Top Ten

June 27, 2003 Article by Dave Read

This is the LCJO’s “Rhythm is our Business” tour so let’s mention the rhythm section first: Eric Lewis, piano, Carlos Henriquez, bass, Herlin Riley, drums. Second thing to say about them is that the second set was their’s, a set consisting of but one number, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, which we didn’t time but must have run 45-50 minutes. The first segment of the piece built up to Henriquez’ haunting bass solo with the rest of the band chanting/intoning “a love supreme, a love supreme…”. Instead of being a tasty coda, that just gave way to a searing sax solo and then came “top professor” Eric Lewis’ virtuoso piano solo that not only kept the audience rapt for a long time but also seemed to stun his colleagues, who peered at him in awe and looked at each other with expressions that ranged from disbelief to joy.

All the while in the back sat Herlin Riley, keeping time, always smiling, glancing over his left shoulder at Mr. Marsalis, and then he started hitting the rim and sides of his drums and we were off to rhythm heaven – all we can report is that it’s a beautiful place. Mr. Riley’s tour de force elicited movement from everybody in the house, of course, except for professor Lewis, who looked as if he were alone in a mountain-top monastary, head bowed before an altar. The collegial leader Wynton Marsalis, who was a warm and witty m.c. throughout the concert, and spoke of his special affection for Tanglewood (but mumbled the not-that-long-ago year of his T.M.C. fellowship!), remained seated for his own lofty solo which coalesced the extraordinary rendition of Coltrane’s eloquent composition, and brought the most-appreciative audience to its feet for a prolonged and heart-felt ovation.

sourced from a medley of composers

Lastly, the first half consisted of the Marsalis composition Back to Basics followed by the novelty of a 3-minute rendition of Fletcher Hendersons’s arrangement of Ravel’s Bolero, then LCJO trombonist Ron Westray’s arrangement of the Charles Mingus tone poem The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Billy Strayhorn’s arrangement of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and closing with Duke Ellington’s Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue.

Marsalis and the LCJO last performed here on July 25, 1999, sharing the stage with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra for a program in celebration of the centennary of Duke Ellington‘s birth. The featured composition that night was Edvard Grieg’ “Peer Gynt Suite” and the program alternated between Marsalis leading the LCJO in Billy Strayhorn and Ellington’s arrangement with Ozawa leading the BSO in the Grieg score of the same passages. Pretty cool.
Members of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra:

• Wess Anderson – sax
• Seneca Black – trumpet,
• Walter Blanding – tenor sax,
• Vincent Gardner – trombone,
• Victor Goines – sax,clarinet,
• Andre Hayward – trombone,
• Carlos Henríquez – bass,
• Ryan Kisor – trumpet,
• Eric Lewis – piano,
• Ted Nash – sax, clarinet,
• Marcus Printup – trumpet,
• Herlin Riley – drums,
• Joe Temperley – sax, clarinet,
• Ron Westray – trombone.

September 1, 2002 performance review by Dave Read

Three tunes into his 2½ hour 2002 Tanglewood Jazz Festival concert, Dave Brubeck said, “I like to introduce new stuff when I play here because the audience is so kind.” Makes you wonder if “here” referred to the seven year old Ozawa Hall where tonight’s gig was, or the Koussevitsky Music Shed, which opened when he was 18 in 1938, or just hereabouts, which would include the site of the fabled Music Barn and the Lenox School of Jazz, where he performed and taught during the 1950s. Regardless, what a treat it was to be in the audience while Dave Brubeck is introducing new material!

That new song was Crescent City Stomp, and it was built around an infectious beat established by drummer Randy Jones, a beat Brubeck said you hear all over New Orleans. Bobby Militello’s saxophone was the featured instrument after the drum intro and Brubeck himself was the most enthused member of the audience for a while, as he would be throughout the evening, whenever his bandmates took their many solos.

Rounding out the quartet, all dressed smartly in dinner jackets and black slacks, was bassist Michael Moore, who plucked and bowed several eloquent passages from his bass, which his languid body fairly enfolded. There were times when you’d think Moore was a ventriloquist for the cleanly enunciated lines he drew from his instrument, but an inartful one because all the while you could see his lips moving! (Read comprehensive bios of the band, from Hedrick Smith’s PBS show “Rediscovering Dave Brubeck.“)

Introducing the evening’s first tune, Brubeck said that for fifty years he started concerts with St. Louis Blues, but tonight would start with the title tune from his current release, “The Crossing.” He told about a trans-Atlantic jazz cruise with about 100 musicians aboard the QE II, which got underway on the Hudson, passed the Verazzano Narrows and into the Atlantic, ” – and we worked up a head of steam, which I hope we do tonight.”

They did.

The tune was some piece of magical mimicry; it was easy to imagine a grand ship honking and chugging away from the pier and soon enough finding its way into rough waters evoked by churning bass notes, then Brubeck took the helm playing long melodious lines, the ship rocking smoothly through eddies and swells.

