Roy Hargrove Quintet

When: Monday, Sept. 9, 2008 • Where: Dakota • Who: Roy Hargrove, trumpet and flugelhorn; Justin Robinson, alto sax; Gerald Clayton, piano; Danton Boller, bass; Montez Coleman, drums

This quintet is golden out of the gate, big and blazing. Hargrove says the first tune, "Depth," is "a song about sea turtles." Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. On a speedy version of "Close Your Eyes," Hargrove stands like Miles at the mike, head and shoulders back, pelvis forward, trumpet muted, playing up and out. Something by Lou Marini featuring Robinson on sax, then Hargrove on flugelhorn. Lambent. A flugelhorn solo leads into "Never Let Me Go" and Clayton (bandleader John Clayton's son) plays coruscating piano, and the flugelhorn returns, pleading.



A drum solo opens a Latin tune with Clayton taking over the infectious jumping rhythm. I'm in a mist of music, knowing this is as fine as anything I have heard anywhere, ever.

A bolero, "La Puerta," the door.



Lowell introduces the second set by saying "Roy Hargrove's quintet is at the top of the world." Another flashy start: "Extra Giblets." Clayton has let his dreads down. A powerful saxophone solo, a profoundly sad piano solo, and a trumpet solo Hargrove enjoys so much he interrupts himself to shout "Whoa!"



Dexter Gordon's "Society Red." Sax and trumpet spell it out, then Robinson takes a knowing solo. Hargrove mutes his trumpet to a sexy whisper. Someone shouts "Go Miles!" Then bass and piano and drums, a rhythm trio, no-sweat swing. An amazing bass solo.



Two sets in a row at the Dakota add up to a long night; you're here in your seat by 7, maybe get up between sets, then sit back down until 11:30 or later. Tonight every minute is worth it. The second set is even better than the first. They're taking longer solos, hanging out more, exploring more. "Once Forgotten," a tune by Pamela Watson, Bobby Watson's wife. Sam Cooke's "Bring it On Home to Me" from the new quintet CD, Earfood. The trumpet is sending out sparks. "The Challenge," a tune Hargrove recorded on Family (1995).

Lowell says Hargrove has been coming to play at the Dakota for 18 years.



An encore; where do they get it? Piano, bass, and drums, slow and easy. Brushes on drums. Soft flourishes on the piano. Hargrove on flugelhorn, all low notes and longing. Then something funky and it's over.

Photos by John Whiting.

Dean Brewington Quintet

When: Saturday, Sept. 6, 2008 • Where: Cue at the Guthrie • Who: Dean Brewington, saxophone; Tom West, piano; John Penny, guitar; Eron Woods, drums

Lovely space, lovely sounds. With Javier Santiago back at school (or en route), Tom West is on the piano bench. I last saw him with Thomasina Petrus in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill. Tonight is an evening of standards and drinks, conversation and good food. The lights are almost too low for photos--almost.



Top photo by John Whiting.

Sonny Rollins

Saturday, September 6, 2008 • Today is the 78th birthday of the great saxophone master Sonny Rollins. We saw him at the Monterey Jazz Festival last fall, and before then on Halloween night 2006 at the Ted Mann concert hall, when he came as part of the Northrop Jazz Season. He played a version of "St. Thomas" I can still hear in my head.

Last week he launched the Chicago Jazz Festival. Chicago Tribune critic Howard Reich wrote: "Still majestic in tone and generous in spirit, saxophonist Sonny Rollins gave the 30th annual Chicago Jazz Festival precisely what it needed and deserved: a regal opening night."

Recently I watched the Robert Mugge documentary "Sonny Rollins: Saxophone Colossus." Filmed in 1986, it shows Sonny in concert at a rock quarry near his home in upstate New York (during which he jumps from the stage, breaks a heel, and keeps playing), being interviewed in NYC with his wife, Lucille, at his side, and in Japan, performing an original composition with orchestra. At one point he tells Mugge, "The saxophone is almost closer to me than Lucille. She knows this already so she's not jealous.... The saxophone is very close to you. It's a very delicate instrument. The slightest thing can change the nuance you put into it. It can drive you crazy because even if you know what you want to play, sometimes it doesn't come out." Hard to imagine Sonny's saxophone not doing exactly what he wants it to do.

The Sonny Rollins Web site features a special birthday page with many treats. My personal favorite: an animated transcription of the recording "Everywhere Calypso" from Sonny Rollins' Next Album (1972). Just press play. Very cool.

