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.

As we look forward to jazz this weekend and beyond, let’s pause to light a candle for the Clown Lounge, the epicenter of improvised music in the Twin Cities for the past 10 years. Both the Clown and the Turf Club upstairs are under new management as of last Saturday. The Turf is scheduled to reopen January 11 (this coming Tuesday). Although talks were reportedly held between JT Bates, Michael Lewis, and new manager Josh James, the Clown’s resident band, Fat Kid Wednesdays (Bates, Lewis, and Adam Linz) has severed its ties with the club. Which won’t be open on Mondays anyway, the night FKW used to play.

JT has promised that FKW will go on, and many people (including this writer) want that to happen. Honestly, I’d open my own basement if I could get a liquor license and a bunch of beer signs. A Twin Cities jazz scene without regular access to FKW is inconceivable and just plain wrong.

Friday-Saturday, January 7-8: Debbie Duncan at the Artists’ Quarter

There are singers who sing with a band, and singers who are part of the band. They use their voices as instruments, they improvise, and they are equals with the other musicians on stage. Debbie Duncan is one such singer; Lucia Newell is another. Lucia was at the AQ last Thursday, and even though the band ran out to move their cars when the tow trucks came, it was a very satisfying show. Debbie Duncan always delivers, and it’s good to see her in the warm, intimate setting of St. Paul’s famous basement jazz club.

9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Artists' Quarter, in the basement of the Hamm Building in St. Paul ($10). Tickets at the door.

Stanley Jordan again/not again

When: Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008 • Where: Dakota • Who: Stanley Jordan, guitars and piano; Charnett Moffett, electric bass; Eddie Barattini, drums

We're so blown away by Stanley Jordan's first night that we're back again. So are many people we saw here last night. Is it possible he'll be as good as he was?

He's better. More relaxed, more expressive. You see it in his face, his hands, and his body: he twists, turns, bows, bends, and reaches for the sky. He moves from guitar to guitar and piano and back again to guitar, and if he did in fact have more than two hands he would probably play more than two instruments simultaneously.

Much of the music is the same as last night--in name, in chord structure, in melody, but not in how they play it. "El Condor Pasa." "Eleanor Rigby" (I think; this time it's the trio, not Jordan alone). A joyous interpretation of Horace Silver's "Song for My Father" is added to tonight's playlist (it's on the new CD as well). Moffett is even more fiery than last night; his "Star Spangled Banner" (which begins as "America the Beautiful") screams and wails, loops and buzzes. At times his bass sounds like a steel drum. Barattini is terrific on the drums.



"How Insensitive." The Mozart again but not again, with ten thousand new notes. One encore only, "O Holy Night." After the concert, Moffett sits at the bar and I bring him a big bushel of adoring fan talk. I stand before him and babble about how wonderful he is. I can't help myself. Out in the lobby, Jordan is surrounded by fans and CD buyers. I wait until the end of the line, then take his picture with the lovely Deborah.

I thank him for his music. He stands very still and talks very, very quietly. After the sound and fury and virtuosity of his performance, he exudes silence and calm.

How many hands does Stanley Jordan have?

When: Monday, Oct. 27, 2008 • Where: Dakota • Who: Stanley Jordan, guitars and piano; Charnett Moffett, electric bass; Eddie Barattini, drums

My only Stanley Jordan CD is Cornucopia (1986). Before that, not even vinyl. I’m drawn to this show because Charnett Moffett is on bass, and to me, Moffett is like Zakir Hussein: someone not to miss when he comes to town.

I know a little about Jordan’s signature guitar-playing technique: he taps (not holds and strums or plucks) the strings so he can play two lines (melody and chords) at the same time. But until tonight, I don’t really care.

Because until tonight, I haven’t seen him live.

Two guitar solos to start: “My One and Only Love,” Simon and Garfunkel’s “El Condor Pasa” (“I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail/Yes I would, if I could/I surely would”). I’m hooked and Moffett isn’t even on stage yet. How is it possible Jordan is playing just one guitar? How many hands does he have? Boosted by amps, layered, swirling sounds fill the room.

Moffett and Barattini come through the curtain for “All Blues,” a track from State of Nature, Jordan’s most recent CD and the reason for the current tour. On this tune, Jordan plays guitar and piano simultaneously. It’s not a parlor trick, it’s amazing.

He told Guitar Player magazine: “My original instrument was piano, and when I switched to guitar, I still had this piano thing in me, so I developed the whole two-handed tapping technique in order to play the guitar more like a piano. When I did this album, I decided there was still a part of my music that lives in the piano…. I am thinking of them together like a single instrument. If you were using two hands on the guitar, or two hands on the piano, you would think of what you were doing as playing one instrument.”

Another track from State of Nature, which Jordan introduces as "a celebration of nature"; the Andante from Mozart’s Piano Concerto #21, a.k.a. “Elvira Madigan.” Jordan is solo but sounds like a chamber orchestra. He plays the notes and all the notes around the notes.

More guitar and piano simultaneously; this time Jordan sweeps his right hand up and down the keyboard in spacious glissandos. Then he plays the guitar with his right hand and the piano with his left.

Moffett solos on “Star Spangled Banner” a la Jimi Hendrix. This is something he has played for a while (and recorded), most often (to the best of my knowledge) on his big upright bass. Tonight it’s on electric bass, deep and dark and searing. He weaves in “Amazing Grace” and “Frere Jacques.” “Star Spangled Banner” is always a political tune, so I guess Moffett is saying something by playing “Are you sleeping, Brother John?” this close to the election.

The announced final tune is “A Place in Space,” also from the new CD. It’s music that makes you want to strap yourself down or at least hold onto something. The audience brings Jordan back for two solo encores, “O Holy Night” and “Eleanor Rigby.”

For some artists, an instrument and all its history and mastery is just the beginning, the jumping-off point, the starting block, the launching pad for a whole new thing. What Jordan does with the guitar is beyond imagining, best (like most jazz) experienced live.

Here’s “Eleanor Rigby” from a 2006 concert. More rock-and-roll than tonight's version but a decent video with many views of Jordan’s hands, proof that he has only two after all.



Photo by John Whiting.