Jazz in the name of love - and loving it

With co-leader Dan Miller out of town, tenor saxophonist Lew Del Gatto brought in guitarist Frank Portolese to join the fun for the weekly quartet gig at The Barrel Room in downtown Fort Myers on Thursday, December 9. 

Lew Del Gatto

Trumpeter Miller was busy with jazz faculty duties at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. So the band this night included Saturday Night Live Band alumnus Del Gatto, Portolese, bassist Brandon Robertson and drummer Tony Vigilante.

Frank Portolese

The highlight of the first set was a Del Gatto-selected string of five tunes that explored many facets of love. "Alone Together" was followed by "I Love You" played in the key of F, which Del Gatto called "the key of love." Then came "Makin' Whoopie," and two relationship-is-over choices, "Gone With the Wind" and "You Don't Know What Love Is."

Tony Vigilante

Lou could have gone on and on with the seemingly endless choices, but didn't. This wasn't a medley of brief snippets. Each tune got an extended instrumental exploration that showcased the players' strong chops, soloing skills, and cohesiveness as a band. Chicago native Portolese fit well in the band, displaying a musical sensitivity that underscored his blistering bebop lines.

Back to The Barrel Room

What a night it was in downtown Fort Myers FL. Thursday evening, June 17, was just the second time back on stage at The Barrel Room at Twisted Vine Bistro for the Dan Miller-Lew Del Gatto Quartet.

Dan Miller, Brandon Robertson

Lew Del Gatto

The band has been featured at the venue every Thursday night for the past five years – except for a 15-month pandemic lull that ended last week. Thanks to vaccinations, a mask or two spotted in the full house, and a need to return to jazz normalcy, the regulars were enthusiastic and the band responded in kind. And, as always, there were a few surprises. You can never be sure who will sit in with the quartet, which features Miller on trumpet, Saturday Night Live alumn Del Gatto on tenor sax, bassist Brandon Robertson and hard-swinging drummer Tony Vigilante.

Glimmers of hope, turning a corner

This 2021 edition of Jazz Appreciation Month underscored the notion that we can’t take the music or its makers for granted. Especially after the past year: clubs shuttered temporarily or permanently, or forced to present music to their supporters virtually via webcasts because of limited or no live audiences. Musicians without steady gigs or, in some cases, any gigs for over a year. Or others performing from their living rooms, stoops, driveways and public parks to keep their chops – and sanity – hoping for support from real or virtual tip jars. The tragic number of jazz musicians and industry figures felled by COVID-19 reached at least 90 and still counting.

But there are glimmers of hope, of turning the corner. Some concerts and restaurant gigs have returned with a clear focus on social distancing, masks and other pandemic protocols. 

One of those good news stories occurred this past weekend in Savannah GA, when the city’s premier venue, Good Times Jazz Bar & Restaurant, reopened after a total shutdown that lasted more than 12 months.

Owners Stephen and Danielle Moore opened Good Times in 2017. It offered dining and live Tuesday through Sunday nights, plus a gospel brunch on Sundays. That was before COVID-19 struck. Rather than risk any viral impact on guests, employees or their relatives, executive chef and jazz fan Joe Randall locked the doors of the downtown venue on busy West Broughton Street in late March 2020.

2020: The Year in Jazz

All About Jazz has just posted my comprehensive annual look back at the past year in the jazz world.  

In short: The COVID-19 pandemic put the jazz world in a tailspin, just like the world at large, in 2020. And there is plenty of uncertainty going into the new year about what “new normal: might emerge from the darkness. International Jazz Day, like so many other things, became a online virtual event this time around.

Pianist Keith Jarrett disclosed that he might never perform in public again because of lingering health issues. The National Endowment for the Arts welcomed four new NEA Jazz Masters and said farewell to nine others who were among the many industry-associated musicians and figures passing away during the year.

But there was much, much more, in a year like we've never seen before. 

With some 20/20 hindsight, there's a lot more to learn about or refresh your memory right here.

Some good news for a change, near and far (updated)

Amid all the economic pain and uncertainty this year for jazz musicians, clubs and festivals due to the pandemic, there is some good news to share.

It comes on distant and local fronts, as we continue to await how the “new normal” affects the arts long term.

Just because we can...

As  the addage goes, just because we can doesn't mean we should.