Photo by John Whiting, Monterey Jazz Festival 2007.

Wordless Music Series: Andrew Broder, Owen Weaver, Cepia

When: Friday, Sept. 5, 2008 • Where: Southern Theater • Who: Andrew Broder, guitar, pedals, four-track cassette recorder; Owen Weaver, marimba, multipercussion; Huntley Miller (Cepia), laptop, hardware

The Southern Theater is one of my favorite venues for music and dance. With its exposed brick walls, hints of past windows and doorways, an archway that could have come from some ancient building, and a black metal grid that floats overhead, housing wires and sprinklers and holding lights and speakers, it is simply a great space. The recent ousting of its 30+ year artistic director (who was placed on "indefinite leave") has caused a ruckus in the arts community but so far the shows are going on.



Born in NYC and still mostly based there (the Southern was the first venue outside of NYC to present an installment of the series), Wordless Music is (says its mission statement) "devoted to the idea that the sound worlds of classical and contemporary instrumental music—in genres such as indie rock and electronica—share more in common than conventional thinking might suggest." Series founder Ronen Givony is here to tell us more and introduce tonight's performers. "It seems deeply unnatural to separate and compartmentalize music into little boxes," he says, then explains that a Wordless Music event is "like an iPod set to shuffle, which makes no judgments or distinctions." I like that if I don't think too deeply about it. Someone makes a judgment about what to put on that iPod in the first place.



I've seen local wunderkind Andrew Broder before, at the Cedar with George Cartwright and Gloryland PonyCat. He's on first, alone with his guitar, some pedals, and a thicket of wires. He lays down a dense loop, then another on top of that, and another, like a rug merchant stacking Persian carpets. The sound echoes and bounces off the Southern's bare walls. The music grows in thickness, complexity and level, rising in pitch until it suddenly reminds me of the voice of the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I can't help it, it does, and I mean no offense. Then it's wind, then a train, then it shifts down and begins again. Trancey, but with an edge of anxiety. Now it's like floating in clouds that suddenly turn black and roiling. Now it's the buzzing of a million pissed-off bees. Huge crescendo, abrupt silence. I like it a lot.



Owen Weaver, who recorded Isolation with the Pan-Metropolitan Trio but wasn't present at the CD release (he had already relocated to Austin, Texas to go to school) plays three wonderful pieces: "Opening" by Philip Glass (which sounds very Bach-ish to me) on the marimba; "Rebonds b" by Iannis Xenakis on big drums, congas, snares, and blocks; and "In a Landscape" by John Cage, which I thought was a complete improvisation until I read the program. Dreamy marimba, with thundering percussion sandwiched in between. Very nice.



Cepia (Huntley Miller) closes the program (there's no intermission; one plays, walks off, and the next walks on; they don't play together). I'm psyched to see him after reading in the Strib that he studied with Anthony Cox. But I don't get his music. Not that I expect musicians to tap dance and twirl scarves, but watching someone sit at a laptop (even a Mac laptop) is not especially interesting. Even if you can see him, which you can't because the stage is so dark. Videos by Randy Kramer are projected on a screen at the back of the stage, but I don't find them especially compelling. The music seems like the same phrase repeated over and over. I doze off. HH tells me I'm not alone.



But I'm more than satisfied with two out of three, so thumbs up to Wordless Music and the Southern.

We drive home with the windows open and the radio tuned to KBEM and Kevin Barnes's "Bluesville" show. He plays a tune by Catfish Keith with lyrics that make me laugh:

Baby, I'm a fine artiste
And baby I deserve to be kissed.

Later I learn they're from a song by R. Crumb and the Cheap Suit Serenaders called "Fine Artiste Blues." Not wordless, but music. It's going on my iPod.

Photos were taken with permission, in case anyone is wondering. The one of the Southern's interior was borrowed from the Wordless Music site, and I'm guessing they got it from the Southern.

Don Pulver's Jazz and Blues

I met Don Pulver when he was art director at Rivertown Trading in St. Paul. (Rivertown was bought by Dayton's/Target in 1998.) Earlier this year, I went to the Park Square Theatre to see Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill. A small group of paintings were hung in the lobby. Drawn to one in particular--a singer in an orange dress, mouth open, head back, singing her heart out against a velvety purple background--I took a closer look. It was by Don Pulver. He's having a solo show of 47 jazz and blues performance paintings starting tonight, Sept. 5, at the Robbin Gallery in Robbinsdale (it continues through Sept. 27). Don is the topic of this week's MinnPost column. With his permission, I'm including a few more images of his work here.

















