David Adler
July 2001

New York @ Night
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By David R. Adler

JVC Jazz Festival Highlights

New York was blessed in late June with a performance by Wayne Shorter’s new quartet, his first acoustic group in decades, featuring Danilo Perez on piano, John Patitucci on bass, and Brian Blade on drums. Their gig at Avery Fisher Hall was not just another all-star crowd pleaser. This was a band, and they brought new collective insights to some of Shorter’s oldest material, including "Valse Triste," the Sibelius adaptation that appeared on the Soothsayer; "Chief Crazy Horse," the final track on Adam’s Apple; and "JuJu," which was given an entirely new rhythmic foundation. Blade, Perez, and Patitucci kept the music in a continual state of harmonic and rhythmic flux, while Wayne’s tenor sound, still strong and utterly distinctive, filled the hall. The set was way too short, but it was unforgettable. For some reason, about three dozen people or so found it necessary to leave before it was over.

Chick Corea’s "New Trio" opened the show. Poor Avishai Cohen was cursed with distortion on his bass so severe that it was impossible to ignore. After patiently sitting through two tunes the crowd began to shout complaints, and Chick, pouring on his Bostonian regular-guy charm, eagerly sought to resolve the problem while keeping the show on schedule. By the last tune, "Lifelines," Cohen was finally provided with a mic, and when he nailed the first unison passage and his low note rang out, the crowd erupted into riotous applause. (Let the record reflect that New York audiences can be very kind when the going gets rough.) Despite the nearly catastrophic technical glitch, Corea, Cohen, and drummer Jeff Ballard played spiritedly, encoring with "Spain."

Two nights earlier, Keith Jarrett played Carnegie Hall with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette. Highlights included two ballads, "What’s New" and "Yesterdays," along with a rollicking "Honeysuckle Rose" and three encores, including "Straight, No Chaser." The first half got off to a pretty strong start with "On Green Dolphin Street" but then bogged down with a sluggish "I’m Getting Sentimental Over You." The second half of the show was better, although the trio never quite unleashed the fire that it does on its latest disc, Whisper Not (ECM). The fact that our seat was about 40 feet above DeJohnette’s drums and nowhere near the piano, resulting in a hideous acoustic imbalance, diminished our enjoyment as well.

Joshua Redman’s quartet put in a fiery performance the previous week at Hunter College’s Kaye Playhouse. The saxophonist’s new record, Passage of Time (Warner Bros.), is conceived as an unbroken song cycle, and that’s how he, Aaron Goldberg, Reuben Rogers, and Gregory Hutchinson approached the gig: they played the entire album straight through, with no breaks. One would more likely hear a marathon set such as this from a free jazzer, so to hear Redman’s composed, melodic material in such a way was novel, although it did have a few lulls. Eric Reed’s septet followed, playing strong music from the pianist’s latest Nagel-Heyer release, Happiness. Brad Lee subbed for Donald Harrison on alto — a tough task since Harrison was given special billing.

Guitarists at the Knitting Factory

Three of the best modern guitarists in New York had gigs in the Knit’s Old Office. Steve Cardenas, with Dan Rieser on drums and Doug Weiss subbing for Larry Grenadier on bass, played a number of new, untitled compositions. He also dipped into material from his album Shebang (Fresh Sound) and played a beautiful rendition of Wayne Shorter’s "House of Jade." Liberty Ellman hit a couple of weeks later with his regular trio, featuring Stephan Crump on bass and Derrek Phillips on drums. Ellman played a dark, fragmented "I’ll Remember April," a reflective "Search for Peace" (by McCoy Tyner — nice old Blue Note tunes being mined by these players!), and a few things from his phenomenal Orthodoxy (Red Giant). Ben Monder also led a quartet, featuring Theo Bleckmann on vocals, Kermit Driscoll on electric bass, and Satoshi Takeishi on drums. Monder’s music — drawn this particular night from his Arabesque releases Dusk and Excavation — is highly advanced and wondrously strange, especially with the unique input of Bleckmann, whose feats of vocal virtuosity and imagination are unmatched.

At Tonic and The Jazz Gallery

Tonic boasted an exclusive duo engagement by Marilyn Crispell and Gary Peacock. Paul Motian was absent, although he appears with the Crispell and Peacock on the stunning new ECM release Amaryllis. The duo’s first set was short but profound, as they intuited their way through two Peacock compositions, "December Greenwings" and "Voice from the Past," plus one or two others. Contemplative, dissonant, texturally rich. Dave Douglas also graced Tonic with a two-night series of improvised music, the first featuring fellow trumpeters Baikida Carroll and Roy Campbell, among others, and the second featuring electro-acoustic music with Marc Ribot, Jamie Saft, Ikue Mori, Yoku Honda, and Timo Ellis. It can’t get much more "out" than this. Douglas played open and processed trumpet and also vocalized a bit, as sampled sounds whirled around in unpredictable patterns. One contrast was particularly striking: the sight of Mori sitting motionless and expressionless behind her laptop while Ellis played his drums with literally all the fury he could muster.

