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CD Reviews

Kill Henry Sugar
Sell This Place

It's refreshing to find out so little about Kill Henry Sugar, the oddly titled collaborative project of Erik Della Penna (guitarist for Natalie Merchant) and Dean Sharenow (drummer and engineer for a lot of famous people). The two met while working on a Joan Osborne tour and quickly realized they had shared similar epiphanies at age nine, or thereabouts, when each lad independently set foot in an out-of-the-way spot in his respective home and said to himself, "No one has ever stepped exactly here before." Having exchanged this bit of personal history, the two formed a band (of course) and have just released their third album, Sell This Place, on Surprise Truck Entertainment. See? Already you know less about them than you did before. If you like this, try searching their CD insert for liner notes. Or lyrics. Or anything.

Fortunately, the work speaks for itself. Spare and soulful, Sell This Place comprises 11 perfectly moody little songs, Penna and Sharenow's rounded acoustic tones underlaid with edgy electrics and festooned with uncanny pop hooks and meaningful, art rock lyrics. The album veers from John Hammond-like blues lines to folksinger sincerity and quiet ballads sung with a self-conscious innocence worthy of Lou Reed-all recorded with silky precision and clarity.

Listeners can thank advances in digital recording technology for the viability of duos (Ween, Mike Halby and David Hidalgo's Houndog project) and solo acts (Moby, Beck). In the case of Kill Henry Sugar, the studio expands the pair's sound while maintaining their intimacy. The technology is completely transparent, with results that are sweet and nearly fragile. Kill Henry Sugar gigs in New York City and in the Hudson Valley. For their performance schedule try www.killhenrysugar.com. The dots in the upper left corner are for navigation.

-Todd Paul

Igor Butman Quartet
Prophecy

When a jaded jazz writer's ears immediately pop up during the opening bars of a hard bop set-and I mean really pop up-you know that something very, very special is happening. Hard bop has been with us for half a century. There's such a large pool of talented players who ply, vary, and renew hard bop that it's difficult to make something happen that's way beyond excellent.

Way beyond excellent is exactly the term for the Igor Butman Quartet concert at Bearsville Theater in Woodstock last February 28. The weather was not nice, plus Russia's great jazzman has not achieved the recognition that he should have in this country, so the crowd was thin. Just the sort of situation that can dampen things. Butman's quartet was not phased. By the end of the first piece, we were totally drawn into the exceptional music of a jazz ensemble that can hold its own any place in the world, as it had indeed done at New York City's Birdland the night before.

Prophecy, Butman's new CD, has the same level of excitement as that evening in Bearsville. Born in 1961 and trained as both a performer and composer at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Butman, a tenor, quickly rose to the top of Russia's competitive jazz hierarchy. He moved to the US in 1987, first to study at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and then the toughest school of them all, life as a musician in the Big Apple. After receiving excellent reviews for his first American CD Falling Out in 1993, Butman returned to Russia. He manages Moscow's top jazz club, hosts the country's national jazz television program, and plays with a who's who of the international jazz scene.

Butman's quartet is a real ensemble, a group that has played together constantly for five years. Vitaly Solomonov (bass), Anton Baronin (piano), and Eduard Zizak (drums) also trained to the exacting standards of Russian conservatories. Go right to the uptempo tracks 2 and 5 to hear how these four wizards can master and coordinate any musical idea that comes to their soulful imaginations.

Move over Big Apple. Butman's quartet returns to the Hudson Valley August 22 at the Bel Air Conservatory. Then there's a joint concert at Lincoln Center on September 18 featuring Butman's and Wynton Marsalis' big bands. Get ready for these don't-miss concerts by listening to this don't-miss CD. -Philip Ehrensaft