Castaneda and friends dazzle with ensemble brilliance

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Wait: Where’s the bass player? Colombian harpist Edmar Castaneda was on stage at the Spa Little Theatre on Thursday with drummer Dave Silliman, flute player Itai Kriss, and guest Joe Locke at the vibraphone. Each played conventional-sounding parts in their Return to Forever-like vamp-and-solos starter “Room of Colors.”

But under their tight weave was a booming bass line — that a closer examination revealed to be exploding from the low strings of Castaneda’s harp, while he zipped through a solo on the high strings that sounded like a roomful of acoustic guitars.

When he introduced Silliman as “the man with four hands,” he could have been speaking of himself, a musician of dexterity beyond description. Pianists must play in two beats and two melodies at once, but Castaneda displays such a high degree of this skill that he moves the music of different traditions through each other.

Castaneda blended folk styles of the Colombian plains with a deeply romantic passion in “Three Thirds,” both more Latin and more jazzy than their opener. Kriss and Locke tossed the melody back and forth in a spiral; then Castaneda charged in and trumped them both.

Kriss mimed trying to count Castaneda’s blinding beats, but grinned and gave up. Castaneda started this outrageous solo with a damped-string technique for percussive effect, but later let the strings ring free as he summoned his bandmates into a joyful recap.

The damped-strings thing, like James Brown’s guitarist Jimmy Nolen’s trick of killing the sustain of the notes with his hand, was just one Castaneda strategy to avoid obvious harp-isms; the splashy glissandos that many close-together strings allow. He also bent the body of the harp after striking notes or chords, changing the pitch; and plucked notes and retouched then when they were still resounding to similar effect.

These never felt like tricks because he emphasized emotion more than technique, especially in the solo numbers. “Hope,” inspired by a film about the sale of children as slaves, expressed both outrage and solace, while the fervent “Jesus of Nazareth” painted a portrait of a benign savior, flowing from a fast, light intro into substantial counterpoint with sparse, strong bass lines, fullest realization all night of his dazzling technique and depth.

Feeling also infused even the band’s formalist experiments: a free-improvisation Joe Locke led into the stratosphere, and a flute exploration that Kriss mutated through intriguing steps into “Autumn Leaves.”

Locke and Kriss often linked their riffs, or ping-ponged them, while Castaneda and Silliman combined to supply powerful rhythmic structure, which Locke and Kriss ably followed. All the players were first-class and fully unified in Castaneda’s vision — even the initially invisible bass player — producing an impressive evening of ensemble brilliance and sizzling or tender solos.

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center 2008 Extended Season concludes on Saturday with a performance by singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega.

Reach Michael Hochanadel at hochanadel@dailygazette.com.