Here's a quick update on highlights of a few of the dozens of festival events since the last posting.
Last night's concert ran past midnight. It was dedicated to the late bassist Ray Brown and featured colleagues who achieved fame as sidemen in Brown's bands.
Pianist Benny Green's trio with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Jeff Hamilton set a high standard with an explosive performance of Brown's "Buhaina Buhaina." My notes say, "Hamilton likes to swing." The more intense the rhythm became, the broader grew Hamilton's smile.
He smiled constantly.
Lynn Skinner, the retiring founder of the festival, introduced by quoting Hank Jones from a phone call earlier in the day. He said Jones had called Gambarini, "the finest vocalist I've heard in the past 60 years.
" Then, with McBride, Hamilton, guitarist Russell Malone and her empathetic piano accompanist Tamir Hendelman, she demonstrated what led to that exalted level of praise. Gambarini is deceptive; she makes perfection in every department--swing, intonation, diction, control, coloration, taste, intepretation of lyrics--seem easy. Earlier in the day, at a vocal workshop, Gambarini gave a good-natured exhibition of the kind of over-the-top vocalizing that in jazz circles too often passes for singing.
Toward the end of last night's concert, Jane Monheit also sang. I don't think that she attended Gambarini's workshop.
In two sets, one with a quartet, one with a trio, pianist achieved the power, drama and propulsion of his work with Brown thirty years ago.
He reached a climax of hard, happy swing in the reunion of his trio with Hamilton and bassist John Clayton. Their "Battle Hymn of the Republic" had the musicians in the backstage bistro area riveted to the big monitor screen and cheering along with the audience when Alexander's roaring performance ended.
At the after hours jam session, the student alto saxophonist from Massachusetts sat in with a group that included veteran guitarist .
I know of no explanation other than genius for this slender fourteen-year-old girl's attainment of maturity in her art. She has mastery of the instrument, passion, profound swing, and judgment that one would expect in a player with twenty years of professional experience. The other jam session surprise was a vocal by guitarist Malone.
With Miss Kelly and Stowell playing obligato, he sang an engaging "I've Grown Accustomed To Your Face." The roomful of close listeners demanded an encore, which they did not get. "No more," Malone announced, waving them off.
Posted by dramsey at February 23, 2007 1:47 PM
Hi Doug, Wonderful play-by-play. You make me feel like I was there since I was last year. I love the way Russell Malone sings!
I wish I could have heard that. FYI Russell sings on two of his earlier recordings, and I sometimes read reviews where he has sung a song during one of his shows. Kandie Webster (jazzylover59)
Posted by: Kandie Webster at February 24, 2007 11:22 PM
"Toward the end of last night's concert, Jane Monheit also sang.
I don't think that she attended Gambarini's workshop." Yeah, well, never mind that: how was her hair?
Posted by: at February 25, 2007 12:03 PM
Grace is definitely a phenomenon!
She sat in at Lee Konitz's show at the Jazz Gallery last year (with George Colligan on organ) and was terrific.
Posted by: Hotel Pianist at February 25, 2007 5:47 PM
Regarding your comment "(Roberta)Gambarini is deceptive; she makes perfection in every department--swing, intonation, diction, control, coloration, taste, intepretation of lyrics--seem easy. Earlier in the day, at a vocal workshop, Gambarini gave a good-natured exhibition of the kind of over-the-top vocalizing that in jazz circles too often passes for singing.
Toward the end of last night's concert, Jane Monheit also sang. I don't think that she attended Gambarini's workshop."
I howled when I read your comments quoted above.
I am still puzzled as to why Jane Monheit was invited to appear and perform on the Legends of Jazz TV series, as I can't think of a female jazz singer active today in my CD collection who isn't more qualified than the over-hyped Monheit.
Posted by: Ken Dryden at February 26, 2007 11:10 AM
This blog is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but it reaches past.
.. Doug lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC.
His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism. Doug's most recent book is .He is also the author of .
He contributed to and co-edited His next book is a novel that has almost nothing to do with music.
John Gross, Dave Frishberg, Charlie Doggett, (Diatic Records). Gross, the outside tenor saxophonist; Frishberg, the inside pianist; and Doggett, the adaptable young drummer, meet on the common ground of a brilliantly assembled repertoire.
The pieces are by Ellington, Strayhorn, Monk, Cohn, Davis, Brookmeyer and McFarland. Gross is calm in his delivery of solos that burn with convincing ideas. Frishberg is a foil for Gross's daring excursions and a soloist of forthrightness, whimsy and a powerful left hand.
This one is a sleeper.
Fats Waller, (Bluebird/Legacy). This is not a comprehensive Waller set, but a well chosen three-disc survey of the stride pianist whose song writing, singing and irrepressible personality made him an American favorite son in the 1930s and early '40s.
Even listeners who have the seventeen CDs Bluebird released toward the end of the last century will want this box because of the 98-page booklet. The photographs, the introduction by producer Orrin Keepnews and the masterly notes by Dan Morgenstern make it one of the best studies of Waller. The music, from 1926 ("St.
Louis Blues") to 1942 ("Jitterbug Waltz") is sublime.
Paul Carlon Octet, (Deep Tone). From Red Norvo to James Moody, Ray Charles, Rod Levitt, Gil Evans, Lee Konitz and Bill Kirchner, I'm a sucker for medium-sized ensembles supported by resourceful writing.
To the list add this octet of New Yorkers led by saxophonist and flutist Carlon. The orientation is Latin, the arranging at once economical and adventurous. Billy Strayhorn's "Smada" becomes a danzón, Emily Dickinson's poem "A Certain Slant of Light" inspires a pointillist reverie, "Boogie Down Broder" a rambunctious trombone fiesta.
And there's this encouraging disclaimer: "NO jazz musicians were harmed in the manufacture of this recording."
Amalia Rodrigues: (MVD World Music Talents). Rodrigues was the leading interpreter of fado, the moody music that expresses Portugal's national preoccupation with fate.
In fado at its best there is a commonality with jazz in the give-and-take among the perfomer and the guitar accompanists. Rodrigues could be as moving as Billie Holiday or Edith Piaf. In the form of a documentary, the film traces her career to her death in 1999 at age 79.
The logy script does not diminish the glories of Rodrigues' singing. The menu gives the viewer the option of isolating her performances from the pompous narration.
Louis Armstrong, (Da Capo).
A friend asked me recently, "What's the best book about Louis Armstrong?" It may turn out to be the one Terry Teachout is writing, I said. I told him about Armstrong biographies by Gary Giddins, Laurence Bergreen, James Lincoln Collier, Max Jones-John Chilton and others, all with their strengths.
But I suggested that if he had not read Armstrong's own account of his youth, that would be the place to start. This modest little autobiography is honest, conversational and true to the man's style as one of the positive, uplifting figures of our time.
News RSS