I can only speak specifically about Florida,  where the governor proclaimed on Friday, September 25 that it is time for business as usual. After six months of varied restrictions to minimize the spread of COVID-19, he gave businesses the green light to get back to doing business at pre-pandemic levels.

In spite of that shift, let's hope we've learned a bit more about the need for caution - and continued precautions. Masks may no longer be required, but they sure are a good idea. Heck, the considerate folks in Japan have been wearing them in public for decades to avoid catching - or passing on - airborne germs that can cause colds, flu, viruses, what have you.

While some restaurants that offer live music here in Southwest Florida have been resuming live music with socially distanced tables, masks for servers and patrons, etc., let's hope that they don't rush to undo all of those sensible precautions.

As individuals, we should still tread with care. It just makes sense, no matter how much we love the way music in live settings warms the heart and touches the soul on some nights.

Arts and culture have been  hit particularly hard this year. By my count there have been more than 40 jazz-related COVID-19 deaths around the world. The number could be much higher but we'll never know for sure. I'd sure hate to see that toll rise further.

The ups and downs in times of uncertainty

Jazz musicians are used to the unexpected and uncertain. In some respects, they've thrived on it - through the art of improvisation that is the essence of jazz. Pianist Cyrus Chestnut calls improvisation "composition at a rapid pace with no erasers."

But the things we're all going through now as we hunker down amid the global spread of COVID-19 is rewriting things - without erasers - to a degree we've never seen. With self-quarantines, school and college closings, nightclub closings, restaurant retrenchings, concert and festival postponements or cancellations for who knows how long, one thing is apparent.

The only certainty we have right now  is uncertainty. Musicians, many of whom live a gig-to-gig existence unless they have teaching income, are feeling the pinch of concert and club and restaurant gig cancellations. 

A night Bass'd on a True Story

The Barrel Room at the Twisted Vine Bistro in downtown Fort Myers was packed on Saturday, September 28 for bassist Brandon Robertson's CD release gig/celebration. By my head count, it was standing-room-only and then some.  In addition to those fortunate to get seats at tables or the bar,people were standing wherever they could find space.
 
 It was a well-deserved turnout to note the release of Bass'd on a True Story (Slammin' Media). 

The Barrel Room was the natural choice for this, since Brandon performs weekly at the club as an integral part of the Dan Miller-Lew Del Gatto quartet each Thursday night. He's built quite a following since settling in the area. He performs frequently in a variety of contexts and directs the jazz program at nearby Florida Gulf Coast University.

Brandon Robertson

While the CD includes two terrific jazz standards (Brooks Bowman's "East of the Sun (West of the Moon" and Benny Golson's "Stablemates"), the other eight tracks are Robertson originals. Each was inspired by a profound moment in the leader's musical or personal life, hence the clever CD title.

The band for the evening included Miller on trumpet, Del Gatto on tenor sax, Zach Bartholomew on piano and Josh Platt on drums. Bartholomew, a longtime collaborator with Brandon since their Florida State undergrad days, earned his doctorate and teaches at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music. Platt is a Frost student.

Swing - and happy feet - are paramount at Roy Gerson’s new gig...

Pianist Roy Gerson, who moved from his native New York a couple of years ago, has brought a refreshing 1940s bite of the Big Apple to Southwest Florida.

Roy Gerson

His new eight-member Swingtet is one month into its Friday night residency at Society Restaurant & Lounge in Fort Myers’ bustling Bell Tower Shops plaza. His concept for this band’s fun evenings is re-creating the Manhattan supper club atmosphere back in the day – where you could hear top jazz musicians playing a wide variety of swing, Latin and even pop music for dining, listening and dancing. Yes, at Roy’s Swingtet gigs, dancing is not only permitted, it is encouraged – either next to your table or right in front of the band.

On Friday, July 26, Gerson’s fine band included his wife, Corrine Manning, on vocals, Don Mopsick on bass, Tony Vigilante on drums, Frank Portolese on guitar, Dan Miller and Randy Sandke on trumpet, and Herb Bruce on trombone. The horn line shifts a bit from week to week, depending on which musicians are available.

Miller, Gerson, Mopsick

The evening’s repertoire was all over the musical map, but oh did it swing.

