It’s high time to check back in with my favorite darkly erotic, harp-wielding, siren-luring, viola-beckoning, piano, percussive and bass jazz-jiving exotic ensemble, Jaggery. They have an incredibly special performance coming up on Friday, May 1st at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It is called Jaggery Presents The Beautiful and the Grotesque: Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci, an evening of original new music that coincides with and celebrates a visiting exhibit at the MFA of rare drawings by da Vinci.

The show is Leonardo and the Idea of Beauty and it features some drawings that have never been shown before in Boston.

Even by Jaggery’s usual ultra-high standards, this is going to be one damned classy gig. Most all the members of Jaggery have written their own pieces for the show and they explain their inspiration as being “everything from Leonardo’s studies of light and shadow on drapery, his forays into flight and flying machines, his bronze horse statue, an essay regarding correspondence between a music theorist and his portrait painter, to our own interpretation of Renaissance music.” Continue reading “Boston Survival Guide – 4/27/15”

Jaggery — For the Record – Live

by Jon Davis

Boston’s Jaggery have developed a sound that is wholly unique, and it’s only partly due to their unusual instrumentation: piano (usually acoustic), bass (often acoustic), drums, viola, and harp, along with female lead and backing vocals. Their studio releases have presented the intense vision of Singer Mali, with her powerful, acrobatic voice, evocative turns of phrase in lyrics, and imaginative flair for arrangement, along with the considerable talents of her cohorts. For the Record presents them at their best, in an intimate live performance, recorded supremely well. The set includes some of the best tracks from their back catalog along with new tunes. “O Scorpio” and “Come” from Polyhymnia (2006), along with “7 Stone” and “Javelin” from In Lethe (2004) are examples of the former; “Icy” and “Walls Are Windows” are outstanding songs that haven’t appeared on a studio recording to date. Throughout, it is Mali’s voice that rivets the listener’s attention with its extensive range and dead-on pitch, expressive in ways that few singers can pull off. For those new to the world of Jaggery, this is an excellent introduction; for the initiated, it’s a sweet treat and proof positive that the band is a formidable presence live.

article link: http://expose.org/index.php/articles/display/jaggery-for-the-record-live-2

Where The Wild Things Are

The strange and beautiful world of Jaggery live at Oberon

By Victoria Wasylak

by Dick Metcalf

. . . Next up was a band from Boston that’s on an extended (30 day) tour of the country that they call their For The Record Tour… Jaggery had played Seattle before, though I was still in Hawaii when they were here last.  The lead for this group is fronted by a truly dynamic vocalist, Singer Mali . . . and when I say that, it is with all the respect one might imagine… the music they play keeps the “prog” in mind, but is more attuned to that “prog-opera” I mentioned earlier in this piece… though I’m not intimately familiar with all the terms proggers use to describe their music, the lead-off piece sounded (to me) like “wicked chamber dirge” – some of the most impressive and powerful high-range vocal work I’ve heard in years.  Let that not detract from the rest of the group, though… each and every piece & player fully understands the story they are telling – and they don’t get “in the way of each other”.  A very powerful set.

Full article link: http://rotcodzzaj.com/?page_id=5130