By Andra Jackson
The harp is asserting itself more and more as a jazz instrument with no better recommendation than that coming from the music of American Brandee Younger.
The Grammy nominated harpist performed in Australia for the first time last week (on Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 October) for the Melbourne International Jazz Festival at Brunswick’s Jazzlab and left the audience buzzing with excitement.
One of the best known and regarded harpist is the late Alice Coltrane who moved over her lifetime from playing jazz inspired music to spiritual music. There was a celestial and transporting quality to her music. She is one of two harpists who have had a great influence on Younger. The other is American jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby.
For the first of two concerts at Brunswick’s Jazzlab, Younger plunged deep into the Alice Coltrane repertoire to play one of the harpist’s more obscure works from her later years in an ashram.
Younger plucked the harp strings producing a melody that evocated a feeling of floating with one hand while laying lilting layers of harmony underneath with her left hand as it swept across the strings.
She also hovered over insistent short repetition phrases that gave the piece a rhythmic intensity. There was no doubting Younger’s virtuosity.
Making up her trio were fellow Americans Rashaan Carter and Allan Mednard who laid down hard-driving grooves. On the first movement of one of Coltrane suites, she performed fast ringing sweeps of the strings with one hand while playing melody with the other. She used her thumb to hit single notes and make them stand out. There was a bass solo that was like hearing a heartbeat while drummer Mednard built to a crescendo while hitting the cymbals for a bell like effect.
Younger also played music from Coltrane’s Ptah, the El Daoud album from 1970. Her hands moved around the harp picking out single notes that rang out, and short rhythmic phrases. There were melodic slides and ornamental flourishes from Younger’s harp while underneath Carter’s bass sounded edgy.
As Mednard laid back using brushes, Carter took off on a solo that landed on one single note with Younger in perfect synchronicity arriving at the same time on a single note finish.
Showing her dedication to move forward musically and expand the harp repertoire, Younger performed one of her own compositions titled Spirit U Will. For fun, the trio then showed their jazz chops on what Younger explained for “those who need to know” was an etude in C minor. She finished what seemed an all too short set but was actually longer than it seemed, by unveiling a new composition, Pinnacle. It combined a lush feel over a bubbling sounding bass.
The classically trained Brandee impressed with her technical dexterity across the harp but also with her jazz feel and strong rhythmic sense. Speaking later in the week at a radio interview at 3PBS as part of the MIJF, she detailed how compared to the previous generation the significant number of young musicians now playing the harp in jazz, both males and female.
