Gem

There was joy and brilliance aplenty the other night. Geri Allen played the Village Vanguard. She’d been there for the week but this was a different and special show. When I arrived, I heard that Christian McBride was sitting in on bass for this one gig. Trumpeter Marcus Belgrave was another addition just for this night. Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts rounded out the band. What a band, and how unexpected. Marcus was an early support for Geri, so there’s a love there. But beyond that, this stage glowed with joy and was riddled with communication. From the arrival on stage, there was casual patter with audience and private smiles and chatter on the stage. Geri led - you could see that in the respectful glances - but this was a partnership, even a family, and her offsiders gave generously. There was normal, human communication with eyes searching and often locked. Certainly Geri was all eyes on the band and almost nil to keyboard, and Jeff was gazing to follow her leads. Marcus and Christian a bit less so, although they looked often enough too. But the musical communication was paramount. Geri was a master of chordal colours that could ape a solo but also lead it with harmonic movements, modal or rhythmical. This is the complexity of the spoken word and these are Shakespearean skills. She was nothing less in solos, of course. Blues with inflections and simplicity; modal with fourths and symmetrical movements that just floored me. I know it’s done, I’ve heard it on record but never live like this. Christian was rock-like solidity with huge tone and absolute steadiness and plenty of space and smiles. This is a big man playing a big instrument that he fitted. The solos were no different, just more. Melodic and appropriate and musical, but devastating and speedy across the neck, and up into the thumb positions. I wondered if some lines were humanly possible, they were so quick and so sustained. They were and he did them. Clearly work of a master with immense knowledge and easy interpretation. I must admit that the concert was too short to capture it all; I was so enraptured by Geri and Christian that I didn’t listen enough to Marcus and Jeff. Marcus Belgrave was an older man and I thought not too well, but his happiness was infectious. The night felt like a family get-together, and there were clearly old mates in the audience because they were chatting after. His trumpet and flugelhorn were post-bop expressive, I thought maybe tested by age, but there were some soulful melodies and a few explosive quick lines. Jeff ‘Tain’ was all groove but also some volume. His is not a drumming of sly infection or of sparkling rudiments. This was more earthy and thumping and on occasion very loud. Here too there’s a family story. He’s got young girl children – I’d seen him carrying one out of the Vanguard between shows – and his wife is from the Sunshine Coast. We should see him more often. All these players were open, lyrical, simple when called for, but virtuosic on call with ease and without affectation. They played generously and the tunes were generously encountered, so the weren’t many. The trio started with a gentle Lucky to be me with immense space and heavy groove. Marcus joined them from the second tune, a ¾ with clinical beauty. There was a quick latin groove and Sunflower done with the subtly and expression of the Freddie Hubbard original. I’ve played this and heard this often enough, but this was another thing again. Geri led another tune with a sparse groove that Christian took up. I thought it may have been Summertime and maybe it was based on that, but it never resolved into the melody an eventually morphed into a blues. There was perhaps one other tune.

I haven’t done any of this justice. Geri’s glorious piano and Christian’s devastating bass were so special and the time so short. I needed another set at least to grow to live with these skills and to be able to give time to Tain and Marcus. It was like that: informed masters playing with ease and joy. Too good. Geri Allen (piano) played with Marcus Belgrave (trumpet, flugelhorn), Christian McBride (bass) and Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts (drums) at the Village Vanguard, NYC. Village Vanguard doesn't allow pics during the performance.

Oh, Linda

I could warm to living in NYC especially if I had an independent income. I feel at home when I cross a road and recognise someone. Linda Oh was crossing against us and we had a small chat about who was playing at Smalls. It is a S/small world. We were off to hear the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra at the Village Vanguard and to catch up with John Riley who had recently been in Canberra. But the whole band seemed to have changed. John was replaced, as was the bassist, and Jim McNeely wasn’t on piano. I didn’t catch all the names, but I’m pretty sure many of the horns were changed too. It must be the Labor Day long weekend that’s done it, but I enjoyed the music none-the-less. This is richly orchestrated music with lots of melodic undercurrents, fills, dynamics and the rest and the band was tight and superbly dynamic and genuinely well intoned. Solos in big ensembles are heavily circumscribed and can suffer from that, but these were some decent soloists and they were also much enjoyed. This is the continuation of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, so there were charts by Thad Jones, a Mintzer arrangement of Herbie Hancock (One finger snap) and even a Hendrix tune (Up from the skies) rearranged for the band. Nice players make the lush reeds, the mellifluous trombones and the blatant trumpets so obvious and pleasing. The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra played at the Village Vanguard, but who know who the performers were. Sadly no pics.

Uncanny beauty

Paul Motion is as long-standing in jazz as I can imagine and I was delighted to find he was playing at Village Vanguard on a night that I was in NYC in a trio format with Ben Monder and Jerome Sabbagh. Again I find myself stunned and delighted with the beauty in a music that I only touch in understanding. I can hear the roles and sometimes the methods, but I can’t imagine the distance you go to play like this. I wonder from the books whether it should work but it so obviously does. These drums that are so sparse and jagged and seemingly outside time. The sax that explores pitch and intervals but always tonally. This is not a music of alterations or substitutions, at least not that I heard from the sax. And guitar that plays with more dissonance although from within the chord, from extensions, in counterpoint with single note runs or chordal melody, finger-picked or plectrum plucked, always mildly echoed and just once overdriven and another time more wildly effected with ringing harmonics. I first guessed that most of the tunes were originals with chordal movements that were intriguing enough of themselves to support this and still sound contemporary. These tunes were jagged or balladic or call-and-responsive, and at least one seemed to me as unlikely chunks of melody that converged strangely but successfully. But they also played several standards, Good morning heartache and Sophisticated lady, so it’s not just the structure or harmony of these tunes that makes this such a unique and beauteous music. I guess it’s that sense of time that floats but also it’s an uncanny anticipation that I came to hear later in the night, during the second, repeated set. BM was reading, and yet he seemed to perfectly predict some of JS’s lines and certainly PM had been doing that all night with both the other players. Perhaps it’s also the lack of bass that’s part of this airiness of time, not just PM’s drums that are so free from the duties of time-keeping. I don’t really know how or why it works, but I can feel it does. Idiosyncratic or iconoclastic, perhaps; unique, probably; impressionistic, I guess so. Whatever else you may say, these were two sets of deeply intriguing and moving music and I’m so glad I got to hear these two wonderful sets.

Paul Motion (drums) led a trio of Ben Monder (guitar) and Jerome Sabbagh (tenor sax) at the Village Vanguard.

There were no pics during the performance and I’m told PM doesn’t like photos, so nothing of him, but I came across Ben and Jerome at the bar and here they are. Hello also to bartender and drummer Ryan Cavan. He’d been to Australia on tour with an R&B outfit, The Healers, and had a great time, a memorable gig in Canberra with a capable support band, and been feted with interviews on ABC666. How small is this world these days? Hello also to Dan Tepfer whose face I was sure I knew.