Earshot Jazz Festival 2010, Part 2

Earshot Festival
Seattle, WA
October 31-November 7, 2010
Part 1 | Part 2




Mavis Staples

Town Hall/Earshot Jazz Festival

Seattle, WA

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Did anyone bring a louder, more powerful voice to this year's festival than Mavis Staples? As soon as Staples strolled out on to the stage at Town Hall on Halloween, she lifted everyone in the room with her blazing voice: in the midst of her songs she would bellow the lyrics out with the force of a mighty gale, while in between those songs she spoke with a pastor's tone, raising emotions and hope from those who had come to see her, and spending only brief moments catching her breath. She thrived in an air of accumulated inspiration; her faith and her drive have clearly only grown stronger in the decades since her family sang as the musical accompaniment to the Civil Rights Movement.

Unlike most singers of her stature, Staples didn't use her time on stage as an opportunity to parade through her most well known songs, but instead focused on newer material, specifically from her recent album You Are Not Alone, gracefully finding new words and melodies for the same tireless message. After an opening gospel number that she sang a cappella with her glowing team of back-up singers, Staples and her tight, rocking band charged into a rendition of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Wrote a Song for Everyone" and the show rolled right on into soulful bliss from there.


Jack Wright/Gust Burns/Mark Kaylor

Chapel Performance Space/Earshot Jazz Festival

Seattle, WA

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Jack Wright certainly isn't a blatantly aggressive saxophonist like many of the reedmen who focus on free improvisation. He tends more to just sit there floating out thoughts like the enticing street prophet found in the corner of a coffee shop. He paws around like a stray dog, unafraid of drifting, half-words, and extended silence. Performing two extended pieces of free improv at the Chapel Performance Space with pianist Gust Burns and percussionist Mark Kaylor, Wright acrobatically snorted and dribbled his way through the trio's explorations, every now and then looking up with an innocent "Who, me?" expression, snorted, like a pouting rhinoceros. Wright practically sweated improv wisdom, deploying techniques such as playing without a mouthpiece and using his thigh as an impromptu mute.

Like Wright, Burns also takes a somewhat unexpected approach to his instrument. He rarely invested his playing in dynamics-based attacks, instead preferring to scribble along in a rather authorial fashion, playing out a full line as if he were composing a sentence and allowing his readers to determine the tone with their own sense of discretion. With his piano positioned in the shadows at the side of the stage, Burns spent the concert plotting in whispers, bringing the pot to a boil. Kaylor was the great rationalizer, who voiced his conclusions in terms of scrapes, bonks, and puffs.


Wayne Horvitz; TONK

Poncho Concert Hall

Seattle, WA

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Pianist Wayne Horvitz's group, TONK—named after a Duke Ellington record that featured the legendary pianist/bandleader and Billy Strayhorn, playing on two separate pianos to rhythm section accompaniment—consisted, appropriately enough, of Horvitz and Danish pianist Soren Kjaergaard playing on two pianos, while the Seattle duo of Evan Flory-Barnes and D'Vonne Lewis supplied upright bass and drums. The proceedings began innocently enough with a cruise through Strayhorn's "Upper Manhattan Medical Group," but from there submerged into a more contemplative, rolling number that quickly did away with the opener's peppy tempo. These first two pieces served to introduce the group's intent to turn over more than just a couple of the stones that their unusual ensemble presented them with. Despite the presence of two other Ellington Orchestra standards no two pieces could be said to have shown the same attitude.

While Horvitz and Kjaergaard were occupying the two grand pianos with an enticing game of table tennis (or perhaps checkers), Flory-Barnes and Lewis seemed to be enjoying a private rhythm party in their corner of the stage. An adventurous suite in the middle of the performance brought the best out of everyone, coaxing the players' abilities out with a toss-up of tempo changes, obstacles, and turnabouts. It was a cat-and-mouse affair, a cartoonish chase scene that took all of the wit and focus that the players had to offer. After all this, the performance seemed to fade to a close with the next piece's gentle conclusion, but there was just enough time for Strayhorn's conveniently named "Johnny Come Lately."


