Downtown jazz band plays funky soul

Steve Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra is a New York nonet, featuring a five-piece horn section of brass and reeds, a foundation of guitar, bass, and drums, and drop-ins of violin and banjo. They’ve made a practice of not practicing, learning tunes and working out arrangements on stage and in the studio, giving their records the vitality of live performance seasoned by the simmered qualities of a road ensemble. Their repertoire mixes jazz-age standards with reworked contemporary pop songs, mating ‘20s and ‘30s classics with the works of the Beatles, Prince and Stevie Wonder. For their third album, they’ve focused on the songs of Sly and the Family Stone, with help from vocalists Sandra St. Victor, Antony Hegarty, Martha  Wainwright, Dean Bowman and Shilpa Ray, as well as Bernie Worrell on Hammond, Vernon Reid on guitar and Bill Laswell on bass.

As Greg Tates notes in his liners, Sly and the Family Stone date back to an era when collectives were a common social currency and bands mattered as much (if not more) than individual vocalists. Even among soul groups, however, the Family Stone stood out from the carefully groomed powerhouse acts of Motown. Not only was the membership almost defiantly multiracial, but in sound and style, the group was a combination of its unique ingredients, rather than a corporate-developed vision to which the members were trained. The aesthetic is a natural fit for the MTO, as Bernstein provides a framework within which the individual players express themselves – much as do members of jazz groups, and so to the members of the original Family Stone under Sly’s leadership.

The selections combine well-known hits (“Stand,” “Family Affair” and “Everyday People”) with flipsides and album tracks, including a drawn-out take on “Que Sera Sera” that models itself after the Family Stone’s 1973 Fresh cover. The B-side (and U.K. title track) “M’Lady” gives Dean Bowman a chance to wail against an arrangement that works violin into its hard-soul, and “You Can Make it if You Try” is taken by the band as an instrumental. Most of the tracks tread the fine-line between homage and reinvention, though Shilpa Ray’s brooding, gritty redesign of “Everyday People” may leave listeners missing the original’s effervescence. It’s no surprise that MTO has the talent to carry off this tribute, but the musical heritage it reveals is deeper than even fans might have realized. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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