Cadence November 2002 Ian Dogole, Night Harvest, Global Fusion 109876 Message From The Nile / Orca Stroll / The Big Dipper / Bemsha Swing / Point of Departure / Mbira Swatch / Methinks. 55.51 Dogole perc; with Dmitri Matheny; flgh; Sheldon Brown, ts, cl, ss; Paul McCandless, Eng hn, ss, as, ts, pennywhistle, b, cl; Hazef Modirzadeh, ts, karna, ney; Eric Golub, vla; Gary Fisher, John R. Burr, Bevan Manson, p; Bill Douglass, b; Hamza El Din, tar, oud, vcl. 8/99-9/00, Santa Rosa, CA.

Percussion-driven and with strong doses of improvisation, the music of Ian Dogole is an especially satisfying blend of Jazz chops and compositions with a world music sensibility. Dogole uses some of the classiest players in the Bay Area, including bassist Bill Douglass, who appears on most of the tracks, flugelhornist Dmitri Matheny and multi-instrumentalist Paul McCandless, an old hand at this kind of sound through his work with the Paul Winter Consort and Oregon. Although no two tracks feature the same line up, the leader's clear vision holds it all together with ease. From the earliest days, Jazz musicians have absorbed features of other music into the Jazz vocabulary, from Jelly Roll Morton's famed "Spanish tinge" to the modal experiments of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Dogole looks at that history and reimagines a tune such as McCoy Tyner's "Message from the Nile" by enlisting Nubian master musician Hamza El Din to contribute lyrics along with his oud and tar drum. Similarly, Monk and Denzil Best's "Bemsha Swing" is arranged with the rhythms leading the way for a sextet of four horns, bass and a cajon, a Peruvian box drum. Dogole's own tunes include the lilting "Orca Stroll" featuring McCandless on soprano and pennywhistle, "The Big Dipper," an overdubbed percussion extraveganza dedicated to Wilt Chamberlain, and the cyclical improvisational structure of "Mbira Swatch," a trio with Douglass on bass and Chinese bamboo flute and McCandless on English horn. Generally mellow but never wimpy or superficial, this music is a real pleasure, and the disc is well worth looking out for. And thanks to Global Fusion for including photos of some of Dogole's exotic percussion instruments. Stuart Kremsky Back to Press See Ian's Instruments