The Room

Album review

Though The Room is the first recorded collaboration between saxophonist Sam Gendel and Brazilian guitarist (and Los Angeles resident) Fabiano Do Nascimento, it is hardly their first meeting. A decade ago, the guitarist's jazz band Triorganico played a gig at a restaurant owned by Gendel's cousin; he was present and they asked him to sit in. Afterwards, a bond and friendship were formed and the pair played together whenever possible, though it was only a handful of times. The Room was recorded over two days at Pacific Palisades studios in Los Angeles.
The intimacy on offer between them is remarkable, but is overshadowed by the seemingly effortless, almost telepathic creativity, musical virtuosity, and technical precision in all ten pieces. Given the pedigree of these musicians, it's safe to say that jazz provides the ground for their meeting, but it doesn't stay there. Opener "Foi Boto" offers a repetitive two-chord pattern on guitar that references blues and folk. Gendel's soprano phrasing recalls the playing of Paul Desmond post-Brubeck. Its constant, winding lyric melody is scalar but goes right at Do Nascimento's fingerpicked chords before he delivers a gorgeous solo of his own just before the nadir. On the swirling, strident "Capricho," the duo go right at one another as if they were playing a scherzo together. On "Astral Flowers," Gendel's soprano sounds like a flute as the pair cascade in a minimal set of changes across a deceptively simple vamp, as fingerpicked accents meet winding chromatics from Gendel. "Cores," the album's centerpiece, is a midtempo ballad that intersects Gendel's forlorn folk melody with sweeping, alternately strummed and fingerpicked minor chords. The twinned lyric lines of "Txera" are almost rockist before they go down a harmonic rabbit hole, seeking connections between Brazilian choro and classical and European folk music. "Poeira" initially sounds fixed, given its limited chord progression. That said, Gendel's soprano sounds like a flute and explores lyric harmony as Do Nascimento syncopates the rhythm around the elocution of scalar improv -- à la Bola Sete and Luiz Bonfá -- allowing Gendel to travel further afield exploring melody across the tonal spectrum. Closer "Daiana" is breezy, spacious, and sprightly, wedding samba, classical music, and elegant jazz to lithe instrumental pop as Gendel's flute-like soprano engages Do Nascimento in staggered phrasing and circular interplay. For a duo album, The Room, for all its graceful gentleness, is virtuosic. Their level of composition is simply enough to provide listeners with something to hold onto, while the improvising and interplay, though sometimes subtle and always deliberate, is sophisticated, creative, and sometimes even breathtaking.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo