Lee Ritenour and Dave Grusin at Tsuen Wan Town Hall, Hong Kong

Lee Ritenour and Dave Grusin featuring Ivan Lins
Tsuen Wan Town Hall Auditorium
Hong Kong
November 12, 2024

Lee Ritenour and Dave Grusin's musical relationship might date back some five decades—the pair may be, in the former's words, "best buddies"—but it was still startling to see how relaxed the pair are onstage together in 2024. How much joy there still is in the fleeting, on/off partnership between the smooth fusion guitarist and the four-time Oscar-winning film composer. At times, the pair's recent show in Hong Kong felt more like an open garage rehearsal—the third night in an all-star, 12-date tour that next visits Japan and South Korea.

This sense of assured disorder was fueled in large part by the wealth of players onstage: ostensibly promoting their recent joint-released album Brasil, the pair invited along the Brazilian band they recorded it with. But for this one-off tour, they clearly had some budget spare, and also had a second regular rhythm section in tow—and two guest vocalists, including fellow aging legend Ivan Lins. The result was a performance of three distinct chapters—and a conspicuously cluttered stage where it sometimes appeared that not everyone was on exactly the same page. But then an abundance of talent is not something to start complaining about.

And so we began with a tender duet on Ritenour's lilting "Pearl," the two leaders joined midway by the 72-year-old guitarist's son Wesley Ritenour on drums and bassist Munir Hossn—whose muscular but musical delivery lent welcome weight to the elegant strut of "The Village," but was dialed a tad too deep when Ritenour picked up an acoustic for "Etude" and "Waltz for Carmen."

At the age of 90, Grusin has earned the right to appear somewhat ambiguous about the city he's playing too—although one hopes his claim not to be able to remember which movie he penned "It Might Be You" for was stagecraft (the answer, of course, is Tootsie.) Jam heads got off to the ragged blues stomp of "Lay it Down," and then, suddenly, the number of musicians on stage doubled: the Brazilian band came on—bassist Bruno Migotto, drummer Edu Ribeiro and percussionist Marcelo Costa—to spark the jarring mood shift of a delicate tread through Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Amparo (Olha Maria)."

Guest vocalist Tatiana Parra soon joined for Brasil's summery opener, Milton Nascimento's "Cravo e Canela," before Ritenour's lilting instrumental waltz "For the Palms." Then, 79-year-old Lins was wheeled regally out, first paying tribute to Quincy Jones with "Love Dance" (recorded earlier by George Benson on the Q-produced Give Me the Night)—before rounding out the set with crowd-pleaser "Harlequin" (title track of Ritenour/Grusin 1985 release) and his own "Vitoriosa" (a refresh of the three-way collab also captured Brasil). After the rousing instrumental closer "Stone Flower," it was Lins' turn to take the spotlight again with his self-penned standard "Começar de Novo," before the strutting encore of "Rio Funk" brought the curtain down on the first stop of this delightfully confused all-star outing.