In telling us that on September 21, he’ll celebrate his 60th wedding anniversary, Brubeck introduced the next tune, All My Love, a translucent ballad that had him hunched over the keyboard, his eyes only inches away from his hands playing so few notes that you could count them.

After The Crossing, came the haunting Elegy, an intimate composition that Ozawa Hall was designed for, where it seems to become part of the ensemble. Continuing in that vein, Brubeck introduced Don’t Forget Me with a few minutes of distant romantic lines that suddenly turned immediate and raucus with another of Militello’s expansive sax solos, and then had Brubeck’s hands flying all over the keyboard before he returned to the lonely little melody that he began with.

This was a very special evening of jazz, a million miles away from being a museum piece, every tune imbued with freshness and vigor. Brubeck’s age was apparent only when he stepped over to the mic, which he did several times to introduce tunes during the first set, which was probably pre-arranged as opposed to the second which I think he made up from the bench as he went along.

It began with Pennies From Heaven, dedicated to the people on the lawn who were being rained upon lightly. Brubeck played out the celestial theme in the next two tunes, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and Sunny Side of the Street, developing each while the band listened to hear where they were going. Militello’s flute solo on – Rainbow was ineffably sublime. Sunny Side – was rollicking, and at one point Brubeck pointed toward Moore and drew a circle in the air, indicating another round of solos for all.

The audience responded to the celestial set with thunderous applause, which the quartet accepted graciously and which Brubeck seemed overwhelmed by, his grin so broad as he looked into the audience and then around to his band to spread out the acclaim. After his fans got quiet again, he mischievously noodled a few lines from Singing in the Rain then broke into the first notes of Take Five, the Paul Desmond composition from “Time Out,” the world’s first million-selling jazz record.

It was a thrilling rendition, featuring Militello’s slow reinterpretation of the theme before returning it to a rambunctiousness that Brubeck brought to a gleeful level which Randy Jones exploded with a virtuoso display of drumming. Brubeck brought the tune back to earth and then Jones laid down the tastiest little drum coda for the ultimate punctuation to this landmark of jazz.

Sustained applause brought these giants back on stage, Brubeck played a few notes of Brahm’s Lullabye to everybody’s amusement before the quartet re-loaded for Take the A Train, which was a rumbling jam session, the sea cruise of two hours earlier long over. It went on until Brubeck, answering a questioning look from Militello, raised his hands from the keyboard, turned them into pistols and fired a volley into the air.

This performance was a slice of jazz for the ages, delivered by the ageless gentleman genius Dave Brubeck and his virtuoso sidemen, each of whom was brilliant tonight.

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2019 Tanglewood schedule

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has released the schedule for the 2019 season at Tanglewood, which will be remembered for the opening of the Tanglewood Learning Institute, the four buildings overlooking Seiji Ozawa Hall on the Leonard Bernstein camopus.

Music director Andris Nelsons will be present for the month of July, conducting 13 programs, including the world premiere of a new work by Kevin Puts, The Brightness of Light, based on letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz on July 20, and a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre on july 27 and 28.

September 2, 2001 Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read

Calling them “world-class people, all of them,” Sonny Rollins introduced his band to the audience right at the start of his Sunday afternoon concert, and then went on to turn Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood into world headquarters of jazz for about 2½ hours. Coursing through a dozen compositions in two sets, the eloquent, elegant, and limber Rollins led his five-piece band in a performance that shone with a singular brilliance, but probably would have had many matches in the decades when giants of bebop roamed the planet by the dozens.

During his band-mates’ solos, he may sidle over by the piano, snapping time with his fingers, or stand head-bowed and motionless, facing in the same direction as the audience. All the while a world of emotion emanates from the stage, uttered by six individuals in language that is both sacred and profane, terse and wordy, crisp and chewy. Sonny Rollins is a commanding presence as he moves around the stage. His body seems to operate in sections during his own solos, as he goes high right for one run of notes, low left for another, and so on. The concert included In His Solitude by “our father” Duke Ellington, Why was I born? by “our good friend” Jerome Kern, “one that I wrote for the great Horace Silver during the halcyon days of bebop called H.S.,” and “our theme song, which we recorded with John Coltrane for Prestige, Tenor Madness.”

Rollins longest introduction was for Global Warming (from the 1998 Milestone recording of the same name). Saying it came from “the stupid mind of a musician who thought that we were despoiling the water” and mentioning the horrors of being in L.A. in the daytime and not being able to get a good tomato that wasn’t full of chemicals, he seemed dismissive of the composition’s impetus, ending by saying, “but hey, that’s politics.”

Whether or not art and politics make good bedfellows, politicians (and their enablers) would benefit by a daily dose of this composition, which is driven by the kind of infectious rhythm that makes you want to get up and bop around; not dance, but become one with the music as it rises and falls – just be – just bop. It makes you feel good, and it makes you want to communicate with those near you, maybe not with words, maybe not in an intimate nor a profound manner, just with cheerfulness and joy.

Sonny Rollins’s band: Clifton Anderson on trombone, Stephen Scott on piano, Bob Cranshaw on electric bass, Perry Wilson on drums, Victor See Yuen on African percussion.