All images by Don Pulver.
See more of Don's paintings (including landscapes, travel scenes, and "kitchen art") at the Minnesota Artists Web site.

Jon Weber

When: Wednesday, September 3, 2008 • Where: The Artists' Quarter • Who: Jon Weber, piano; Gordy Johnson, bass; Kenny Horst, drums

The Republican National Convention is in town and St. Paul is a police state, but it's our anniversary and we want to see Jon Weber, who's here for one night only. So we drive by the barriers and the fences topped with barbed wire, find parking in the Macy's ramp, walk into the Hamm Building past armed security guards, and head downstairs to the AQ to find that most people have stayed away.

A bad thing for them and for the musicians, who deserve a bigger audience; a good thing for us, because we are about to be treated to a private concert of music, facts, history, tales, days and dates, mathematical equations, and interesting asides. A salon with Jon Weber, pianist, brainiac, raconteur.

"Penthouse Serenade." "Very Early" by Bill Evans. Weber leans back from his bench and considers the possibility of a CD made entirely of Thelonious Monk ballads. "When you slow Monk down," he says, "it's almost normal speed....'Darn That Dream' is a Monk tune if you speed it up." He demonstrates. It is. Then he riffs on the strange but true fact that 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, and 12/12 all fall on the same day of the week no matter what year it is. Who knew? He plays a Henry Mancini tune. He tells a Henry Mancini tale from when he (Weber) was 25 and gigging at the Hyatt in Milwaukee when Mancini came in and young Jon played the composer's music for him.



"Secret Love," a Sammy Fain tune from 1954, written for the movie Calamity Jane. The bridge between choruses is very long. It's the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. "Lulu's Back in Town," "When I Fall in Love" (with Kenny on brushes, caressing the drums). Around midnight, a few people wander in, dressed up, no doubt from the Convention; they have just stumbled into some of the best music they may ever hear.

Weber loves to play and he doesn't want to quit. Fine with me; a friend has treated us to a bottle of champagne for our anniversary (thanks, Steve!) and we're enjoying everything about this evening. Appropriately (or ironically), "I Didn't Know What Time It Was," a Rodgers and Hart tune (from a musical called Too Many Girls, Weber explains, which is where Desi met Lucy.) Finally, "Jitterbug Waltz" with touches of "Take Five" and the "Mission, Impossible" theme.

Still smiling, we climb the stairs into the night and walk down the pedestrian mall toward the parking lot. A minivan pulls up to the light, stops, and two police officers in riot gear get out. They slam their doors and glare at us before turning away. Not as bad as being maced or pepper sprayed or handcuffed, but chilling. Usually when we come out of the AQ late we worry about too-aggressive panhandlers, not police.

Photos by John Whiting. Weber really is wearing a purple jacket.

Twentieth

It was 20 years ago today that HH and I got married. Saying yes when he asked was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Fat Kid Wednesdays at the Clown

When: Monday, September 1, 2008 • Where: Clown Lounge • Who: Fat Kid Wednesdays: Michael Lewis, saxophone; Adam Linz, bass; JT Bates, drums

Located downstairs from the Turf Club on University Avenue, the Clown Lounge is a center for improvisational music. During an interview earlier this year, Kelly Rossum said, "The Clown is a big deal. Out of all the clubs in the Twin Cities, it's the most consistently high quality music, week by week, month by month, year by year."



It's a pretty full house for Labor Day, mostly young white guys who are there to listen, including other musicians: Chris Morrissey, Bryan Nichols. Linz smacks his bass and pulls at the strings, Lewis paces (I wonder what he does on a shallow stage? Fall off?), JT rolls a ball around on top of his big floor tom. Lewis plays the same note over and over again, supporting Linz's solo; JT looks like he's trying to dig a hole in his snare with his sticks, or start a fire. At one point he seems to be playing goat toenails in a handkerchief.



Let me not give the impression the Kids are playing around. This is wholly engaging music, sometimes teetering on an edge but more often melodic and beautiful. During "Dewey's Tune," JT gives us a gorgeous drum solo. Lewis's tone is tender and sweet. Linz makes his instrument sing.

Words come into my head as I listen, and images, and this phrase, which repeats like a chorus: Jazz is contagious. Where did that come from? I don't know but it's the truth.



When we last saw Fat Kid at Cafe Maude, they played a tune by the Shaggs. I'm hoping they will again and they do: "That Little Sports Car."

Note to self: Get to the Clown more often.

Photos by John Whiting.