September 2012 - The New York City Jazz Record

NEW YORK @ NIGHT
SMOKE ® JAZZ&SUPPER CLUB
4 September 2012 | THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD
Photo by Scott Friedlander
An eight-week run of free concerts in the Whole Foods
café at Union Square was more impressive in its
programming than for its publicity efforts, but
nevertheless the Wednesday evening shows enticed
small cadres of the faithful for sets by Steve Berrios,
Cooper-Moore, Bern Nix, Steve Swell and, on Aug.
15th, William Parker’s Summer Songs with Charles
Gayle and Marvin “Boogaloo” Smith. And if free jazz
in the supermarket doesn’t make New Yorkers’
nonplussed heads turn, perhaps nothing would. The
first set Parker’s trio played was standards, though
through the voice of Gayle’s hard-bitten tenor they
might not have been recognized as such by many in the
room, most of whom were typing on smartphones and
sipping lattes. They played an impassioned set
nonetheless, working through “Lady Bird”, “I’ll
Remember April” and other chestnuts and if it might
have been a bit cacophonous for the environs, it was
still a far cry from By Any Means, the Gayle/Parker
trio with drummer Rashied Ali - not just for Smith’s
lighter touch but the relative restraint the other two
musicians displayed. Any such bets were off for their
second set, though. Gayle let the young Buffalo
saxophonist James Brandon Lewis open and on the
small stage area listened intently before picking up his
horn and laying an appreciative squall over the mix.
And it was this, not the fractured standards, that got
the room’s attention: gazes of disbelief to be sure but
generally topping off smiles. - Kurt Gottschalk
Jazz 2751 BROADWAY & Supper • NEW YORK Club
• NY 10025 • 212 864 6662 • WWW.SMOKEJAZZ.COM
Wednesday, Sept 5
Nat Adderley Jr. Quartet
Friday & Saturday Sept 7, 8
George Coleman Quartet
featuring Harold Mabern
Wednesday, Sep 12
Chris Bergson & Band
Friday & Saturday Sept 14, 15
Renee Rosnes Quartet
Steve Nelson (v) • Peter Washington (b) • Lewis Nash (d)
Wednesday, Sept 19
Ken Fowser Sextet
Friday & Saturday Sept 21, 22
Wallace Roney Quintet
Ben Solomon (t s) • Victor Gould (p) •
Darryl Johns (b) • Kush Aberdey (d)
Wednesday, Sept 26
Pepper Adams Festival:
Alexis Cole Quintet
featuring Eric Alexander
Friday & Saturday Sept 28, 29
Mike Le Donne’s 5LIVE
Eric Alexander (t s) • Jeremy Pelt (t) • John Webber (b) •
Joe Farnsworth (d)
Sundays Sept 2, 16
Allan Harris Band
Allan Harris (v & g) • Pascal LeBoeuf (p & k) •
Leon Boykins (b) • Jake Goldbas (d)
Sundays, Sept 9, 30
SaRon Crenshaw
George Papageorge (o) • Thomas Hutchings (s) •
Richard Lee (t) • Cliff Smith (b) • Damon Due White (d)
Mondays, Sept 10, 24
Captain Black Big Band
A 14-piece Jazz Orchestra conducted by Orrin Evans
Mondays, Sept 3, 17
The SMOKE Big Band
A 16-piece Jazz Orchestra directed by Bill Mobley
Tuesdays, Sept 4, 11, 18, 25
The Groover Quartet
Eric Alexander (a s) • tba (g) • Mike LeDonne (B3) •
Joe Farnsworth (d)
Thursdays Sept 6, 13, 20, 27
Gregory Generet
Saturdays & Sundays Jazz Brunch
Vocalist Annette St. John
and her Trio
2751 Broadway • New York NY 10025
212-864-6662
www.smokejazz.com
William Parker Trio @ Whole Foods Union Square
Kimmo Pohjonen’s appearance at Lincoln Center
Out-of-Doors on Aug. 3rd opened in familiar smallworld-after-all
fashion with a procession by the
Chinese Chio-Tian Folk Drums and Arts Group before
the Finnish accordionist and his troupe of wrestlers
took the Damrosch Park stage. Pohjonen’s thoroughly
entertaining Accordion Wrestling was a good bit of
scripted hilarity, but it was borne of a longstanding
Finnish tradition of bouts with musical
accompaniments. They pantomimed weighing in, they
displayed moves, they waltzed, played like airplanes
and flipped each other about, all to the booming live
accordion soundtrack, dramatically processed and
amplified by Helsinki Nelson. The carefully
