July 1, 2015 Article by Dave Read

As Lady Gaga herself mentioned from the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood early in her concert with Tonay Bennett June 30, 2015, it didn’t rain! But a steady drizzle and dreary skies did prevail all day long as a vast crowd assembled, causing miles-long traffic jams and overwhelming the usually efficient parking protocol at Tanglewood. With an hour to go before 8 pm showtime, Hawthorne St. was reduced to a single-lane parking lot – all the way back up Old Stockbridge Rd. to Lenox Town Hall. Tanglewood reported the audience a sellout of 19,000.

It seemed like a bigger audience than the 2012 James Taylor concert that included a guest appearance by Taylor Swift, but probably not equal to Taylor’s July 17, 2002 concert, with the Boston Pops, that set the Tanglewood attendacne record – 24,470, and which led to the B.S.O.’s agreement with the towns of Stockbridge and Lenox to cap ticket sales at 19,000.

Tony Bennett sings Cheek to Cheek with Lady Gaga

Altogether the concert included 31 songs in about two hours; duets included their grammy-winning Cheek to Cheek and Anything Goes, while Bennett did a set of Frank Sinatra songs, mentioning the Sinatra Centennial celebration later this year in Las Vegas. Ms. Gaga reminded us that Ole Blue Eyes called Bennett the greatest singer in the world. Besides all the costume changes and vamping, the highlight of her performance was a beautiful rendition of La Vie En Rose. They have taken the entertainment world by storm since teaming up a couple years ago, and this is no novelty act. Nearing 89, Tony Bennett simply sounds great – still. Nearing 30, Lady Gaga sure has chops, and it shouldn’t belong before she’s a great singer, too.

Continue reading Tony Bennett Lady Gaga throng swamps Tanglewood

August 25, 2004 performance; by Dave Read

Monty Alexander peered out from the Ozawa Hall stage at Tanglewood, saw the auditorium half full, and proceeded to deliver a concert of upbeat and optimistic music to an enthusiastic audience that occupied way less than half the hall. Such is the nature of the Jamaican-born pianist, whose reputation apparently carries insufficient weight in the Tanglewood market, despite a fifty year career, more than 60 albums as a leader, and performance credits with legends of jazz including Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra, Benny Golson, and Oscar Peterson.

The concert began with a piece that quoted I Got Rhythm, begun by drummer Dennis Mackrel (Obed Calvaire was listed in the program) and bassist Hassan Shakur before Alexander made his entrance. A few minutes later, his composition Look Up seemed to be running alongside the A Train, and the next tune, Just Wait, was written in response to a successful bout with cancer.

Mr. Alexander evinced an easy rapport with the audience, even if he did seem to value his early experience with Sinatra more highly than today’s jazz fan would. And he was as generous with his sidemen as any leader could be. He stood aside while Shakur took a long ambling solo that somehow encountered The Pink Panther along the way. Other familiar tunes heard tonight were Come Fly With Me, Day O, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and Sweet Georgia Brown.

The BSO was bolder than usual during the 2013 Tanglewood season with its “Popular Artist” programming. Tonight’s program had all the requisite merit on the artistic side, but as with a few earlier events, the marketing effort wasn’t up to par. That is unfortunate because, just as a full house can raise the level of excitement, a nearly empty one can be an un unhappy distraction.

Continue reading Monty Alexander Trio at Tanglewood

August 4, 2013 performance; by Dave Read

Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood was transformed Sunday evening into Ms. Esperanza Spalding‘s neighborhood; she is the phenom, who at age 4 made up her mind to have a life in music while watching Yo Yo Ma perform on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. A year later she had taught herself how to play violin; by 20, she was on the faculty of the Berklee College of Music; and in 2011 she won the Best New Artist Grammy, the first time it was awarded to a jazz musician.

Tonight, her neighborhood was the locale for a session of the Radio Music Society, comprised of a crackerjack 11-piece band, which takes its name from her 2012 double-Grammy release. The horn section was set up behind music stands covered by a giant radio facade. Ms. Spalding made her entrance a few moments after the band had begun laying down the hypnotic beat of Radio Song. A little later, she implored our indulgence while she got a few things off her mind, relating to “friends. family, loved ones…”. For most in the near-capacity audience, it was easy to assent to her wish, if not an outright privlege to attend to her artistry.

