Latin-jazz pianist Arturo O’Farrill and Swedish flutist Elsa Nilsson didn’t make an entrance for their Bop Shop duo appearance on Friday night. They nearly stumbled into the stage area, which consisted of a worn-down oriental rug with incongruous red curtains haphazardly hung behind it, set at the back of a scruffy record store. Atop the carpet was a simple brown upright piano and some limited sound gear, nothing fancy.
But when they began playing, propulsive montuno piano grooves and pressure-valve air-jet flute accents surged from their instruments. They were the kind of sounds that come from a world-class, eight-time Grammy-winning musician like O’Farrill, who leads the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra (founded in the early 2000s as the Latin-jazz counterpart to the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra), and an ascending contemporary jazz artist like Nilsson. Not only was the dive setting a contrast to their reputations, but their collaboration was equally unique: a venerable Latin-jazz musician and an emerging Swedish flutist sharing and blending their cultural influences and generational differences.
It was their first duo collaboration, despite living blocks apart in Brooklyn. The two have been inhabiting the same improvisatory circles in New York for years, and Nilsson has even recorded with O’Farrill’s sons. (The O’Farrill family, originally from Mexico, boasts three generations of professional musicians.) But it was across the equator in Chile where Nilsson and O’Farrill first hung out and realized a shared interest in the sounds of culture, place, and politics. The meeting ignited recent collaborations that led to Nilsson’s first inclusion in O’Farrill’s ensemble concert at the Havana Jazz Festival in January.
Their Rochester duo show on Friday, however, was preceded by a stop in a prison in Youngstown, Ohio. Yes, you read that right: a jail. Musical mavericks as they are, they weren’t in trouble. They were there to support the innocence of death-row inmate Keith LaMar by participating in the incarcerated jazz lover’s spoken word and jazz project called Freedom First Jazz. LaMar’s execution date was pushed to January 13, 2027, and the deadline is now on the horizon, making the project even more urgent.
Nilsson mentioned an upcoming release on May 31st, LaMar’s birthday, although it seems not to have been publicly announced yet.
The tunes in the Bop Shop performance weren’t political, but O’Farrill and Nilsson’s collaboration had the sense of a political statement in the ease with which they inhabited each other’s sonic worlds. It was clear which tunes each brought to the performance, even before they gave post-song explanations: O’Farrill’s selections had the topsy-turvy accents and flair of Latin jazz, while Nilsson’s were more experimental, textural explorations. They navigated each other’s territory intelligently. O’Farrill had no difficulty with Nilsson’s through-composed complexity, and Nilsson likewise offered timbral interest and nimble rhythmic precision in O’Farrill’s Latin-inspired selections, which simmered with energy.
Both instrumentalists’ easy virtuosity came through, as they scaled their instruments’ ranges and locked into each other’s playful accents. The concert had an unplanned feel, clearly two musicians who just felt like getting together and making music, all the more interesting for their unlikely combination. They often had to confer on which works to play and confirm that they each had the correct sheet music, which was shuffled around as they searched.
Adding to the unusual pairing was the bass flute, a mammoth-looking silver instrument with a subterranean hum, which Nilsson frequently swapped in for her flute during the performance. The atmospheric instrument was well-suited to selections from Nilsson’s “Atlas of Sound” project, a volume of works developed over the years in relation to place and nature in rarefied locations, such as Patagonia. Several of those selections were world premiere performances at the Bop Shop, mostly because, as an ongoing project, Nilsson’s recent travels over the winter provided opportunities to expand the rep. Between tunes, Nilsson mentioned they would be recorded soon.
But the Bop Shop has been a place of return in her recent adventures: she brought her “Band of Pulses” ensemble to the venue as recently as March and performed works that can be heard on her upcoming album, “Liminal,” which will be formally released on June 12. Playing with artists of O’Farrill’s renown seems to be the latest feather in the cap of a rising and original voice in jazz, and resulted in a gripping and exploratory show at the Bop Shop.
With gratitude for the featured photograph by Aaron Winters.
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