 mandala music production |
bett butler |
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home The eclectic album “charts new musical explorations with poetic lyricism and complex ensemble compositions, revealing even deeper incarnations of Butler’s versatility—from progressive jazz to earthy blues, from traditions of chamber music and art songs to sambas and bossa novas,” writes poet Roberto Bonazzi, author of Maestro of Solitude: New Poems & Poetics. Myths & Fables features "When Love Has Left the Room," 1st Place Winner in the Jazz Category of the 2006 International Songwriting Competition. Click here to download selections from Short Stories from iTunes. |
featuring Available now on CD at www.jazzartstore.com or download from iTunes here. |
Maybe it was the crazy mix of musty musical treasures her father brought home from frequent forays to second-hand bookstores: dusty vinyl platters serving up Billie Holiday and Beethoven, Bessie Smith and Ernesto Lecuona, Mario Lanza and Ray Charles. Or maybe it was the wild disparity of gigs she played: melodrama theater and silent movies, tent revivals and weddings, down-home roadhouses and upscale nightclubs (her first public performance was at age four in a suave Mexico City lounge). But like category-defying artists Joni Mitchell, Cassandra Wilson, and Abbey Lincoln, Bett Butler refuses confinement to formula. It’s all about the story, the song, and the character, and where they go, she goes. And what stories, songs, and characters they are in Myths & Fables: the artist who dreams of flying beyond the oppressive domesticity demanded by her lover in “For Gabriele;” small-town residents still reeling from a generations-old suicide in “Secrets;” a saucy broad demanding equal satisfaction in “It Ain’t Over ‘til It’s Over.” (And every pet lover will recognize the “Angel in a Dog Suit.”) But her aversion to the predictable doesn’t stop there. The dark political fable “Grim Fairy Tale” bounces along as a happy samba. A soaring solo by Finnish fusion guitarist Jartse Tuominen turns the tragic folk song “Secrets” into a rousing rock anthem. And “Nothin’ to Be Proud Of,” a clarion call to conscience, is delivered with gentle, childlike innocence. Producer/bassist/composer Joel Dilley uses instrumentation, placement, and effects cinematically, creating the perfect aural mise en scène for each story, transporting the listener to the alcohol-numbed claustrophobia of “When Love Has Left the Room” or a lonely plaza where distant voices echo in his own composition “Recuerdos.” He and former Gatemouth Brown drummer Lloyd Herrman anchor this collection with solid grooves ranging from gutbucket to sensitive brushwork, punctuated by the world-music percussion of Mwendo drummer tbow Gonzales and the haunting gypsy voice of Dilley’s cello-like arco lines. In the straight-ahead treatment of Rodgers’ and Hart’s “I Wish I Were in Love Again,” co-producer/trumpet player Cecil Carter shares horn duties on his own edgy arrangements with alto saxophonist Richard Oppenheim, and Polly Harrison’s guitar on the bossa nova “Bitter Dawn” reverberates with Getz/Gilberto-era authenticity. On slide guitar, Gib Wharton brings the same eerie noir quality that he contributed to the title cut of Cassandra Wilson’s Blue Light ‘til Dawn, rounding out the list, as author Roberto Bonazzi says in the liner notes, of “first-call musicians who contribute to both the overall artistic value and entertaining sounds of Butler’s extremely sophisticated Myths & Fables.” |
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