Jazz concert review – Randy Brecker

Trumpeter looks back four+ decades in Naples concert


Randy Brecker

Randy Brecker dug deep into his own songbook on January 17 in his second guest appearance with the Naples, Fl-based Philharmonic Jazz Orchestra. It was also a reunion of sorts with tenor saxophonist Lew Del Gatto (a 25-year veteran of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” Band), who Brecker has known for more than 30 years.

Metheny's starry homecoming

Two nights before concluding phase one of his Orchestrion tour, Pat Metheny stopped by Boston to provide a glimpse of his project to make ambitious, multi-layered music in which he is responsible for every note.

There’s Metheny and a few of his custom guitars and an Orpheum Theatre stage filled with four levels of instruments triggered either by pneumatics or electronic solenoids that are controlled by a MIDI system. Metheny keys it all with foot pedals, guitar knobs and a small electronic touchpad.

In a city where he has been revered as a guitar god since the early 1970s, the crowd was fascinated – and riveted to his playing and his explanations/demonstrations of how it works. Sort of a musical Mr. Wizard.

Metheny described the project as “my brain at 9 years old taken to the 21st century,” a reference how as a youngster he was fascinated at the mechanics involved when he crawled under his grandfather’s antique player piano to see how it worked. Today’s technology enabled him to develop the possibilities into a new reality.

Metheny opened his set with a half-hour of music from his songbook on solo guitar, including his 46-string Pikasso hybrid. Then he shifted to guitar plus one robotic drum, before the curtain rose on the entire Orchestrion.

He worked his way through the entire five-part suite that comprises his Orchestrion CD (Nonesuch). All of those works featured Metheny playing his distinctive guitar work on top of the MIDI-programmed tunes he had developed. Close your eyes, and it sounded like Metheny playing dozens of instruments at once. Beautiful, complex, deeply layered.

He had twinkling white lights added to each instrument, so we in the audience could visualize what had been triggered. It was a starry night – indoors.

To give the audience a sense of how it all works, he played three pieces that were improvised on the spot. He’d set a melody with one pedal, play a melody or counter melody on his MIDI-guitar, then assign it to one or more instruments (There were two Yamaha Disklaviers, countless percussion pieces, four guitarbots, two cabinets full of blown bottles that created B-3 like tones, marimbas and vibraphones in his arsenal.) Then he’d add more layers…. Then when he liked the backing, he soloed over it.

It was all Metheny - a blend of melodicism and intensity - and it was all good. He even took his older tune “Unity Village” and played multiple guitar layers – something he had to do by overdubbing when it was first recorded.

Metheny stretched this show to more than two hours. “There are more than a million reasons why it’s always special to be here,” he said of his Boston stop. “Primarily it is you people.”

Metheny is not going solo with this project all the time. In fact, he’s taking Pat Metheny Group back on the road in June. This was just a new chapter in his musical imagineering.

Parris takes the music south

No matter that there was another Arctic blast of winter in New England, singer Rebecca Parris packed in a full house at Chan's in Woonsocket RI Saturday evening with a heated set that had us feeling like we were in Rio.

The Boston-based singer, always a huge draw at Chan's, was joined by saxophonist Dan Moretti, pianist Tim Ray, bassist Dave Zinno and drummer Steve Langone for a heart-warming and solid evening.

They took a blend of American Songboook and jazz standards - and performed them with a variety of Brazilian rhythms. Parris was in her element, a master of working the beat with her uncanny phrasing and sense of time.

The first set explored "Speak Low," "Darn That Dream," "I Fall in Love Too Easily," "You Don't Know What Love Is" and quite appropriately Tom Jobim's classic "Dindi" - with a Parris storytelling twist - and "Chega de Saudade" (No More Blues).

Parris has taken a hit with health issues over the last few years, but it hasn't affected her singing. Hallelujah.

Jazz and folk intermingle – paying it forward

Louis Armstrong is credited with saying: "All music is folk music; I ain't never heard no horse sing a song." Another variation on the quote is “All music is folk music, because we're all just folk."Quotations aside, there are some interesting jazz-folk synergies at work this autumn.

Some may have been surprised when 90-year-old folk troubadour Pete Seeger was featured September 19 in a prime-time performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival. He got a standing ovation when he walked on stage at the festival’s Arena venue.

Yes indeed, this land is our land.

And on the afternoon of Sunday, December 6, Sonny Rollins will take to the stage at Tarrytown NY Music Hall with his band to perform a benefit concert. It will be Rollins’ first fund-raising performance for any cause… And the cause in this instance is the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater – an environment-focused vessel and nonprofit founded 40 years ago by singer Pete Seeger.

"Pete Seeger and I have the same heroes and beliefs. We are in the same family. He is my brother", says Rollins.

Besides brother, you say add neighbor. Rollins has called the Hudson Valley home since 1972.

The home-court advantage

The basketball and hockey playoffs that are under way have proven once again that there is a home arena / hometown advantage. For proof, look no further than the Boston Celtics' epic first-round series with the Chicago Bulls.

That advantage also exists in music, as I was reminded when checking out the Blue Note 7 in performances two weeks apart in two different cities.

The all-star group’s show in Worcester, Mass. on April 1 was quite good, but the impact was numbed a bit by a half-empty house and the very large stage at historic Mechanics Hall.

