SARA SERPA
"Mobile"
Inner Circle Recordings
Usually, artists view the future as a
rather foreboding place full of anxiety and dissonance. Not so with
Portuguese singer/composer Sara Serpa.
Flaunting an international point
of view and a literary bent on her new album, “Mobile,” Serpa makes the future
of jazz sound like an edgy place that also has a hauntingly lyrical quality.
Kind of like high-sheen
architecture with lots of hard surfaces, softened by doors with rounded arches
and friendly portal windows. You can see it, can’t you?
Serpa’s artistry begins with her
classically trained voice, looks for inspiration to the poet e.e. cummings,
novelist John Steinbeck, graphic novelist Hugo Pratt and other writers, then
adds an uncanny ear for improvising flowing melodies into wordless sounds that
she calls vocalese.
With perfect pitch and a deep
appreciation for the possibilities of expression found in every chord, Serpa
can compose a song, add the charts, then perform the completed piece with a
blooming emotional awareness.
The sound occasionally dips into
atonal moments but mostly it has an ethereal quality. Heavenly, in a way, as if
all the singing angels are of a hipper sort.
There are no tunes, as such, but
sweeping waves with long curves of harmony that can feel a little disconnected
from other passages that are equally sweeping. Imagine a sky with several small
groups of birds flying around in different patterns. Serpa wants to portray all
of those patterns.
Theirs is a journey of
self-discovery, following Serpa’s magical road map of unexpected choices that
can’t resist knocking on some backdoors of the mind.
She is accompanied by an equally
free-thinking ensemble comprised of a rhythm section of Kris Davis, keyboards,
Ben Street, bass and Ted Poor, drums, joined by guitarist Andre Matos.
To find a copy, www.saraserpa.com
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