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Dom Minasi Trio Takin' the Duke Out  (CDM Records, 2001) 


Did the Duke ever need to go this far out?  Or rather, did Dom Minasi
need to take him this far?  New York City guitarist and composer Dom
Minasi has been stretching the boundaries of avant and free jazz for
decades.  He carefully selected the personnel and the live setting at
The Knitting Factory in New York City for his interpretations of six
Ellington standards.


Minasi's dissections of these classics bare scant resemblance to the
familiar heads and chord structures.  Both he and bassist Ken Filiano
use a variety of attacks, from normal picking to percussive smacks to
strident bowing on the bass, but their playing too often diverges into
pointless flurries and screeches that add nothing to the music except a
shrill reminder that these guys are "out."  The lone bright spot of
comprehensible deconstruction is "Take the A Train," as the chords
disintegrate into divergent plucked Lines.  


Minasi's round hollowbody jazz guitar tone feels better suited to airy
chording or a ballad melody rather than blazing runs of notes, as they
tend to smear together.  The lack of any treble bite in the guitar and
the sparse trio format leave the live mix sounding boomy and 
indistinct, with only drummer Jackson Krall's cymbal work in the midrange
and higher frequencies.


The title perfectly describes Minasi's goal to deconstruct these
standards, and the turgid liner notes by jazz critic Bill Milkowski
belabor the expected snobbish reactions of "straight-laced Ellington
fans and scholars" and Milkowski's certainty that "Takin' the Duke Out"
will "piss people off."  The problem with Minasi's interpretations 
isn't that they stray from traditional notions of these standards, it
is that Takin' the Duke Out razes them so utterly into an avant void 
that nothing remains except tedious noodling.  


Reviewed by Scott Andrews [scottandrews@his.com]


More Info:

http://www.domminasi.com/ 


Track Listing:

Satin Doll
 
Don't Get Around Much Anymore
 
I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good
 
Take the A Train
 
Solitude
 
It Don't Mean a thing If It Ain't Got That Swing 


Personnel: 

Dom Minasi: Guitar
 
Ken Filiano: Bass
 
Jackson Krall: Drums






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