Ramsey Lewis at Orchestra Hall: Concert review

When: Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009 • Where: Orchestra Hall • Who: Ramsey Lewis, piano; Larry Gray, bass; Leon Joyce Jr., drums. Opening set: Bruce Henry, vocals; Peter Vircks, saxophone; Bryan Nichols, piano; Chris Bates, bass; Daryl Boudreaux, percussion; Kevin Washington, drums. Host Irvin Mayfield.

Last night’s program at Orchestra Hall was billed as being all about the blues. It wasn’t, but nobody cared. Instead, the audience was treated to a sublime set of music by the Ramsey Lewis Trio.

Anyone who thinks this group is about resting on laurels, delivering hits, and playing it safe is mistaken. The music was as rich and sophisticated, melodic and complex, inside and out there as any I’ve heard in a long time.

The opener, “Wade in the Water,” became a sweet samba, with Joyce stroking his drums with his hands. The crowd applauded wildly and Lewis joked, “Shall we quit while we’re ahead?”

At 74, Lewis has embarked on what is almost a new career, or at least a new passion: composing. A series of commissions for the Joffrey Ballet and the Ravinia Festival, where Lewis serves as artistic director for jazz, has made him feel “like a kid on Christmas morning.” His new CD, Songs from the Heart, due out on Concord on Sept. 29, is his first-ever (out of 80 to date) to include all original compositions.

We heard “To Know Her Is to Love Her” (from the Joffrey work) and “Conversation,” written for Ravinia and performed there in 2008 by the Turtle Island String Quartet. The latter made me hold my breath, it was so beautiful—and much like a conversation, perhaps between lovers, with changes in mood and tempo. Another original, “Exhilaration,” showcased Gray on the bass, bowing like a classical master, plucking and tapping like an avant-garder. We heard a lot of arco (bowed) bass during the evening; Gray used his bow almost as much as he used his fingers.

Throughout, Lewis made occasional references to the blues, inviting us to “find where it is” in the music he was playing, reminding us that jazz was born in the blues. For the centerpiece of the set, he took us back to before the blues with a medley of gospel tunes and spirituals. Not the usual play-a-few-notes, awkward-pause, switch-tunes medley, but a lengthy, elegantly constructed series of phrases, whole songs, and variations within songs, linked together by improvisation, like pearls on a string. Between selections, as Lewis moved his fingers over the keys, you could almost hear him thinking “What next?”

I recognized “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” “Precious Lord,” Ellington’s “Come Sunday,” “How Great Thou Art,” and (I think) “Lift Ev’ry Voice.” Lewis and Joyce traded melodic phrases (Joyce played notes on his drums, with help from his elbows) on the way to Joyce’s big solo of the night, a breathtaking display of speed, invention, and precision.

Except for the originals, much of this was music many of us had heard before, made new by surprising changes and phrases, rhythms and transitions. People talked afterward about how modern it was, how “outside,” and how it wasn’t what they expected.

We got the encore everyone wanted: “The ‘In’ Crowd.” A soft and lovely solo piano introduction worked its way there, the familiar chords burst forth, and the audience loved it. Joyce’s whistle midway through signaled a detour into an Afro-Cuban tempo.

If you’re going to have a huge hit, make it a good one, like “The ‘In’ Crowd” or “Take Five” or "Poinciana," and don’t get stuck singing “Muskrat Love” for the rest of your life.

For the last song of the night, Lewis finally gave us a classic blues tune: Jimmy Reed’s “Baby What You Want Me to Do.” (Hat tip to Dan Emerson for the title.) Which, as it happens, appears on Lewis's first-ever live album, Ramsey Lewis Live at the Savoy (1982).

A note on where we sat: We moved during intermission from a row midway down the main floor to empty seats on Tier B looking down at the stage. With help from my handy binocs, I could see everything: how Leon Joyce reached casually over his right shoulder to tap the inverted cymbal to his right, Larry Gray pressing the strings of his bass, the red felt lightning bolts inside the Steinway, Lewis’s hands on the keys. I thought the sound was better, too—it rose up to us from the monitors and the instruments themselves, rather than passing over and between hundreds of people

And I have to say that Lewis, Gray, and Joyce looked good. I mean really good All three were impeccably attired. Their posture was perfect, their stage presence professional. Handsome men. Lewis, the legend, great statesman of jazz, is 74? Don’t believe it. Skin like a baby.

