GABRIELA MARTINA & MAXIM LUBARSKY

EXPLORATIONS IN SOUND

Gabriela Martina, voice; Maxim Lubarsky, piano.

This artistic duo opens with the composition “One Note.” Maxim Lubarsky’s single finger teases one note on the piano, pumping it across space until Gabriela Martina enters with her own vocal notes to dance above his piano part.  Now the pianist has developed chords. She is wordless, like the piano. They speak to the world in tones.  Tones that roll off her tongue and his fingertips like sweet oil or honey.

Gabriela Martina is a vocalist, composer and bandleader from Switzerland. She spent thirteen years living and working in the Boston/New York area of the USA, studying jazz and jazz artists. During that time in the States, she collaborated with heavyweights like Meshell Ndegeocello, Jack DeJohnette and Angelique Kidjo. This unique vocalist grew up yodeling, which James Moody once told me was an important thing to master if you were going to be a jazz artist.  Today, Gabriela is an experimental jazz artist in Europe who has won the Arts & Culture Award in 2020 from the Culture Commission in Horw, her Switzerland.

Martina’s voice, accompanied by the piano of Maxim Lubarsky, pushes boundaries, singing from her heart without words, sometimes only using tones and vocal techniques to enhance their duet presentation. That pretty much explains the title of their album, “Explorations in Sound.”

As an activist, from 2009 to 2010, Martina was the founder and president of the Cultural Leaders Club at Berklee College of Music, where students investigated causes and effects in terms of race, gender, and ethnicity issues. “Sonic Relief,” is an organization that Martina cofounded. It was awarded the Berklee Urban Service Award in 2016 for using music to aid people in need, such as organizing a humanitarian fundraising concert for Syrian refugees, featuring Simon Shaheen and the Lee Swensen Katz Trio in December of 2015.

Her take on the jazz standard “All of Me” clearly shows her direction, using this duet recording to explore the outer limits of jazz and vocal expression. On this arrangement, she does sing the lyrics.  Maxim Lubarsky also offers his piano talent and expertise on the instrument as an exploration of modern jazz eccentricity.

Gabrilla also plays percussion instruments. Their music, although technically astute, defies categorization. Together, they transcend conventional jazz duos.  Gabriela Martina and Maxim Lubarsky offer their listeners collaborative creativity. There is the ever-present flair for freedom-of- expression.  After all, jazz is the music of freedom.  At times, this duo creates on-the-spot music that is improvised and openly experimental.

On the whole, this is an album of art, with unexpected musical pleasure pouring from their unique presentation. They offer their audiences imaginative performances and innovation, as fresh and organic as a cool bottle of purified water.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil

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