Archie Shepp: Attica Blues Orchestra Live: I Hear the Sound – review

Attica Blues was a classic Shepp album from 1972 – an incensed response to the bloody state suppression of the previous year's Attica prison riot, using a big band and a wider embrace of the black music of the period than had been usual for the avant-garde saxist, actor and activist. This powerful remake was recorded live recently in France. The spectacular band includes blues-rooted vocalist Amina Claudine Myers, prizewinning new singer Cécile McLorin-Salvant, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, Art Ensemble drummer Famoudou Don Moye and a string ensemble. The music ranges across vivid ballads (Myers is distantly Nina Simone-like on the confiding Arms), Motown-inflected blues, brass-blasting funk (Mama Too Tight), and a gruff Shepp account of Come Sunday. On Steam, his old staple, Shepp's vocal fuses the sound of an early African-American balladeer like Billy Eckstine with the bruised, rough-edged sound of his own tenor sax. The structures here are traditional and familiar, but the playing is full-on, and the emotion palpable.