Live jazz to see in Minneapolis-St. Paul: This week’s picks

Are you in your car or near a radio at 8:30 CST on Friday mornings? Tune to KBEM to hear me and Mr. Jones—Jazz 88 "Morning Show" host Ed Jones—talk about these events and more. 88.5 FM in the Twin Cities, streaming live on the Web.

Last week, we mourned the end of the Clown Lounge as the weekly home of Fat Kid Wednesdays. This week, let’s celebrate the opening of Jazz Central. 

In fact, Jazz Central opened quietly last summer as an underground venue, a place where jazz artists could perform, rehearse, and teach. Now there’s a performance scheduled for most Mondays, followed by an open jam session, and the public is welcome. There’s no cover charge, but donations are accepted. Pianist Tanner Taylor and drummers Mac and Luis Santiago, who jointly run the place, want to keep it “for the cats, by the cats,” and any amount helps.

Here's the performance schedule. This coming Monday, Jazz Central hosts trombonist Jeff Rinear, whose resume includes work with the Butanes, the JazzMN Big Band, Pete Whitman’s X-Tet, and the Artie Shaw Orchestra. He’ll play with Jazz Central’s house trio: Taylor on piano, Mac Santiago on drums, Keith Boyles on bass.

8 p.m. Monday, January 17, Jazz Central, 407 Central Ave. SE (across the street from the Aveda Institute). No cover.

What else is happening this weekend and into the week? As always, plenty.

Friday, January 15: Pat Moriarty and Phil Hey at the Black Dog

Saxophonist Moriarty and drummer Hey met in 1973 and formed a band. In 1977, they released their first and only recording, Let Them All Come. They haven’t played together as a duo for many years (though fans will remember their performance at Studio Z with Ellen Lease and Adam Linz last May). Expect a night of free improvisation with all of the delicious possibilities that presents.

8 p.m. Friday, Black Dog, corner of 4th and Broadway, Lowertown, St. Paul. No cover but donations are accepted (and the right thing to do).

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.

Ramsey Lewis on the British Invasion, and how a quintet became a trio

Most interviews include more than you see in the final article. MinnPost is a web publication so there are no real space restrictions, but the editors like the Arts Arena writers to keep things short and bloggy. Here's the Ramsey Lewis interview that appears there. And here's what else he said.

I mentioned briefly at the start of our conversation how "The 'In' Crowd" had been a fresh sound amid the noise of the British invasion in 1965. After talking about the connection between the blues and jazz, Lewis went on to say:

"If we move forward to the late 1950s, early 60s, and do a little bit of history, we find that there are musicians, especially in England, particularly around London and Liverpool, that discovered this music called rock and roll, but they went a step further. They wanted to find out where this music came from. They studied then the great blues masters--Muddy Waters, Little Walter, John Lee Hooker, the list goes on and on. They also studied the great R&B artists, like Sam Cooke, who definitely influenced Rod Stewart. The music caught on in Europe, especially England. Someone brought some of it over here, it caught on here and became known as the British Invasion....

"I remember those days because a friend of mine, Charles Stepney, who had a lot to do with Earth, Wind, and Fire, Minnie Ripperton, and my career...we were talking one day in the middle 60s and he said, 'Ramsey, isn't it something how they now have us imitating the music that came with the so-called British Invasion, and it's music that these British musicians came over here and studied and learned from the African-American blues and R&B musicians? They have us now imitating us.'"

I asked if he would talk briefly about the other members of his trio, bassist Larry Gray and drummer Leon Joyce Jr. That answer took a different direction than I expected.

"I found Larry Gray when I was invited to play the Havana Jazz Festival in Cuba and decided to take a trio there. Until then, I had been playing with a quintet. I needed a good acoustic bass player, put the word out, and two out of every three people I asked said Larry Gray. We went down to Cuba and had such a great time playing the festival that I decided to stay a trio. When my drummer, Ernie Adams, got an offer to go to Europe, we went looking for another drummer, and Larry suggested Leon Joyce.

"We have been together for ten years. We are compatible off stage as well as on stage. It makes life easy when we’re on tour."

Photo from the Orchestra Hall website. Ramsey Lewis and his trio perform there on Thursday, August 13.

The Gospel According to Ramsey Lewis: Concert review

When: 2/2/08
Where: Ted Mann Concert Hall
Who: Ramsey Lewis (piano), Larry Gray (bass), Leon Joyce (drums), William Kilgore (organ), Eleanor Hampton (voice)

Back when jazz had a chance at cracking the Top 40, Ramsey Lewis had a string of radio hits ("The In Crowd," "Wade in the Water," "Hang On Sloopy," "A Hard Day's Night"). With very few exceptions, he hasn't played clubs in decades, and I had never seen him perform live until he came to the Ted Mann.

Lewis has been on tour since January 2007, appearing solo, with his trio, with Dave Brubeck, Nancy Wilson, and the Joffrey Ballet Company in various venues from New York to California. Minneapolis and Wisconsin appear to be the only places he brought his gospel show, although he also performed with a gospel choir in Strathmore, Maryland.

The first half of the performance featured the trio and music from "To Know Her...," Lewis's collaboration with the Joffrey. They did a beautiful cover of the Beatles' "In My Life," with bowed bass from Gray and big drums from Royce. After a lengthy solo of music from the Joffrey work, Lewis announced, "It's time to go to church."

Hampton came out singing "Amazing Grace," and Kilgore took his place behind a tiny keyboard. He was supposed to have a Hammond B-3, "but someone didn't get the memo," Lewis explained. Kilgore was robbed and so were we. After a few robust organ-like chords, the keyboard seemed to fail entirely, and Kilgore's considerable talents (he plays organ on Lewis's award-winning gospel album With One Voice) were wasted.

We heard "Precious Lord," Ellington's "Come Sunday," "Wade in the Water," "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior" (one I didn't know; maybe Lutherans don't sing it?), and "This Little Light of Mine," some sung, some instrumental. This wasn't pure gospel, it was jazz gospel, with quotes and improvisation. And it wasn't a gospel revival show like the Blind Boys deliver, although Hampton tried more than once to get us clapping along with the music. For encores, they gave us "The In Crowd" (still a good tune) and "Oh Happy Day."

I'm glad I had the opportunity to see Ramsey Lewis live (this concert was part of the 2007-2008 Northrop Jazz Season, to which we subscribe), but the evening seemed like two separate performances with an awkward segue. There was no intermission, which would have helped effect a transition. We wondered later if the whole program might have been gospel, or included more gospel, had it not been for the organ failure.

Subscribers were invited to a meet-and-greet reception following the show. We spoke with Kilgore, who was wearing a very fine suit, with Hampton, who was charming, and with Joyce, who spent much of his music career with Marine Corps bands.

Photo of Ramsey Lewis from Narada.