Jazzitalia - Saskia Laroo : Really Jazzy
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Laroo Records 2008
Saskia Laroo
Really Jazzy


1. Jazzn'Jamz
2. Courtesy to Coltrane
3. Really Jazzy
4. Up the Mountain
5. Same Song
6. Munchin'
7. Kumpa
8. Big Blues
9. Nightgarden
10. Funky Roads
11. Jealousy
12. Go For It

Saskia Laroo - trumpet, saxophone, upright bass & vocals
Warren Byrd - Keyboardist/singer/co-arranger
Frank Lacey - trombonist/vocalist
Gene Jackson - drummer
Ronald Wright - drummer
rappers Stewlocks, Firestorm and Phantom, beatboxer Eyesful



A few years away from a recording studio can do some good...

The poly-instrumentalist, and composer from Holland, Saskia Laroo has during this time found a way to refine her musical research, between energetic spaces of electronic jazz and Hip Hop, in which the presence of the keyboarder Warren Byrd and from a trio of rappers (Mc Stewlocks, Mc Firestorm and Mc Phantom) has without a doubt produced some brilliant ideas for her fifth album release, coming to us with a more than significant title, "Really Jazz".



Between mélanges of densely stylistic improvisations, of encounters perfectly set against each other between the trumpet, sax, drum'n bass and vocals, she vigorously shows us the light with this versatile "Lady Miles of Europe" – as opportunely acclaimed by the American public – that, a few decades of age magnificently exhibited here, she is still among the few artists who are constantly on the research of chromatic variants, of unpredictable styles, of vehement crossings of some lines of bop with trial rhythms and urban ones that define "Nu Jazz" which, in this case, would be too reductive.

Rather than think of a way of outlining this case (as we assert more often than not) an eclectic buzz of a "swingin' body-music" - cocktail instinctive of Hip Hop, jazz, salsa, funk, reggae, world – that few are able to suggest with so much unimaginable confidence.

Of the rest, the proof of this artist has already been given to us in "Sunset Eyes" with the great company of the tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards and of the vocalist Ernie Andrews [Laroo Records & Music, 2000], an unforgettable album.

So, here we are, to shine light on a soul that is orientated towards the electric Davis, the percussive styling of the James T. Taylor Quartet, to the verve of George Clinton: the necessary landscape for those percolations of contemporary breeds, for those transversal waves that shatter those networks of volcanic traumas that always require great attention to the "pleasing sound" for the final destination of the sound.

For Saskia it is necessary to try, to experience different languages, different syntax's, different imaginations; as was affirmed in some more recent interviews: "It can be quite nice and relaxing to stay within your own musical scene for a lot of musicians….I am a very curious person, though, who loves to take great musical risks… so I can appreciate different styles."

So good to see, they aren't statements similar to those of John Coltrane, of Miles Davisor Charlie Parker?

Saskia launches long notes in "legato" in a confident way, she climbs over the beats with a bitingly incisive way which seem to make it possible to generate a tension without "screaming", the accentuation of the phrases indicate a multi-directional and inventive action and launches the soloers (in this way, and like in the davisesque "Doo-Bop"), the accompanying phrases flow fluently and dynamically with a lightness, a subtlety, and precision, solid in disposing its proper chords in "blocks".

The stamp on this renders the entrances real and proper events of a magma level, followed rapidly after by columns of arpeggios, with small substitutions of chords that intend to give vibrant weight and an immersed melody in a stormy dimension that is almost suspended.

The movement appears substantially Coltranian, with starting attacks and an anchored phrasing in tension and stretching, up until it arrives at an extreme that is pushed in virtue to a design that avoids and confirms markedly the harmonic fundamentals, vaulting in an extremely free pithy of rhythm and dancing on a "baroque" plot of electric colours, that exercises to who listens, a singular hypnotic fascination, that is not only a must in the chromatic alchemy but above all to the luminescent volume of the sonorous amplified recordings in a plastic and solar fashion.

In the musical environment of Holland, this has always seemed to have happened: soul, blues and jazz meet the afro, the caraibic, the Latin, the oriental, the Slavonic and the classical.

Saskia is testimony to the vitality in her sound, in her groove that encourages the bodily movement, to the amusement (or to the divertissement, which perceives the apex of its intentions) through the energetical improvisations, the proper riffs of the blue notes, the freedom of thinking, the overwhelming, nice, sincere and absolutely sharable indifference for the pale and purist critic: her principal preoccupations is that the music "arrives", that it gives joy to the public and herself. And for so much, we can only be grateful to her.

Fabrizio Ciccarelli for Jazzitalia













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Publishing Date: 16/11/2008

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