Ramsey Lewis Trio Setlist
"Wade in the Water"
"To Know Her Is to Love Her"
"Conversation"
"Exhilaration"
"Spiritual Medley"
"The 'In' Crowd"
"Baby What You Want Me to Do"

Starting what I hope will be a regular thing at OH jazz shows, the evening began with an opening set by area musicians, led by soulful vocalist Bruce Henry, who now lives in Chicago but was here long enough to become part of our music scene (plus we’re not willing to let him go).

He and his band brought out the big crowd-pleasers: “Statesboro Blues” (“Wake up, mama, turn your lamp down low”), a lovely “Embraceable You” (nice solo, Chris), Henry’s composition “Jump That Broom,” and “House of the Rising Sun,” which Henry said he was inspired to sing by Nina Simone.

They were given half an hour—not long enough, even though Lewis and his trio were up next.

After last night’s “Broom,” Boudreaux needs a new washboard; he broke a leg on the one he had.

Debbie Duncan at the Dakota

When: Thursday, Jan. 8, 2008 • Where: Dakota • Who: Debbie Duncan, voice; Chris Lomheim, piano; Adam Linz, bass; Daryl Boudreaux, percussion; Kevin Washington, drums

We see Debbie Duncan at Barbara Morrison's show on Monday, then return to the Dakota on Thursday for Debbie and her quartet. We arrive in time for "Over Dere," a song for which I usually have little patience but I like pretty much whatever Debbie sings.

She moves effortlessly from song to song, style to style. And she knows how to get the best out of whatever band she plays with. There are moments tonight of pure magic when the energy can't get any higher or the music any better--during "After All" ("Mornin' Mr. Radio, mornin' little Cheerios, mornin' sister Oriole"), and during Debbie's own arrangement of "Afro Blue," accompanied only by Boudreaux and Washington. Voice-and-percussion now seems like the perfect way to do this song.



She sings "Love, Look Away" from Flower Drum Song and a swinging version of Cole Porter's "It's All Right with Me," ornamented at the end with scatting. And "Misty," a tune we've all heard a zillion times but not like this: She sings around the melody, not on it. Occasionally she lands on a melody note, but only briefly, like she's touching ground between flights.

In homage to jazz legend James Moody, who comes to the Dakota on Monday and Tuesday (Jan. 12-13), she performs "Moody's Mood for Love," which inspires an introduction. "Personally," she says, "I think this is one of the sexiest songs ever written, yet it leaves something to the imagination. It's one of those songs you put on when you're trying to get from point A to point Z in the course of an evening." Her between-songs patter is warm and engaging.

"Teach Me Tonight" is soulful and sincere, playful and bluesy; she ends with "Teach me! I'm willing!" and sends us out into the night. She's back at the Dakota on the 20th in "4 Women for Obama" with Yolande Bruce, Ginger Commodore, and Tonia Hughes-Kendrick, then again on February 7 with Adi Yeshaya. Debbie, do your many fans a solid and update your schedule on your Web site so we know where else to find you.

Photos by John Whiting.

Bruce Henry at the Dakota: Concert review

When: 4/4/08
Where: Dakota
Who: Bruce Henry (voice), Peter Vircks (tenor sax), Bryan Nichols (piano), Chris Bates (bass), Daryl Boudreaux (percussion), Wendell Henry (drums)

We're seeing Bruce Henry as often as we can before he moves to Chicago. Tonight he's in fine form, dressed to the nines, accompanied by an excellent band, singing his heart out, bantering with the open-curtain Friday-night crowd, and happy to be in this elegant club ("People talk about this place all over the world," he later says).



We don't hear "Nature Boy" or "Afro Blue," two of his signature songs, but we do hear others Henry has made his own: "House of the Rising Sun," Chick Corea's "Spain" (with lyrics by Al Jarreau), the original "Africa Cries."

As many times as I've heard Henry sing "House of the Rising Sun," it has never been the same. It depends on his band, his mood, the crowd, the weather, maybe the way the planets are aligned. Tonight it's new again—partly because Henry sings as if it is, partly because each note from Nichols's piano is a surprise.