There were some Swing-era staples: (“Lady Be Good,” “Caravan,” “Perdido,” “Sweet Georgia Brown” and the classic Louis Jordan hit “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby.” There were several varied New Orleans-based tunes: “Bourbon Street,” “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” and “Iko Iko.” The Latin fare ranged from cha cha to the Mexicana-flavored rock hit “Tequila” and “Quando, Quando, Quando,” which originated as a bossa nova-styled Italian pop song. The evening also featured the bossa classic “Girl from Ipanema.”

Sandke, Portolese, Miller

There were beautiful musical moments. Sandke, another recent transplant from New York, was featured on “Stardust.” Miller turned great solos on “Basin Street Blues” and “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans,” with Bruce doing the same on “Stars Fell on Alabama.” Vigilante rose to the Gene Krupa challenge on “Sing, Sing, Sing,” the Benny Goodman Orchestra classic written by Louis Prima. Portolese, a Chicago jazz fixture for 30 years, shifted with ease between rhythm guitar and masterful solos throughout the night.

The dancers got into the mix on the band’s spirited version of “Jump, Jive an’ Wail,” the 1956 Prima hit that Brian Setzer brought to fresh ears four decades later. Manning’s solid vocals were especially effective on that one, as well as “What a Difference a Day Made,” “I Can’t Live Without You” and the Al Green hit “Let’s Stay Together.”

Suffice it to say that you won’t find a jazz atmosphere like this anywhere else in the region. It was enhanced by a visual mood-setter: three walls of shifting classic black-and-white images of varied jazz greats from across the decades. 

The Roy Gerson Swingtet

Dancing is encouraged

 

Jumping aboard the hard-bop express

Drummer Paul Gavin digs hard bop, a hard-driving jazz subgenre that embraced strong elements of funk, soul and the blues when it emerged in the 1950s. And he plays it with great joy and enthusiasm.

Paul Gavin

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers band was one of hard bop's primary incubators. His unit also played a peerless role in developing scores and scores of fine bandleaders over the years. (You can find more detail on that legacy in this earlier posting.)

Gavin's newest band project, Mosaic, made its debut performance on Saturday, May 18, at the Firehouse Cultural Center in Ruskin. The band is named after one of Blakey's finest albums, a 1961 Blue Note project for which pianist Cedar Walton composed the title track.

This night's music was drawn entirely from the Jazz Messengers repertoire, which made sense for two reasons - Blakey's influence on jazz, and the fact that this is the centennial of his birth year. The Pittsburgh native was born on October 11, 1919. He died in 1990.

Bruce, Suggs, Gillespie

Tampa-based Gavin's sextet included pianist John O'Leary III, bassist Michael Ross, trumpeter James Suggs, tenor saxophonist Valerie Gillespie and trombonist Herb Bruce. They locked into the hard-bop groove and celebrated its vibrant legacy all night long in both ensemble sections and soloing.

Gavin, O'Leary

The repertoire was varied, drawing mostly from Jazz Messenger members Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan and Benny Golson, as well as Curtis Fuller, Bobby Timmons and Blakey himself.

Mosaic performed Morgan's "Calling Miss Khadija" and "Kozo's Waltz," Hubbard's "Crisis" and "Down Under," Golson's "Along Came Betty," Fuller's exotic-tinged "Arabia," and Walton's "Mosaic" and "Ugetsu."

There were two other fine spotlight moments:

Gavin, Ross

• Mosaic's opening set concluded with Gavin's arrangement of Timmons' composition "Moanin'," which became the Jazz Messengers signature tune. After a horn-section intro, it became a very fine showcase for Ross. To Gavin's mind: "the Jazz Messengers never featured the bass player enough."



Gavin

• The leader opened the second set with a stunning solo drum composition, reprising "The Freedom Rider," which Blakey wrote in tribute to the riders who helped end segregation on public buses - and ultimately, all forms of transportation.

The power and majesty of the trumpet was always a key element in the Jazz Messengers (whose horn-playing alumni included Hubbard, Morgan, Donald Byrd, Chuck Mangione, Terence Blanchard and Wynton Marsalis, among others). On this night, Suggs wore the mantle to great effect. His solos were on fire all night long. Gillespie and Bruce also had fine moments. Bruce, who works mostly in the classic jazz, Dixieland and swing genres, took on the hard-bop challenge and stretched his wings. He was showcased on "Along Came Betty."

Gavin, 27, is a 2015 graduate of the University of South Florida's jazz program. He works full-time as a performer and music educator.

