By Progress Hornsby
6:30 PM
On any night of the week in New York City you can expect to hear world class jazz in just about any style, in a variety of locations, played by veterans, all-stars and newcomers. So with this in mind I begin my night early at the 55 Bar
(55 Christopher St) located at the triangle where Christopher meets West 3rd and 7th Ave. South West. Since it's early the place is not crowded and I take a seat right up front. Virginia Mayhew is blowing some hard sax, right out of Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson. The rhythm section is cooking too. Allison Miller on drums and Phil Polomby on bass. Mimi Fox, a recent import from the left coast, is wailing on guitar. Mimi is a pleasant surprise. It's apparent that she has complete command of her instrument and a total knowledge of the tradition. Her solos were well constructed and lifted the music to glorious heights. Immediately I'm in the groove and the music transports me right out of my work-a-day worries. This is a good beginning. As the set ends the basket is passed and I gladly drop in a handful of bills and move on to my next stop, Symphony Space (Bway & 95th). It's about 7:30 now and people are beginning to fill the streets. It's Friday night in the Big Apple.
8:00 PM
I hop the number 1 train uptown to 96th St. Outside Symphony Space there is a large crowd lining up to hear Don Byron's latest concept. There is a buzz in the air. The kind of buzz that surrounds events that have expectations. I see some important music press people and also some record company executives. A sure sign that this is a must-see concert. Don Byron plays clarinet and bass clarinet. He has earned a reputation for being able to perform in a variety of musical styles from klezmer, funk, jazz, classical and even Borscht Belt Kitsch ala Mickey Katz. This evenings offering is called Contrasting Brilliance: The Music of Henry Mancini and Sly Stone. On paper this must have sounded like a great idea, but in live performance it sounded more like an open rehearsal work-in-progress, which is not a bad thing. The Jazz Composers Orchestra was doing this in the late 60s and Mingus had a go at it with his Workshop Orchestra before that. Byron is smart, bright and talented and is to be applauded for his ingenious ideas, but this music, although performed admirably by some of New York's best musicians, lacked two things; depth and soul. Mancini's compositions from Peter Gunn, Hatari! and Touch of Evil are well know works, familiar to a generation that grew up watching Peter Gunn on TV. There was a great opportunity for Byron to take Mancini's beautiful melodies and give them back to us in a new and unique way. What we got were very straight readings of the Mancini originals with some touches added here and there for accent. Like adding more trees to an already beautifully painted landscape. The Sly Stone offerings really left me flat. About as flat as the recent Hendrix Tribute at BAM's Next Wave Festival (but that's another story). Sly Stone defined funk. He brought soul, rock and rhythm and blues to the hippie generation. And the man had truckloads of soul. Something sorely missing from the six Sly tunes Byron offered. David Gilmore did lay down some good guitar though and James Genus did his best Larry Graham thing. DK Dyson, on vocals, had a great hat that even Sly would appreciate, but not the great harmonies and funk grooves that Sly rocked 500,000 at Woodstock.
Gratefully the Byron show ended around 10:00 PM.
Since I'm uptown I head over to a new jazz lounge, Smoke, at 106th St. and Broadway. A cozy intimate room with low lighting, limited seating and a bar. The band is already in gear, but the club is not full. I snag a seat at the end of the bar. I can see the whole band except for the drummer, who's positioned behind a giant pillar that is holding up the ceiling. In my mind I'm trying to rearrange the bandstand so I can see the drummer. I had to wait for the announcement to learn that it was Al Foster, one of the all-time great jazz drummers, an alumnus of Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins. This is an unexpected surprise and one of the joys of living in the jazz capital of the world. The group is lead by Bruce Barth, a pianist with a growing reputation on the New York scene. I've heard him as a sideman in a number of groups so it was nice to hear him as a leader playing his own compositions. The two horn front line featured Steve Wilson on alto and soprano and Adam Kolker on tenor. Ugonna Okegwo was on bass. This is New York jazz at its best. Hard, swinging and straight-ahead.
11:30 PM
New York is the city that never sleeps and in Big Apple time it's still early. The streets are now humming at fever pitch, a crescendo of sound and movement.
I'm tempted to continue my jazz journey uptown to Harlem's Lenox Lounge or back Downtown for the late sets at the Vanguard and Sweet Basil. But with two little one's dreamily tucked into their beds and early risers I defer to my parental duty.
It has been remarked that New York can be a hard place to live, and that we move at warp speed, indifferent to the world around us, rushing even to the corner store to buy a quart of milk. Fortunately the original designers laid out the City's streets in grids - straight lines, running east and west, north and south making it easy to navigate. But these intersections sometimes converge in strange configurations, like in Greenwich Village, where I began my jazz journey, and then there's Broadway that stretches the full length of Manhattan, like a long solo that never seems to end.
