Carlo Mombelli’s new Jazz album is gripping

20 March 2016 - 02:00 By Lloyd Gedye

When bassist Carlo Mombelli took to the stage last weekend at Joburg's premier jazz club, The Orbit, not many in the audience could have known that his first gig was opening for the stripper Glenda Kemp, whose routine was seen as so scandalous in the '70s that the apartheid state arrested her a number of times for public indecency."My first live performance was very strange," chuckles the 50-something Mombelli in his Melville home."My dad was a chef and had his own restaurant. He used to have this cover band playing there and he figured it was a good idea to use me to sing with the band as I had this high-pitched voice and could sing popular songs by Michael Jackson. Glenda Kemp would come on afterwards. She had this pet python called Oupa that she used to strip with. After I had sung with the band I would have to leave as I was not old enough to watch the stripper."Since then, Mombelli has graced stages at music festivals in Rome, Stockholm, Oslo and Paris and played with jazz greats like Malcolm Braff, Lee Konitz, Johnny Fourie and Miriam Makeba.He has spent years making instruments out of junk, while at the same time composing for ballets, films and the Grammy Award-winning string quartet Ethel.story_article_left1Last weekend, Mombelli launched his new album I Press My Spine to the Ground.The story behind this album goes back to 2014, when he released the album Stories, recorded in the Idee und Klang studios in Basel, Switzerland with a number of European musicians. The only other South African on the album was vocalist Mbuso Khoza.When it came time to launch the new album in South Africa, Mombelli created a band featuring drummer Kesivan Naidoo and pianist Kyle Shepherd - two rising stars of South African jazz - alongside Khoza."I played with the Stories band, the Europeans, and it was amazing, but there was something else that was happening with the South Africans," says Mombelli. "When I finished a concert with the European group, we didn't reach that explosion of sound that we did with the South Africans."He wanted to capture this different chemistry in the studio, and the new album is the result. It features Shepherd, Naidoo and Khoza, although Naidoo has since left South Africa to do his masters in music in the US and has been replaced by drummer Tumi Mogorosi.  The show at The Orbit was Mogorosi's first gig with the band, but the musical language they shared felt instinctive and magical. Mombelli mesmerised the audience with a breathtaking show, performing all but one of the eight compositions from his new album and a few gems from past albums.The version of Trance By Chance from Mombelli's 2007 album, I Stared into My Head, was revelatory in the second set, while the first set's highlight was Bass Spirits, a new composition from his latest album.If the film Blade Runner had a scene featuring a jazz band in a smoky basement club, then Bass Spirits would be the sound they made.Mombelli's bass tone was rich and warm, the band enveloping the audience in a sound that felt like the aural equivalent of mercury.One friend leaned in and whispered, "This is the best song ever." Another responded, "Carlo Mombelli is taking us to church."Amen to that...

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