Omer Klein: Jazz with roots in Israel

Jazz happens in a lot of places around Minneapolis-St. Paul: clubs, cafés, concert halls, galleries, parks, pizzerias. Under the radar for many of us is the jazz that happens in synagogues and at Jewish community centers.

Israeli jazz musicians are a vital part of today’s New York City jazz scene. But when they come to the Twin Cities, artists like bassist Avishai Cohen are more likely to perform at the Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Minnetonka or the St. Paul JCC.

A center for Jewish cultural art performances, the JCC will feature jazz again on Thursday, May 14 -- Israel’s 61st Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzmaut). Omer Klein and his trio, bassist Omer Avital and drummer Ziv Ravitz, will present original music by Klein, a pianist and composer since age 7.

Born in Netanya, Israel, in 1982 (he turns 27 on Friday, so if you meet him, be sure to wish him Yom Huledet), Klein graduated from the prestigious Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, the Juilliard of Israel, which has a serious jazz department. In 2005, he moved to the U.S. to study at the New England Conservatory with Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez.

Klein already had his own sound, a mélange of Israeli, Middle Eastern, and North African influences with American jazz. Speaking by phone from his New York apartment on Monday, Klein recalled, "The first time [Perez] heard me, the first lesson we had, he said, 'Listen, man, we’re going to work on several aspects, but this thing you do that sounds so Israeli, don’t ever lose that. ... It’s original, it really comes from you.' "

His music is exotic yet accessible. Minor-key inflections add shadows and emotion to his pensive and beautiful melodies. It’s probably a good thing he’s playing at the JCC -- no club chatter. If you go, you’ll want to hear every note.

Since moving to New York in 2006, Klein has released three CDs. “Duets” (2007) with bassist (and Klein’s former Boston roommate) Haggai Cohen Milo was followed by “Introducing Omer Klein” (2008) with Avital and Ravitz, the musicians he’ll bring to St. Paul, and percussionist Itamar Doari. (Here’s a video of that quartet performing in Tel Aviv.) In March 2009, the solo piano outing “Heart Beats” had its release at the Blue Note jazz club.

Every track on all three CDs is an original composition by Klein. "Oud Song" from "Introducing" is the one I heard first, as an MP3 linked in an email. I stopped messing around on my desk and listened hard. Then I went in search of whatever else I could find.

Klein is already moving on to the next thing. After playing some of the "Heart Beats" compositions with Avital and Ravitz, he began writing new compositions specifically for his trio. "I was imagining Omer and Ziv in my mind while I was writing the different parts, and we have been rehearsing this music for a while now," he said. "They feel this is a new stage in my music and could be a new direction for the trio. We’ll play a lot of this new material in St. Paul. Some of it will be heard for the first time outside of New York City, and some will be heard before New York City. Since everything is so fresh, not all songs have titles."

Avital grew up in Tel Aviv, Ravitz in Beer-Sheva. You may be wondering why Israelis have become such a force in jazz. (More names jazz fans may know: trumpeter Avishai Cohen - same name as bassist Avishai Cohen, but no relation; his sister, clarinetist Anat, and brother, saxophonist Yuval; trombonist Avi Liebovich; pianist Shai Maestro; guitarist Gilad Hekselman; saxophonist Eli Degibri.)

Speaking for himself, Klein says, "I was a musical kid, playing melodies, inventing different things, learning songs from the radio. When I discovered jazz, in which you have to invent things all the time, I immediately knew that I had to be involved with that. I wanted to play differently every time I play."

Speaking as one of many Israeli jazz musicians -- some living in New York, some back in Israel teaching the next wave -- he says, "One thing we all seem to agree upon is there might be something in the Israeli way of life that requires improvisation in everyday life, that requires being creative. ... What we all want to do is express ourselves, be able to express something universal, but still tell our own story."

Omer Klein & His Trio. Thursday, May 14, 7 p.m., St. Paul JCC, 1375 St. Paul Avenue. Tickets at 651-698-0751 ($10 members/$15 public).

Originally published at MinnPost.com, Wednesday, May 13, 2009.

Omer Klein: Jazz with roots in Israel

Jazz happens in a lot of places around Minneapolis-St. Paul: clubs, cafés, concert halls, galleries, parks, pizzerias. Under the radar for many of us is the jazz that happens in synagogues and at Jewish community centers.

Israeli jazz musicians are a vital part of today’s New York City jazz scene. But when they come to the Twin Cities, artists like bassist Avishai Cohen are more likely to perform at the Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Minnetonka or the St. Paul JCC.

A center for Jewish cultural art performances, the JCC will feature jazz again on Thursday, May 14 -- Israel’s 61st Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzmaut). Omer Klein and his trio, bassist Omer Avital and drummer Ziv Ravitz, will present original music by Klein, a pianist and composer since age 7.

Born in Netanya, Israel, in 1982 (he turns 27 on Friday, so if you meet him, be sure to wish him Yom Huledet), Klein graduated from the prestigious Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, the Juilliard of Israel, which has a serious jazz department. In 2005, he moved to the U.S. to study at the New England Conservatory with Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez.

