Felipe Salles – ‘Camera Obscura’

Brazilian-born composer and saxophonist Felipe Salles has been based in the US since the mid 1990s. ‘Camera Obscura’ is major new work, concerned with shifting perspectives, and this is reflected in the variety of musical styles which are traversed in course of the album’s ten compositions: you hear straight-ahead jazz, various Latin-American influences as well as classic and modern chamber music. This is a heavyweight compositional triumph from the former Guggenheim Foundation Composition Fellow, carefully organised into tunes that follow the main theme and four shorter interludes that riff on different aspects of memory and its interaction with perception.

The album title refers to the natural phenomenon whereby light rays entering a dark chamber through a small hole create an upside down mirror-image on the surface they strike. As a precursor of photography, the concept is also extended Salles to include contrasting light and shadow in the tunes. You hear the harmonic and rhythmic shifting that represents this idea throughout the major pieces of the album. But it is also embodied in the musical personnel that deliver on this project. Salles’s quartet – Uruguayan-born Nando Michelin (piano), Keala Kaumeheiwa (bass) and Steve Langone (drums) are joined by the Cushman Quartet, featuring violinists Laura Arpiainen and Amanda Stenroos, Anton Boutkov (viola) and Karl Knapp (cello).

On Salles’s single foray into songwriting on this album, “À Deriva” (Adrift) – with lyrics by Salles’s sister, poet Helena Tabatchnik – the ensemble also features vocalist Tatiana Parra. Salles himself plays a wide range of instruments on the album, including tenor and soprano sax, piccolo, flutes and clarinets.

Pleasingly, the result is not overwhelmed by either its conceptual ambition or the multiple layers of sonic capability on show. This is partly because Salles’ own playing always has a lightness of melodic touch, with many of the tunes and riffs having a recognisably Brazilian feel. This is apparent on the opening title track, where Michelin’s opening is highly evocative of light building a picture. He is joined by Salles’s sinuous soloing in the second section of the piece, before the Cushman Quartet come more to the fore and the tune builds to a full blend of classicism and jazz.

This is even more apparent on the tango-derived “Perspective”, perhaps the thematic core of the album, where Kaumeheiwa’s bass and Langone’s drumming are constantly shifting to accommodate the alternating rhythms, from romantic classical to what feels like 1950s popular music before evoking 60’s New York jazz. The saxophone playing is beautifully controlled throughout, choreographing the piece so that it all feels very filmic. “Rooms” (a play on Salles’ own name) displays another aspect of these pieces, which is the way in which different sections are often linked by moments of quiet transition, enabling a new and very different musical ‘perspective’ to emerge.

But this is also a very personal album. “Remembrance”, one of the interlude pieces, is Salles’ tribute to his mentor, saxophonist David Liebman. It has a highly classical feel and communicates strongly the anguish of loss as well as the memory of the life-force of the departed. Another, “Lucidity”, reflecting on the cognitive challenges of his elderly mother, uses the extended techniques of the Cushman quartet to create a truthful and affecting piece.

On the album’s final tune, “Trem de Prata” (Silver Train), Salles resurrects from his memory a now rusting hulk which was once a luxury train, on which he travelled as a child from São Paulo to Rio. Langone’s brushwork brilliantly recreates the train’s rhythm, while Michelin’s piano and Salles’ saxophone draw the passing landscape with aplomb. As the train reaches its final destination you feel that Salles has likewise made a successful journey.

Release date is 6 June 2025

from https://ukjazznews.com