Diaspora Suite is wild and exciting jazz flavored with a mix of old-world feeling, wrapped up, and billed as a modern take on Jewish music. The fourth in a series of Diaspora recordings (the first, Soul, followed by Blues and Hollywood) by New York artist Steven Bernstein (a man billed as band leader, trumpeter, arranger, composer, and producer) is the most improbable record as might be described as “entertaining” this or any year.
Choosing a single track from the twelve-track CD would feel almost flaky or singular—it would give the impression that this is a conventional record. What Bernstein has assembled is a suite, a set of musical recordings; what’s most important is how they come together. The answer to that is in riveting lockstep. The record bursts in moments as pure jazz, and others, as a slice of old Europe. The mental picture given is one of either a smoky downtown club or walking down cobblestone streets in a foreign country. The record is that dynamic. A disciple of Robert Altman (among other projects, Bernstein directed the band in the late director’s Kansas City), the work on Diaspora Suite follows the old man’s filmmaking zeitgeist: “Create an event and shoot it like to you have no control over it.” Bernstein’s work is tight and original, meaning he had some control over his work—the superpowers he’s assembled (try Nels Cline, Devin Hoff, and Ben Goldberg) and their varied influences only seem to seal that he is the harnesser of greatness. The impression of chaos on these original songs is nothing less than brilliant, bouncing between funk and Afro-Latin beats, folk music, and raw jazz within a single track.
I don’t know how you feel about the disparate pieces that Steven Bernstein brings together. They may be too much, too fractured—but not to this reviewer. It is a lovely meld. It is steeped in complexity, moments of which are as exalting as anything ever committed to compact disc.
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