Michael Blake's Lucky Thompson Project

Poncho Concert Hall

Seattle, WA

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Michael Blake's Lucky Thompson Project, which focused mainly on playing tunes by the underappreciated saxophonist it is named after, took the stage a short while after TONK finished, and didn't hesitate to blast right off. Blake's opening solo spiraled right into the stratosphere, playing directly to the tune's structure but garnishing it in unpredictable flairs. Soren Kjaergaard returned from the first set on piano and Fender Rhodes, while fellow Dane, Jonas Westergaard, played bass and New Yorker Ben Perowsky held down the drums. Despite the group's name, Thompson's compositions were not all that were on the table: the audience was also treated to a Blake piece called "John Ford," as well a rendition of Otis Redding's "Treat Her Right." Westergaard knew exactly what he wants out of his instrument and didn't allow much else to distract him. He was like the band's bodyguard, keeping everything in line and adhering to a focused level of discipline. When he soloed, he built from the ground up, starting with the melody and shaping it into a strong, consolidated improvisation. Perowsky used this stability as a platform for equally appropriate percussion barrages, but traded Westergaard's conciseness for energetic bouts of spice and fire. Kjaergaard took great advantage of his now significantly more spacious circumstances, particularly on one theatrical solo that began with nothing, declared itself with a devastating low note, then step by step rolled into a two-handed cascade of block chords. Thompson himself was represented not just in music, but in kinds words and memories courtesy of Blake and Earshot Executive Director John Gilbreath.


Brian Blade's Fellowship Band

EMP

Seattle, WA

Friday, November 5th, 2010

Brian Blade and his Fellowship Band performed for a packed house in the upper level of Seattle Center's Experience Music Project. The ensemble, which in addition to Blade on drums featured Chris Thomas on bass, Myron Walden and Melvin Butler on reeds, Jon Cowherd on piano and keyboard, and Jeff Parker subbing for Kurt Rosenwinkel on electric guitar, brought their own brand of jazz, which consists of meditative, long-legged compositions that float along over Blade's shifting rhythmic DNA. Blade himself conducted the proceedings on his own terms, using an extensive percussion vocabulary to build up and soothe the music's breezy movements.

There was something chivalric about the group's presentation, a Romantic sense of nobility in the way they played. Parker, for one, was in a more morose mood than in his previous performance with the Scott Amendola Trio. Each of the pieces contained a similar character, in terms of harmonics and tone, and it was this character that dominated the group's approach. The definition of this character was evasive, but had a sort of rosemary soul to it, something distinctively embedded in each of the compositions, which were mostly by Blade and Cowherd. The solos, particularly those by Walden and Butler, seemed possessed by this vital essence, but not conquered by it so much as smitten with it.


Gust Burns Large Ensemble

Poncho Concert Hall

Seattle, WA

Sunday, November 7th

On the final night of the festival, pianist Gust Burns and saxophonist Jack Wright delivered a second performance, this time expanding their roster to a sextet for a three-part show at the Poncho Concert Hall. Alto saxophonist Wilson Shook, bassists John Teske and Mark Collins, and electronics navigator Doug Theriault joined Burns and Wright on stage for two bouts of free improvisation, which bookended a solo improvisation by Wright.

The first round flowed in waves of varying magnitudes, allowing sounds to assemble into brief storms before dissipating into near silence, then beginning the growth all over again. Shook proved to be an effective counterpoint to Wright, balancing the latter's shards and syllables with longer draws, heaves, and squawks, while the two bass players produced an undergrowth of tangled roots and vines that crawled along the music's floor. Later, in the second group section, the music seemed to move less along the time axis than through space, bouncing sounds around a stationary sonic environment.

Wright cut his solo into two sections, one each for alto and soprano saxophone. Both halves portrayed a distinct narrative arc, as Wright traveled from one end of the sound spectrum to the other. He began with the thinnest shavings of notes and patiently nurtured them through an extended life cycle, bringing them all the way to maturity before they evaporated into mere breaths, literally de- and re-constructing his instrument in the process. The result was two vivid tall tales, courtesy of Wright, a free jazz storyteller if there ever was one.

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