Exuberance - Live at Vision Festival

Bruce Lee Gallanter, DMG Newsletter

Exuberance is a downtown all-star quartet featuring Louie Belogenis on tenor sax, Roy Campbell, Jr. on trumpet, flugelhorn & flute, Hilliard Greene on double bass and Michael Wimberly on drums and voice. This is the second superb offering from Exuberance, the first appeared on Boxholder from last year.

I attended this extraordinary festival and this set was one the year's highlights. It opens with an earthy invocation of congas, voice, flute, bowed bass and tenor sax, a righteous beginning. This is a perfectly balanced stereo recording, sounding like you are sitting up front and center-stage. Building slowly in intensity, the spirits dancing, wailing and sailing magically together.

Both Louie and Roy have immensely warm and rich tones and sound as if they have been playing together for dozens of years. Each piece builds with an organic flow, the quartet moving in cosmic waves together, bending their notes around one another and erupting together.

"Evocation" is a shorter, calmer work that sounds just right in helping float back down to Mother earth to mellow out a bit before we launch off again on the final benediction/explosion.

"Incandescence", which erupts into another wailing wall with a nearly free/funky groove. The drums, tenor sax, trumpet and screaming vocal burn the voodoo down once more, so watch out.
A perfect ending for a stellar set!