Going back and forth between upright acoustic bass and electric bass guitar, Ms. Spalding occupied a musical space that could evoke a range of progenitors from Willie Dixon, to Jack Bruce, to Ron Carter. And her singing is just as impressive and various, if not peerless. For an encore, she cut loose with some terrific scat in duet with pianist Leo Genovese, promising us that it would be an improvement over the previous night’s effort at the Newport Jazz Festival.

Over the course of nearly 2 hours, we were treated to an abundance of jazz that was so contextualized that if you zoomed in to a small fragment, it was indistinguishable from mainstream jazz, but when you relaxed and took the long view, the music was the dominant fragment of a larger work, and any number of sub-genres could be identified, from hip hop, to blues, to opera.

Yes indeed opera! A case could be made that opera is the most appropriate milieu for Esperanza Spalding. Besides her duly noted accomplishments as bassist, composer, and vocalist, she evinces a perfectly entertaining knack for story and drama – a sort of sturm und drang marked by a wink and a smile.

Radio Music Society followed Ms. Spalding’s Chamber Music Society, and after tonight’s performance, the last in the US, we’re left in eager anticipation of her next venture. Besides entertaining and delighting audiences, it’s probably a good bet also that she inspires young would-be musicians, because she exudes the same joy in performance as Yo Yo Ma does. How’s this for a coincidence? Mr. Ma was the featured soloist at this afternoon’s Boston Symphony Orchestra concert next-stage over in the Koussevitsky Music Shed!

Continue reading Esperanza Spalding at Tanglewood

June 28, 2013 performance, by Dave Read.

The Terrence Blanchard Quintet filled Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall with two sets of dense jazz before a sparse audience on June 28, 2013. It was a lovely evening in the Berkshires, but rain had been forecast, so maybe that had something to do with the nearly empty lawn and four-fifths empty hall. Has the Berkshire county reached the tipping point, where there’s so much stuff going on, that so many tickets for such an accomplished artist as Blanchard could remain unsold?

By “dense” we mean that the music made by Blanchard and his band occupied all the space available; the spacious Ozawa Hall with its renowned acoutistics sometimes seems to be accompanist, rather than mere facilitator, for a musical performance. Besides his brillance as a trumeter, Mr. Blanchard is a charming m.c., engaged with the audience, and generous to his band, which is terrific. He told a funny story about the Tuscon Jazz Society by way of introducing tenor sax player Brice Winston, a wonderful player who is heavily involved in jazz education.

Terrence Blanchard features new release Magnetic in Tanglewood performance

The rhythm section was good enough to be booking their own gigs! Pianist Fabian Almazan, from Cuba, shone especially brightly on his composition, Pet Steps Sitteres Theme Song. The tune is on Blanchard’s current Blue Note release, Magnetic, which also includes Time to Spare, a groovy up tempo composition by Winston, which got the evening underway in good order. Robert Hurst lll was on bass; his 2nd set solo was mesmerizing. Blanchard told us drummer Justin Brown “has great time” and a great career ahead. Blanchard himself demonstrated total artistic mastery of the trumpet, including loud high passages where it felt like notes bolted off the stage and became hecklers in the empty balcony.

Continue reading Terrence Blanchard Quintet performance Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood

August 20, 2012 Article by Dave Read

Wynton Marsalis Quintet and Christian McBride Trio performed one set each in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood and then assembled for a mashup that looked to be as much fun for the musicians to do as it was exciting for the audience to see and hear. If there were an equal number of musicians and instruments, we would’ve called it a jam session, but with only one bass, one piano, and one drum kit on stage but two musicians for each, their playing was more in concert than what you’d expect to hear during a typical jam session.

