Tiga Trombone, the first release on Audible Beauty, features eleven recordings by the composer and pianist Alfonso Soliano, which were originally produced in a very limited run for local radio. Their rediscovery not only brings to light a little-known facet of Malaysian musical history, but also reveals just how consistently jazz has been able to evolve beyond its original origins.
Soliano combines jazz harmony with Malay melodies and polyphonic wind arrangements. This is where its quality lies: Soliano does not merely adopt jazz; he translates it. As a leading figure at Radio Television Malaysia – and thus also a pioneer of a local jazz language – he blends Western forms with the musical idioms of his homeland, without this resulting in a mere stylistic quotation.
In particular, the rhythmic sound architecture of the song ‘Masth Chantani’, combined with its traditionally coloured melody, reveals a distinctive local character that opens doors to other successful fusion works: ‘A Street in Bombay’, a song by the Mumbai-born guitarist Amancio D’Silva, also composed in the early 1970s, reveals parallels that offer a glimpse of the breadth of the musical-geographical network that was in fact woven from fine jazz fabric, and how, depending on the region, corresponding patterns were incorporated.
Tiga Trombone
