A DOUBLE ORDER OF EXUBERANCE: MICHAEL HASHIM / EHUD ASHERIE at MEZZROW (May 17, 2016)

Michael Hashim, June 2016.  Photograph by Tara O’Grady.

About three weeks ago, singer Barbara Rosene and pianist Ehud Asherie delighted us with an evening of music at Mezzrow; early on they were joined by the reed wizard Michael Hashim.  I have become used to hear Michael doubling on alto and soprano saxophones — our mutually pleasing acquaintanceship goes back to very late 2004 or early 2005.  But that night, coming from a gig playing for NYU graduation ceremonies, he brought his tenor saxophone along.  If you’ve never met Michael, he is an absolute virtuoso (and someone deeply interested in a scholarly way in many artistic endeavors that don’t have reeds in them).

Ehud Asherie is simply one of the finest pianists of this or any other jazz era, as a soloist or a wonderfully subtle accompanist.  But I think this is the first opportunity I’ve had to observe and record Ehud and Michael as a duo.  And the results, although too brief, are spectacular.

A dazzling CHINATOWN, MY CHINATOWN:

And a campanologist’s delight, RING DEM BELLS:

Thank you, Michael and Ehud.  Give this duo a gig!  A CD!  A weekly gig . . . !

May your happiness increase!

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WHEN LOVE LASTS: YAALA BALLIN and ARI ROLAND (2015)

Songwriters have always done well with the sudden romantic infatuation, the blinding green flash “across a crowded room.”  “And all at once I owned the earth and sky.”  But love that lasts when such mind-altering experiences have grown familiar is much more rarely a subject.  Oh, there’s WHEN YOU AND I WERE YOUNG, MAGGIE, but MAGGIE is no longer around to appreciate the encomium; there’s THE FOLKS WHO LIVE ON THE HILL, but that couple is also apparently fairly sedentary.

The song that I think of with great affection is the 1934 THEN I’LL BE TIRED OF YOU, music by Arthur Schwartz, lyrics by Yip Harburg.  I heard it first in a rather irreverent version by Fats Waller (when the song was new) and later by Vic Dickenson and Joe Thomas — instrumental but deeply fervent.  The simple melody is memorable (Joe delighted in those repeated notes) yet for me what makes it complete is Harburg’s witty conceit: rather than attempt to revitalize “I will always love you,” he turns it on its head in the conditional: “I’ll weary of you when these improbable events happen, but not a second before.” High fidelity, and long-playing, too.

Here’s a deliciously intimate version by the fine young singer Yaala Ballin and string bassist Ari Roland, recorded in December 2015 at The Drawing Room (video by the very gifted Neal Miner):

Even better than this video is the news that Yaala and Ari will be singing and playing on Sunday, June 19, at the pastoral hour of 3:30, at The Drawing Room (56 Willoughby Street, Brooklyn — right near a subway!)  Here are the details of that event.  And later on that same June 19, Lena Bloch, Russ Lossing, Cameron Brown, and Billy Mintz (the FEATHERY quartet) will be creating and improvising . . . from 7 PM on.

May your happiness increase!