Filipino-American guitarist and composer Karl Evangelista has collaborated with an impressive list of innovators from the jazz and experimental scenes including Oliver Lake, Myra Melford, Zeena Parkins, Fred Frith, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Roscoe Mitchell. For Ngayon, the second full-length from his group Apura, Evangelista welcomes the great drummer Andrew Cyrille into the creative fold alongside saxophonist Francis Wong, pianist Rei Scampavia, and bassist Lisa Mezzacappa. The results document a striking perseverance over adversity, about which more is detailed below. Ngayon is out now on limited edition vinyl (500 glass mastered copies) and digital through Astral Spirits.
Released in May of 2020, also by Astral Spirits, the prior release by Evangelista’s Apura was a 2CD and digital affair that announced its presence with that reliable jazz punctuation, the exclamation point. Apura! featured the organizing guitarist with British pianist Alexander Hawkins, fellow English saxophonist Trevor Watts, and South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo.
A word taken from the Filipino language Tagalog, apura translates as “very urgent.” That phrase just happens to be the title of a 1968 LP by the Chris McGregor Group, a South African sextet in exile that had previously recorded and made considerable waves as The Blue Notes, at least until the departure for South Africa of tenor saxophonist Nikele Moyake in 1965.
Along with Moholo-Moholo and pianist McGregor, the Blue Notes were rounded out by trumpeter Mongezi Feza, alto saxophonist Dudu Pakwana, bassist Johnny Dyani, and Moyake, whose replacement was South African tenor saxophonist Ronnie Beer. All the musicians listed here save Moyake and Dyani also contributed to the 1971 debut album by the McGregor led big band Brotherhood of Breath.
Although the name of the group that made it is different, Very Urgent can be accurately assessed as a continuation of The Blue Notes. And by extension, through the participation of Moholo-Moholo and Watts, Evangelista’s Apura was in part intended to honor and engage with the spirit of The Blue Notes, Brotherhood of Breath, Spontaneous Music Ensemble (a legendary Brit free improvisational group that featured Watts), and additionally, Amalgam (Watts early ‘70s outfit) by enlisting the musicians that helped shape those groups (Hawkins has recorded in numerous units led by Moholo-Moholo).
Originally, Ngayon (which translates from Tagalog as “now”) was conceived to bring Moholo-Moholo to California to record, but then COVID-19 and a succession of other factors led to the follow-up album’s cancellation, rescheduling and revision until finally it happened, not with Moholo-Moholo but with another exceptional drummer in Andrew Cyrille. The album’s five pieces deliver a powerful and inspired compositional and improvisational showcase.
Opener “Ngayon, Kahapon” begins with a theme of sorts before the collective, with Scampavia laying out, launches into an exquisite tangle of abstraction. A terrifically angular yet serpentine Evangelista solo emerges, followed by a burst of energetic blowing from Wong, and after a brief interjection from Mezzacappa, there is a return to melody that gives way to a more meditative, indeed peaceful stretch, and then a final, bolder restatement of the theme.
The whole way through Cyrille is accenting and nudging the action forward like an absolute champ, his acumen extending into “Sige Na, Bukas,” which exudes an almost free-bop-ish feel, Scampavia again notably absent. The highlight of the track is Evangelista, who initially darts around another spirited Wong solo and then tears into a suitably edgy bout of post-fusion-ish note-spillage.
The guitarist really lets it rip later in “Isang Bagsak,” though the piece opens with Cyrille alone, his dynamism joined soon enough by Mezzacappa in arco mode. When Scampavia (Evangelista’s partner in the art-rock outfit Grex) eventually makes her entrance in “Isang Bagsak,” it is with subtlety. She’s more at the forefront of the relatively concise “Santo,” as this time, it’s Wong that lays out. “Santo” is another unperturbed beauty move on a record that’s more about mood than improv skronk splatter, but in an appropriate twist, “Sinabi Mo Pa” is a bit of a burner for the album’s close.
Another of Evangelista’s goals for Apura has been to “foster ties between generations and cultures, identifying synchronicities between the legendary creative music of the past and the activist sounds of the modern day.” Listening to Ngayon, the intermingling of history and the current moment with a nod to the future is robust and fittingly proportionate.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
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