SFJAZZ Collective: Ottawa, Canada, October 13, 2011

John Kelman

Senior Editor since 2004

With the realization that there will always be more music coming at him than he can keep up with, John wonders why anyone would think that jazz is dead or dying.

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Centrepoint Theatre,
Ottawa, Canada
October 13, 2011

In its eight-year existence, the SFJAZZ Collective has gone from triumph to triumph, each year choosing a specific artist to honor—past years including pianist Herbie Hancock Herbie Hancock
b.1940
piano and saxophonists Ornette Coleman Ornette Coleman
b.1930
sax, alto , John Coltrane John Coltrane
1926 - 1967
saxophone and Wayne Shorter Wayne Shorter
b.1933
saxophone —and giving each of its eight members the mandate of coming up with a new arrangement and a new composition, making the Collective the best kind of jazz laboratory; one where the heroes of the past are celebrated alongside these relatively young icons in the making. The 2011 edition of this gradually changing collective—only alto saxophonist Miguel Zenon Miguel Zenon
b.1976
saxophone remains from the inaugural 2004 season—paid tribute, for the first time, to an artist outside (though certainly informed by) the jazz purview, Stevie Wonder Stevie Wonder
b.1950
keyboard . The source music for the Collective's return to Ottawa on October 13, 2011 may have been distanced considerably from its 2009 Ottawa performance—when a substantially different lineup performed its homage to McCoy Tyner McCoy Tyner
b.1938
piano —but the below-capacity but enthusiastic crowd at Centrepoint Theatre would have been hard-pressed to tell the difference.

That's because this was no get-down, shake-your-booty look at the music of Stevie Wonder, though there were grooves aplenty—delivered, this time, by drummer Kendrick Scott Kendrick Scott
b.1980
drums , who was substituting for regular drummer Eric Harland Eric Harland

drums on eight of the fall tour's thirteen US and Canada dates. But if the coda to trumpeter Avishai Cohen - Trumpet Avishai Cohen - Trumpet

trumpet 's radical reinvention of "Sir Duke" was enough to get everyone in the audience's heads bopping, it's a fair bet most of them didn't even notice the extra beat being tagged onto every fourth bar, or how it seemed to magically interlock when the horns began playing the familiar chorus ("You can feel it all over...") over top of it, in straight time. And for those already familiar with the new tunes and arrangements on the Collective's recently released Live in New York Season 8: Music of Stevie Wonder (SFJAZZ, 2011), it was clear that the music was a living, breathing, evolving thing, as vibraphonist Stefon Harris Stefon Harris
b.1973
vibraphone playfully stretched and contracted the time of another of the song's familiar themes, keeping the rest of the Collective on its toes.

This incarnation of SFJAZZ Collective represents the first time that there's been no change in the lineup since the previous year, when it paid tribute to pianist Horace Silver Horace Silver
b.1928
piano , documented on Live 2010: 7th Annual Concert (SFJAZZ, 2010). A consistent lineup may mean more opportunity to hone its chemistry, but the Collective has always managed change well; with its lineup changing gradually, year-after-year, there was always some residual chemistry while achieving, at the same time, the best possible sound of surprise, from the introduction of someone new to the mix.

SFJAZZ Collective, Ottawa, 2010—© John R. Fowler This may have only been Scott's second date, but he nailed it from the get-go, while bringing a different kind of energy to the music that changed the complexion of the Collective. This isn't the first time he's followed in Harland's footsteps, either—replacing the barely-older drummer in trumpeter Terence Blanchard Terence Blanchard
b.1962
trumpet 's band at the time of Flow (Blue Note, 2005)—but if that suggests Scott's some kind of second-stringer, waiting in the wings like an actor's stand-in, nothing could be further from the truth, on the basis of the 31-year-old's leader debut, The Source (Word Culture Music, 2007), and subsequent work with trumpeter Sean Jones Sean Jones
b.1978
trumpet , saxophonist Myron Walden Myron Walden
b.1972
saxophone and singer Gretchen Parlato Gretchen Parlato

vocal .

If Scott was the fire in the engine room, then bassist Matt Penman Matt Penman

bass was the engineer keeping that fire stoked. A masterful player, he held down the shifting landscape of Zenon's second set-closing arrangement of Wonder's "Superstition," which deconstructed the tune down to its fundamental motifs, rebuilding them in various permutations and combinations, for a reading as fiery as it was cerebral. Penman's unshakable time was balanced by thoughtful solos, in particular his pizzicato work on tenor saxophonist Mark Turner Mark Turner
b.1965
sax, tenor 's "Orpheus," a heady composition that created a variety of contexts for inspired free play that gradually coalesced into a form only truly revealed at its conclusion.