We hear "Autumn Leaves," Horace Silver's "Senor Blues," and "In the Beginning God" from Duke Ellington's Sacred Concert ("a seldom heard song unless you come to my shows," Henry says).

He tells us about growing up on Madison Street in Chicago, home of the blues; how all of the big blues singers had "imposters" (Little Little Milton, Little James Brown;) how he once saw the real Muddy Waters get out of his car and go into a club and tried to follow him in. "I'm not a blues singer, but I've got the blues aesthetic," Henry says, then launches into the blues standard "Sweet Home Chicago."

More Horace Silver, this time "All," a song Henry got from Dean Brewington, "the first person I met in the state of Minnesota." The lyrics (also by Silver) seem especially appropriate for Henry: "All time is now/all space is near/all minds relate/all souls evolve...all things are spirit/all is in mind." His performances are engaging and entertaining, but they're also deeply spiritual if you're willing to let that part reach out and touch you.

African American history is important to Henry. "Every day of my life, I celebrate African American History Month," he says. Then he sings an original song, "Jump That Broom," based on genealogical research he did on his own family, including a great-great grandfather who loved his about-to-be great-great grandmother so much that he bundled his clothes on top of his head and swam across a lake to court her. Boudreaux plays the washboard and it's joyous.



Henry closes out the night with a song for Martin Luther King Jr., who died on this day 40 years ago. Rather than a sad song, he gives us "a song about freedom and justice and peace all around the world." I don't know the name but here are some lyrics: "It's a party/it's a freedom party/raise your victory sign!" He ends by wishing us peace and love. There's no encore; we don't need one.

A few about the band: I hadn't heard Nichols and Bates play with Henry before but you can't go wrong with either one. Boudreaux has always seemed like Henry's own hands on the percussion, a natural fit; as Henry said earlier in the show, "We go way black, I mean back," then laughed. I've heard Wendell Henry play drums for Bruce Henry but never for anyone else. I'm guessing he'll show up at the Freedom Train benefit concert on April 19? (For more about that, see Andrea Canter's preview on Jazz Police.)



Vircks was new to me but I have since learned (thank you, Jazz Police and the Internets) that he's part of Moveable Feast, the Rhythm Junkies, and other bands around town. I thought he got off to a slow start but picked up the pace later in the show. Good, strong sound.



Photos by John Whiting.

J.D. Steele

When: 3/23/08
Where: Dakota
Who: J.D. Steele (vocals), Peter Schimke (piano), Serge Akou (bass), Daryl Boudreaux (percussion), Larry Robinson (drums), ???? (trumpet); Billy, Fred, Jearlyn, and Jevetta Steele (vocals)

The band warms up and suddenly J.D. rockets through the curtain and launches into Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" before a crowd of family, friends, and admirers. He's dancing and smiling and we're right there with him. No need to warm us up. From the moment he opens his mouth until his final goodbye, this will be a high-energy show.

I've seen the Steeles several times but never J.D. on his own. I wasn't expecting to be handed so much joy. J.D. is effervescent. This night is a CD release for an album he's been recording for the past decade ("Whenever I started working on the record I'd end up doing something for my family instead"), a celebration of 25 years in the music business ("I left the corporate world in 1983"), an introduction to the new love of his life (Shangilia, a choir of former street children from Kenya), and a family reunion ("My brothers and sisters will join me later and I hope you don't mind?"). The band is splendid. If you weren't in the audience, you can be sorry now.

We hear several songs from the CD, all originals: "I Wonder," "Don't Give Up" ("I wrote this song when a friend of mine was having some problems; I just wanted him to be encouraged"). We see a short film about J.D. and Shangilia, learn to say "Every burden shall be rolled away" in Swahili, and hear J.D. sing "Save the Children," another song I associate with Marvin Gaye though it's been recorded by a lot of people.



Jevetta, Billy, Jearlyn, and Fred join their brother for the final songs: J.D.'s "Starting All Over," "All Because of You," a rousing gospel tune ("I never shall forget what he's done for me..."), and "Better Love." Now the energy is incandescent. Have we just heard more than two hours of soulful, beautiful music? The time has telescoped. The evening could not have been better.