Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi & Jean-Marie Collatin Faye @ Love Not Money, 10-21-23 from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.
In the wake of the devastation to the livelihoods of professional freelance musicians wrought by the digital paradigm shift, it is encouraging to see small record stores cropping up like shoots in a forest after a fire. Love Not Money, located @ 42 Eldridge Street in NYC’s Chinatown district, is one such shop. Specializing in analogue musical recordings like vinyl and cassette tapes, as well as related merch like vintage tee-shirts and posters, it is a prime example of this welcomed resurgence in “physical” music consumption and the venues that support it.
Another promising trend such stores represent is a return of live musical performance in situ. There was a time when such live performances in record stores were regular occurrences. The old, now defunct, J&R Music World regularly hosted such events to promote new releases … especially for jazz and classical artists. WBGO even broadcast the live jazz performances. But with the demise of brick-and-mortar stores, these live in-store performances ended.
So, when my friend and colleague Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi invited me to one such performance he and Jean-Marie Collatin Faye were giving on Saturday October 21, 2023, @ Love Not Money, I was intrigued.
I’ve known Sohrab for about a decade now… mostly through his artist rights activism and leadership of Musicians For Musicians and his participation in other groups fighting for justice for musicians.
I’ve heard his thought-provoking recordings, but this is the first time I’ve heard him live, despite us both playing on the same bill for some fund and awareness raising events.
I’ve always liked the duo format, because it lives or dies on the conversational aspect at the heart of the best jazz. I’ve found this to be true regardless of instrumentation. The masterful interplay between Sohrab and Jean-Marie confirmed this once again, but not in any way I would have predicted.
Their performance on Saturday afternoon was a revelation. Jean-Marie’s mastery of the arsenal of percussion instruments at his disposal functioned very musically as both the foundation and embellishment for Sohrab’s improvisational flights of fancy. Jean-Marie’s playing really engaged the audience of many passersby, despite his limited mobility (after all, his instruments were stationary). Sohrab, on the other hand, strolled back and forth, reminding this listener of Sonny Rollins, as he playfully interacted with listeners of all ages and nationalities.
However, the real pleasant surprise was how Sohrab held things together with no chords to shape the form of his improvisations. He strung together cogent thematic statements that unfolded with the force of narrative. He did this, by the way, while interacting with the percussionist and somehow managing to make verbal chant-like statements about the power of art and music…. all done in such a natural flow and engaging manner that many of those passing by stopped to listen and stayed for a while.
Like me, they enjoyed what they heard.
While the content was very different, Jean-Marie’s and Sohrab’s interactions come out of the tradition established and developed by Elvin Jones and John Coltrane, though Sohrab and Jean-Marie delved into more world music vocabularies. This amalgam seemed so natural coming from these cats that I have to conclude that it is their “happy-place”… musically speaking. It also produced much joy and happiness for the audience.
When the joy of the musicians is so infectious that it moves the audience, you are witnessing the reason live music is the most real manifestation of the power of music we have in this world of ours!
Bravo, Sohrab and Jean-Marie!
Review by Ken Hatfield (musician, composer, recording artist, author, educator and musician rights activist) – 10/22/2023
