from The Seattle Times:

The fourth Bellevue Jazz Festival got under way Wednesday with a sumptuous concert at the Meydenbauer Center by violinist Regina Carter and her group Reverse Thread.

Featuring Yacouba Sissoko on kora (21-string harp) and Will Holshouser on accordion, the band performed music from Carter’s 2010 Grammy-nominated album (also called “Reverse Thread”), which presented traditional music from Uganda, Madagascar, Mali and other African cultures, re-imagined for jazz quintet.

Carter’s group played with delicacy and a light touch, weaving the timbres of reedy accordion, violin (bowed and pizzicato) and the fast-flickering strings of the kora into a dazzling tapestry. Their dramatic use of dynamics — playing both loudly and softly and everything in between — was especially refreshing. The music not only lifted spirits but seemed itself to lift off from the ground, floating just above day-to-day reality.

Continue reading at The Seattle Times.

Category:
Seattle Jazz