests tend to be casual, he does work closely in rehearsing material with drummer Erik Kerr, whom he describes admiringly as "kind of like Sunny Murray meets Clyde Stubblefield" in his facility to shift among loose jazzy patterns and hard funk.

Rivard likes to find the right balance of blend and contrast in his mix of players (for instance, in matching former David Bowie guitarist Gabrels with microtonal-free-jazz visionary Joe Maneri), and he also tends to shape sessions around guests like Roger Miller, who will be joining the group at the MFA on keyboards. "Roger plays a lot of sampled ‘prepared’ piano, which really fits well with what we do, because it turns his thing into more of a percussion instrument." The band at the MFA will also include Fribgane, Rourke, Kerr, and Mat Maneri. As the live mixmaster, Rivard says, "I try to create an atmosphere where everybody knows they can go out as far as they want to go and there will be someone to bring it home at the end."

Club d’Elf, with special guest Roger Miller, performs July 14 at 7:30 p.m. in the Museum of Fine Arts’ Calderwood Courtyard, 465 Huntington Avenue in Boston; call (617) 369-3306.


Issue Date: July 2 - 8, 2004
Back to the Music table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group