At the Jazz Gallery, pianist Jason Lindner led a new, promising quintet and played some new music. He had with him James Genus on bass, Eric McPherson on drums, Avi Leibovich on trombone, Duane Eubanks on trumpet, and, on a couple of tunes, Miles Griffith on vocals, who nailed highly complex ensemble passages with the band and ad-libbed hilarious lyrics on a gospel finale. Lindner and Leibovich were back later in the month for a marvelous set with vocalist Claudia Acuña, who sang material from Wind from the South, her 2000 Verve debut, along with stirring arrangements of "A Time for Love," "Mariposa," "My Romance," and "I’m Glad There Is You." Bassist Omer Avital beautifully handled his duet with Acuña on "Alfonsina Y El Mar" (Avishai Cohen played it on the album). Acuña is at work on her second album for Verve.

At the Vanguard

Joe Lovano brought his new "Trio Fascination" concept to the Village Vanguard, opening with an absolutely burning "Syeeda’s Song Flute," featuring Cameron Brown on bass and Idris Muhammad. Then Billy Drewes and Joey Baron joined in, first as a trio with Lovano and then in various combinations throughout the rest of the set. On the hard-swinging finale Lovano took his solo backed by Brown and Muhammad, and then the drum baton was passed to Baron, who ripped it up while Drewes blew soprano. This was Lovano pushing the trio envelope and taking chances that really worked. Tim Ries was in the house, incidentally, and could be heard trying out Lovano’s straight alto sax backstage before the show.

Leon Parker also put in a great performance during his Vanguard run, with Jacky Terrasson on piano, Ugonna Okegwo on bass, and Steve Wilson on alto. Parker and Terrasson, in particular, are masters of taking a groove and developing it into an epic statement.

Two Very Different Pianists

At the uptown spot Smoke, David Berkman played a one-night engagement with a trio that featured Darryl Hall on bass and Adam Cruz on drums. The fiery, sophisticated Berkman began his second set with a lilting "With a Song in My Heart" and went on to offer "Embraceable You," Herbie’s "One Finger Snap," "Weird Knock" from last year’s Communication Theory, and more. One of our most insightful composers and players for sure.

At Merkin Hall, a truly rare occurrence: pianist Eric Watson, an American expatriate living in France for the last two decades or so, swung through New York for two shows with his Silent Hearts trio, with Mark Dresser on bass and Ed Thigpen on drums. (Sunnyside released the 1999 album in the States just last month.) Watson is a highly unorthodox stylist, with a remarkably uncliched style that isn’t quite avant-garde yet can’t be called mainstream either. Thigpen gives Watson’s all-original repertoire a driving, swinging pulse, but Dresser’s freer background and Watson’s heavy, clustery playing send it frequently into bracingly modern territory. There’s are resonances with some of Mingus’s work, and some echoes of modern classical music as well. "Chamber jazz" of a rather dark and unpredictable variety.

Soulful Synergies

Me’Shell Ndegéocello, the visionary R&B singer/bassist/songwriter/bandleader, packed the rather tiny Village Underground in Manhattan’s West Village for an intimate engagement, featuring material new and old. Ndegéocello has always hired serious musicians to play her stuff, and here she had Reggie Washington on bass (she plays bass only sporadically during her shows), Gene Lake on drums, Daniel Sadownick on percussion, Allen Cato on guitar, and Federico Gonzalez Pena on keyboards. Also on hand were tenor/soprano man Jacques Schwarz-Bart (check out his Fresh Sound release Immersion) and Gregoire Maret on harmonica, who’s cropped up on albums and/or gigs by Jacky Terrasson, Tim Ries, and Andy Milne’s Cosmic Dapp Theory. It’s a small jazz world in New York, and genre-crossing artists like Ndegéocello have a way of bringing great musicians together.

The Disrespect Toward Artists Department

1. At David Berkman’s gig, during an Adam Cruz drum solo, a guy’s cell phone rings. Not only does it ring, but the guy decides to take the call, and he proceeds to talk over the solo. After about 30 seconds the bouncer comes over and tells the guy to shut up, which has the desired effect.

2. Right before Keith Jarrett’s second encore, as the crowd begins to hush, an audience member takes the opportunity to scream at the top of his lungs, "FREE MUMIA, FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS!" Having performed all over the world, this trio has probably seen and heard it all, so it didn’t seem to faze them. A woman responds, "Not now!" And the sloganeer, like a five-year-old being denied milk and cookies, shouts back, "Yes now!"

Some Questions

After Joe Lovano’s set, a woman is overheard saying to her boyfriend/spouse/companion: "I thought that was piss-poor." This is a music that provokes widely varying opinions, and yet, aren’t certain things beyond argument? Is there a case to be made here for jazz elitism? Can we confidently state that the opinions of people who don’t know the music are sometimes objectively wrong? There’s an aesthetic issue here that’s beyond the scope of this column, but readers, please feel free to give feedback.