Built around Cherokee, it was called by Wynton Marsalis after he recounted an episode from his early days on the road, when the legendary Pearl Bailey surprised him with a gift and told him to do likewise once he’s a headliner. Declaring that the chance to imrovise with other musicians is a jazz musician’s best gift, he invited McBride, pianist Christian Sands, and drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr. to join himself and pianist Dan Nimmer, bassist Carlos Henriquez, saxophonist Walter Blanding and drummer Ali Jackson, Jr. for the rousing finale.

Marsalis said that it requires good manners and being a good listener to be a good musician – so that you know when to play high or low, when to play loud or soft. He didn’t say anything about being a good dancer, but the several transitions between Christian McBride and Carlos Henriquez were so smooth that they coud’ve been choreographed.

essential element of jazz

Tonight’s performance put jazz in perspective in a way that made its European antecedent seem a bit stiff, at the very least. Beyond the equal parts of artistry to be found in the compositional and instrumental components of both European and jazz music, the latter has it all over the former by virtue of its allowance for improvisation, which cedes back to the musician some of the responsibility (credit and/blame) otherwise held by the composer alone.

Wynton Marsalis + Tanglewood

THe 50 year old Marsalis has a long history with Tanglewood; at 17, he was the youngest student admitted to the Tanglewood Music Center, (before enrolling at Julliard), and in 1995 he had the use of the still un-opened Ozawa Hall for the production of Marsalis on Music, an educational series along the lines of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, which featured Seiji Ozawa, Yo-Yo Ma, and Tanglewood Music Center students.

One of the most exciting concerts we’ve attended was the one in 1999 at the Koussevitsky Music Shed when Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra shared the stage with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra for a program that alternated between Peer Gynt Suite being played by the BSO and the Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn arrangement being played by the LCJO.

Former young lion Christian McBride

Christian McBride, 40, who also studied at Julliard, talked about arriving where his mother had long-ago told him he would, when he no longer is a “young lion,” and expressed his delight in employing the young Sands and Owens. Sands’ mentors include Billy Taylor and Oscar Peterson, who were represented in the set by Easy Walker and Hallelujah Shout. McBride dedicated his set-closing number, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, to Phyllis Diller, telling the audience that she’d died that day “with a smile on her face.”

McBride’s set was so thoroughly satisfying that it seemed as if his trio format must be the essential and sufficient blueprint for jazz. We held onto that assessment with confidence during intermission and until about five bars into Marsalis’ set, when we could only laugh at how wrong we were. Easy to get carried away trying to describe the addition of trumpet and sax to piano, bass, and drums in a jazz band, but here goes: from the ability to laugh/cry to the ability to tell funny/heart-breaking stories.

Continue reading Wynton Marsalis Quintet Christian McBride Trio at Tanglewood

June 23, 2012 performance reviewed by Dave Conlin Read

Miss Diana Krall gave a bravura performance in the Shed on the opening weekend of 75th season of concerts at Tanglewood. The show featured a crackerjack combo Anthony Wilson (guitar), Robert Hurst (bass), and Karriem Riggins (drums) in support of an almost wierdly diverse setlist that visited many provinces of the jazz empire. While it wasn’t the sort of program Miss Mary Aspinwall Tappan had in mind in 1936, when she laid the family cottage (and 210 sylvan acres) on Maestro Koussevitsky (and the BSO), it was the sort we locals have become accustomed to while the BSO has become an increasingly important element of life in the Berkshires*.

setlist: Fats Waller, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Sergio Mendes, Tom Waits …

Her setlist drew from the work of Fats Waller, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Sergio Mendes, Tom Waits, and Bob Dylan and included a stunning rendition of John Lennon’s Come Together. Since Quiet nights was released in 2009, Krall has performed on four continents, produced Barbra Streisand’s Love Is the Answer, contributed Simple Twist of Fate to the charity album Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International and performed on Paul McCartney’s new album, Kisses On The Bottom.

Opening the show were the Canadien duo Denzell Seymore and Devon Thompson; really tasty music, but just too much patter for an un-familiar opening act.

*We overheard a conversation – someone was bemoaning the Berkshires remoteness from the ocean or the great lakes – her interlocutor said true enough, but can’t you imagine Tanglewood as a sort of ocean where wave after wave of great music washes ashore?

Continue reading Diana Krall at Tanglewood June 23, 2012 review