Blakey's legacy was the inspiration for this band, but Gavin said he also plans to dig into other aspects of the hard-bop legacy as Mosaic develops. His said its next focus will be on the soulful sound of two Tampa natives who made a huge mark in jazz, brothers Cannonball and Nat Adderley.

Bruce, Suggs, Gillespie, Gavin, Ross, O'Leary

There's jazz in his blood

Pianist Rony Khoury hails from the Dominican Republic, where his sheer talent at the keyboard has caught many an eye - and ear. With good reason.


Rony Khoury

He visited Port Charlotte this week for a showcase performance - a brief stopover en route to Boston, where he's going to study at the Berklee College of Music. He won a half-scholarship to Berklee through the Michel Camilo Scholarship Competition, which is open to student musicians from the Dominican Republic. 


Isaac Mingus

Khoury, 28, performed in a trio format at J.D.'s Bistro with bassist Isaac Mingus and drummer Mark De Rose. Mingus, a recent grad of the State College of Florida in Bradenton who now studies at the University of Florida in Gainesville, is a classical and jazz bassist and cellist. De Rosa, a Berklee grad who spent a lot of time working in Japan, is now based on the Florida east coast.

Things are heating up again, music-wise....

Jazz never goes away in southwestern Florida. There is jazz to be found in all seasons, if you seek it out. The major concerts and festivals generally take a summer hiatus - but things heat up again come fall.  They really intensify once the snowbirds start returning to the region. 

Bobby van Deusen

For me, those summer doldrums ended on Wednesday, September 12, when Pensacola-based pianist Bobby van Deusen came to town to share his formidable musical talents at a Charlotte County Jazz Society membership recruitment and preseason fundraising event at JD's Bistro in Port Charlotte. 

The afternoon included a bit of ragtime, jazz and Great American Songbook standards, some singalongs and a healthy dose of movie theme music. Van Deusen added some ragtime and reggae flavors to "Under the Sea" from the Disney movie "The Little Mermaid." He concluded the afternoon with his 10-minutes-plus medley of the music from "Phantom of the Opera."

Kudos to JD's General Manager David Bell and his staff for making their fine venue available for this worthy cause. The matinee event drew a crowd of nearly 100.

Gates and Morgan – two different takes on vocal jazz

Giacomo Gates

Hot House, New York City’s long-running monthly jazz guide, asked me to profile singer Giacomo Gates, as well as preview singer Melissa Morgan’s metro-area gigs for its July issue, which is now out.

It can be read online or downloaded - or picked up at the many metro NYC jazz venues. 

Gates and Morgan have their own jazz vocal niches because of their approach and specialties. 

Melissa Morgan

You can read here about Giacomo, a master of many trades.

Melissa’s spotlight is available here. 

Always a night with musical surprises

You never know just what's in store when the Dan Miller Quartet performs on Tuesday nights at the  Roadhouse Cafe in Fort Myers FL. There are always musical surprises, and that's a good thing in this case.

An improved jazz deja vu

John Allmark

One of the great bonuses from returning to Rhode Island for the Newport Jazz Festival each summer is a chance to hear trumpeter John Allmark's extraordinary big band, The John Allmark Jazz Orchestra. For 16 years and counting, Allmark has kept Little Rhody's big band tradition alive - a tradition that began 49 years ago with the Duke Belaire Band. (It's just one year shy of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra's golden Monday night run that began as the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra,)

This was my first opportunity to hear the band in its new home, The Met, a live music emporium in Pawtucket. The prior home, Bovi's Town Tavern, closed in late 2015. It had hosted big-band jazz on Monday nights for 48 years.

Jerry Vejmola solos

Bill Vint

The new venue is larger, feels much roomier, and has top-notch sound and lighting systems. In my view, those compensate for the coziness that Bovi's afforded the band and its loyal fans.

During last night's opening set, the wide-ranging repertoire included a bit of Ellington and Strayhorn, some Freddie Hubbard material and a few other gems. My clear favorite was the band's lush take on trumpeter Tom Harrell's gorgeous composition, "Sail Away." 

Bob Bowlby

Vinny Pagano

Lucky me. I get to go back the next two Mondays to hear this blend of some of Southern New England's finest jazz players.

Enjoy these visual souvenirs from the evening. 


  

The John Allmark Jazz Orchestra