I also caught them at Birdland in New York on April 16. I doubt the band coasted in any of its performances in its 50-city U.S. tour, but what a difference it makes to play at home in familiar surroundings, in front of critics and peers.

The band was tighter physically and emotionally, and the sound was top-notch. The resulting music was stunning from start to finish. A few times, when he wasn’t soloing, Nicholas Payton stood at the wall at the rear of the stage, and added some comping riffs - off mic, yet filling the room.

Nicholas Payton, Birdland, April 2009... > The evening was punctuated by the ultimate musicians’ compliment… musicians who weren’t elsewhere that night or that set were checking out the band. Those in the room that night included Bob Sheppard, Eric Alexander, Anat Cohen, Jim Ridl, Roni Ben-Hur and Bill Mays. When the BN7 played its update to Herbie Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance,” pianist Bill Charlap noted that saxophonist George Coleman, who played on the original Blue Note session, was in the house - sitting close to the stage, holding court at his own table.

I suspect the six-night Big Apple winddown of the spring tour was like that every night. Those in the house the prior night, for example, included Steve Kuhn and Mike LeDonne.

Fresh takes on jazz classics

Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts is historic, elegantly preserved and remains a great contributor to the region’s arts vitality. Built in 1857 in the heart of central Massachusetts, it underwent a restoration more than 30 years ago to show off its acoustic and visual grandeur.

The Blue Note jazz catalog is just as historic to jazz fans, elegantly preserved since the label’s founding 70 years ago by German immigrants Alfred Lyon and Francs Wolff. And the Blue Note 7, an all-star band, is on the road celebrating the richness and vitality of the label’s great music.

Worcester’s April 1 concert that was the first stop in the East Coast final leg of the 50-city U.S. tour that winds up April 14 to 19 at Birdland in New York. And the setting was most appropriate given the venue and label’s shared qualities.

Steve Wilson, Nicholas Payton, Ravi Coltrane... >

Pianist and music director Bill Charlap, guitarist Peter Bernstein, alto saxophonist Steve Wilson, tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, bassist Peter Washington, and drummer Lewis Nash, put their own modernized touches on seven classic tunes written by jazz musicians associated with Blue Note. The fresh arrangements came from the septet members and Charlap’s wife, pianist Renee Rosnes.

Peter Washington, Lewis Nash... >

The hall swung mightily for 90-minutes as the band performed extended explorations of seven tunes: Horace Silver’s “The Outlaw,” Joe Henderson’s “Inner Urge,” Herbie Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance, Wayne Shorter’s “United,” McCoy Tyner’s “Search for Peace,” Cedar Walton’s “Mosaic” and an encore, Lee Morgan’s “Party Time.” The ensemble playing was always tight and the format gave the musicians abundant solo space.

Peter Bernstein, Nicholas Payton... >

The players kept their own musical identities, but also tipped their hats to clear influences from the 1950s and ‘60s Blue Note heyday – with strains of Lee Morgan and Clifford Brown, Jackie McLean and Art Blakey.

Rosnes’s updated arrangement of “Dolphin Dance” stretched the tune into a somewhat laid-back form that gave the players more space to mine new musical nuances from the classic Hancock hit. Cedar Walton wrote “Mosaic” for Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and this version featured arranger Nash’s most extended and bombastic drum solo of the evening.

Steve Wilson, Bill Charlap... ^

After the Birdland engagement, the band members take a break for their other individual projects. A European tour begins in the fall.

Coryell Auger Sample Trio - in concert

Coryell Auger Sample Trio

(Narrows Center for the Arts, Fall River MA) Musical chops – and genes – were quite evident during the first East Coast tour of the southern California-based Coryell Auger Sample Trio, which consists of guitarist Julian Coryell, drummer Karma Auger and bassist Nicklas Sample. In a February 11 southern New England performance in support of its self-produced debut CD, Coolidge Returns, and preview of tunes written and recorded for the trio’s sophomore project, CAST (as they abbreviate their grouping) was impressive.

They have an affinity for improvisation and strong interaction. They say that was evident when the first sat down as a group in August 2007 – and developed the music for the project in four hours. They haven’t slowed a bit, describing their collaboration as prolific ever since. 

 It was only fitting that midway through the trio’s long set, they performed “Song For Our Fathers,” a tune from that not-yet-mixed, not-yet-named second CD. With very much the same intent and a bit of the feel of Horace Silver’s classic ”Song for My Father,” this piece is a tribute to guitarist Larry Coryell and keyboard players Brian Auger and Joe Sample. In the hands of his son’s exquisite soloing, the latter track and a tune called “Purple Panther” displayed a very strong Larry Coryell melodic influence. “Purple Panther” additionally underscored the strong interaction that gives this band a jazz-based jam band sort of propulsion. 

Auger’s solid drumming, alternating between delicacy and a firestorm, was an interesting contrast with his rather low-key demeanor. He and Sample provided interesting colors as they shared and shifted rhythms and melodies. The high energy of two vamp-based originals, “Walk of the Dragon” and “Rice Krispy Socrates,” also provided great improvising moments for all three players. Coryell Auger Sample Trio is well on the way to becoming one of the more interesting new fusion bands – able to draw both from its highly credentialed jazz roots, as well as modern rock.