YVETTE MASHUN DEVEREAUX: CHRISTMAS FAVORITES ON VIOLIN AND PIANO Several years ago at the Central Avenue Jazz Festival Teddy Edwards was performing with his big band. A violinist in the band, upon her turn to solo, stood up and no sooner had had she begun to play, then every member of the audience leapt from their seats in exultation, summoned as every auditor in that crowd was by a music of such ineluctable force and splendor. The virtuosity of Yvette Mashun Devereaux is of an exceedingly special kind, which is perfectly in keeping with an artist whose intensity, intelligence, and versatility place her at the very forefront of our musical epoch whether in jazz or in classical music. Her playing in its ceaseless combinations of acrobatics and grace, agility and finesse, dynamism and verve, bring to us a musical world of such immediacy that every listener feels personally addressed, feels as if the most beautiful kind of promise had now been fulfilled and kept! Violinist, composer, conductor (the first African American woman to serve as a conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra), Yvette Mashun Devereaux is certainly the supreme colorist, the supreme expressionist among all our contemporary musical virtuosos and it is one more reason why the music she brings to us warms and charms us so. We have not had often or perhaps ever before Christmas songs brought to us where the intimacy of classical and recital music for violin and piano combines with the "rhapsody, verve, and improvisation" of the jazz quartet. And this is the wonderful achievement of Yvette Mashun Devereaux and her accompanists on this album, Richard Turner on piano, Kevin O'Neal on bass, and Henry Alberto Mejias on Cuban and African percussion. Standards whether Christmas or jazz, pop or rhythm and blues are the waiting stations for artists to stage their individuating style. But on this album it is as if each one of these Christmas favorites has been invented for the first time. Here the songs are not merely marvelous versions, but compositional wonders. And where begin to describe the delight and joy this album and its music brings to us? With the uptempo and sprightly "Frosty the Snowman" or with the balladic meditations and reveries of "White Christmas", with the appasionatas and fortissimos of "Little Drummer Boy" or the adagios and plenitudes of "I'll Be Home for Christmas"? We could start with "Frosty the Snowman" where the compositional, improvisational, and performative choreographies Yvette Mashun Devereaux presents to us are so many dazzling musical figures and constellations. What turns, what leaps, what sallies and fancies, her bow with such delicious subtleties and velocities presents to us, these notes, chords, glissandos and accelerandos woven together as the most wonderful of constellations--dances!--whose profound emotional palpability endures and resonates within us and for which there is no other name that that of profound happiness. But whether it is in the uptempo portions on this album or in the balladic and meditative portions what must strike any auditor is the density and dynamism of this music because we are ever alert to the exquisitely rich texture of Yvette Devereaux's tone and intonations, her musical diction and voice. Listen to the sonorous plenitudes and expansions and above all the intuitive sympathies she and her accompanists bring to "Little Drummer Boy", to "Christmas Time Is Here", to "Silent Night", to "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman". How grand, how graceful, and how gracious this music is. And how adventurous it is--and how much it swings! Andrew Hill, the very great pianist and composer, and a man about whom I would say what Cecil Taylor said of Eric Dolphy, that he was the kindest and most gracious man in jazz, once said to me that without emotional sympathy and intuition there can be no substantial improvisational creation. Intuitive Sympathy and Heart. Body and Soul. These are so clearly the elemental foundations of the music and playing of Yvette Mashun Devereaux, of her musical virtuosity and musical hospitality, the elemental foundations of the songs she presents to us on this album that surely must count as the very best kind of gift and, again, as the most beautiful promise kept. --Steve Light--