choreographed show elicited laughs but at the same
time was an athletic and a musical display. Pohjonen is
a new music hero in his homeland, having worked
with the Kronos Quartet and King Crimson guitarist
Trey Gunn. He is a striking figure, muscle-bound and
mohawked and his commanding presence was a big
part of the stageshow. He unstrapped his instrument at
one point to assume the role of coach in a gravelly
voice somewhere between Tom Waits and Donald
Duck. Later he was quite literally caught up in the
action as one wrestler lifted him and carried him off,
his accordion falling over him with a moan. Ultimately
the much maligned instrument was sacrificed, along
with its player, in a ritual killing, closing the book on a
most unusual chapter in musical history. (KG)
There is something about Roulette’s newish Brooklyn
space that inspires grandeur. Maybe not in the most
traditional sense of the word but an actual stage under
a lovely proscenium arch makes the music played there
seem especially impressive. Clarinetist Jeremiah
Cymerman, leading his amplified quartet (Aug. 9th),
was a beneficiary of this effect. While his grouping of
like-minded conceptualists - trumpeters Nate Wooley
and Peter Evans and saxophonist/clarinetist Matt
Bauder - would feel at home at the city’s more prosaic
venues, at Roulette the 42-minute piece conceived by
Cymerman had greater impact, if only because it was
not constrained by low ceilings, close walls or
inattentive listeners. The Amplified Quartet is just
that, the natural timbres of brass and woodwinds
transmogrified through various forms of manipulation:
electronic processing; feedback and microphone
placement; amplifier settings. Except for Cymerman
presenting melodic fragments in a relatively
straightforward manner, all the players trafficked in
extended techniques and Bauder also integrated
separate electronics. Heard on CD the sounds would
have been unidentifiable (a factory during an air raid
or small unmanned drones killing even smaller insects)
but in person became logically impressive as
concentrated gestures fed into the whorled whole.
Most fascinating, however, was a 10-minute acoustic
encore, more staccato and unadorned, a fanfare that
seemed to come from a different group. - Andrey Henkin
Jeremiah Cymerman Amplified Quartet @ Roulette
In today’s ‘modern mainstream’ (Who came up with
this awful term? Is there an ‘antiquated avant garde’?
Actually, yes there is.) players take less from the
compositional lessons of their forbears in lieu of
individual instrumental prowess. Blowing sessions
with interchangeable and forgettable melodies abound
- as long as everyone can solo and solo often. Hammond
organist Brian Charette - possibly modern mainstream,
maybe more main modernstream - is a delightful
exception, as evidenced by a set at Smalls (Aug. 9th) by
his Sextette. Charette can burn as can his interesting
frontline of Itai Kriss (flute), Seamus Blake and Mike
DiRubbo (saxes) and John Ellis (bass clarinet) but his
music is not about blowing for blowing’s sake. He
writes interesting and unique compositions (a step
above ‘tunes’), his currency inventive little twists, and
works from behind the keys as an active arranger.
Much of the music from the first set (slightly marred
by a loud early evening crowd, which included many
soon-to-be-playing musicians) came from Charette’s
recent SteepleChase disc Music for Organ Sextette and
displayed an advanced whimsy. So Charette is a good
composer yet doesn’t take himself too seriously? Call
the police (jazz or otherwise). “Fugue For Katheleen
Anne/Ex Girlfriend Variations” and “The Elvira
Pacifier”, classical and reggae respectively, were the
highlights mainly because Charette’s sidemen believed
in his music, playing their features with concision -
run-scoring singles instead of solo home runs. (AH)
Peter Gannushkin/DOWNTOWNMUSIC.NET