Klein already had his own sound, a mélange of Israeli, Middle Eastern, and North African influences with American jazz. Speaking by phone from his New York apartment on Monday, Klein recalled, "The first time [Perez] heard me, the first lesson we had, he said, 'Listen, man, we’re going to work on several aspects, but this thing you do that sounds so Israeli, don’t ever lose that. ... It’s original, it really comes from you.' "

His music is exotic yet accessible. Minor-key inflections add shadows and emotion to his pensive and beautiful melodies. It’s probably a good thing he’s playing at the JCC -- no club chatter. If you go, you’ll want to hear every note.

Since moving to New York in 2006, Klein has released three CDs. “Duets” (2007) with bassist (and Klein’s former Boston roommate) Haggai Cohen Milo was followed by “Introducing Omer Klein” (2008) with Avital and Ravitz, the musicians he’ll bring to St. Paul, and percussionist Itamar Doari. (Here’s a video of that quartet performing in Tel Aviv.) In March 2009, the solo piano outing “Heart Beats” had its release at the Blue Note jazz club.

Every track on all three CDs is an original composition by Klein. "Oud Song" from "Introducing" is the one I heard first, as an MP3 linked in an email. I stopped messing around on my desk and listened hard. Then I went in search of whatever else I could find.

Klein is already moving on to the next thing. After playing some of the "Heart Beats" compositions with Avital and Ravitz, he began writing new compositions specifically for his trio. "I was imagining Omer and Ziv in my mind while I was writing the different parts, and we have been rehearsing this music for a while now," he said. "They feel this is a new stage in my music and could be a new direction for the trio. We’ll play a lot of this new material in St. Paul. Some of it will be heard for the first time outside of New York City, and some will be heard before New York City. Since everything is so fresh, not all songs have titles."

Avital grew up in Tel Aviv, Ravitz in Beer-Sheva. You may be wondering why Israelis have become such a force in jazz. (More names jazz fans may know: trumpeter Avishai Cohen - same name as bassist Avishai Cohen, but no relation; his sister, clarinetist Anat, and brother, saxophonist Yuval; trombonist Avi Liebovich; pianist Shai Maestro; guitarist Gilad Hekselman; saxophonist Eli Degibri.)

Speaking for himself, Klein says, "I was a musical kid, playing melodies, inventing different things, learning songs from the radio. When I discovered jazz, in which you have to invent things all the time, I immediately knew that I had to be involved with that. I wanted to play differently every time I play."

Speaking as one of many Israeli jazz musicians -- some living in New York, some back in Israel teaching the next wave -- he says, "One thing we all seem to agree upon is there might be something in the Israeli way of life that requires improvisation in everyday life, that requires being creative. ... What we all want to do is express ourselves, be able to express something universal, but still tell our own story."

Omer Klein & His Trio. Thursday, May 14, 7 p.m., St. Paul JCC, 1375 St. Paul Avenue. Tickets at 651-698-0751 ($10 members/$15 public).

Originally published at MinnPost.com, Wednesday, May 13, 2009.

Montreal Jazz Festival part deux

This just in (I suppose if I keep this up, the Montreal Jazz Festival will take me off its email list):



Stevie Wonder
Opens the Place des Festivals with a Concert Inaugurating the 30th Edition of the Festival

Montreal, Monday, May 11, 2009 - The Festival International de Jazz de Montréal is extremely proud to offer our loyal fans another gorgeous gift as part of this 30th anniversary: a very special free outdoor concert by American music giant Stevie Wonder, in his first-ever visit to the Festival.... Stevie Wonder will literally launch the Festival's 30th anniversary celebrations when he opens the brand-new Place des Festivals this Tuesday, June 30 at 9:30 p.m. on the General Motors stage.... Stevie Wonder, peerless icon of American black music, is the ideal choice to illuminate an event as illustrious as the Festival's 30th anniversary....


Who doesn't love Stevie Wonder? Everybody loves Stevie Wonder. I love Stevie Wonder. I'd give my firstborn (sorry, Jonah) to be at that concert (after which I'd want him back). But what makes him "the ideal choice" to inaugurate the Jazz Festival's 30th year? Is it (I didn't write this, they did) because he's black? I'm just saying.

Jason Moran and The Big Bandwagon: Monk in motion

When: Saturday, May 9, 2009 • Where: Walker Art Center, McGuire Theater • Who: Jason Moran and The Big Bandwagon: Jason Moran, piano; Logan Richardson, alto sax; Aaron Stewart, tenor sax; Ralph Alessi, trumpet; Howard Johnson, tuba; Isaac Smith, trombone; Tarus Mateen, bass; Nasheet Waits, drums

Jason Moran is snobby about chairs. He keeps a lot of photographs in the studio where he works. He learned classical piano as a child with the Suzuki method; he grew up hearing Glenn Gould at home and jazz on the car radio. His older brother played violin. One day, when Jason was 13 and bored with the piano, his parents played a recording of Thelonious Monk's “’Round Midnight.” It was the second most important moment in his life, after being born. In his words, it "set everything in motion."

(Monk did it for me, too. I came to jazz through the fusion door. Then one day I heard Monk on the radio. I don’t remember which tune it was, but I remember feeling that the man with the strange name was playing those lurching rhythms and dissonant chords just for me. I fell hard.)

The facts of Moran’s life were projected on a screen in stenciled letters during In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall 1959, which came to the Walker Art Center as a shared presentation with the Northrop Jazz Season. Commissioned by Duke University, the San Francisco Jazz Festival, the Chicago Symphony Center, and the Washington Performing Arts Society, Moran's new work was originally supposed to be a re-creation of Monk's famous big-band concert of 50 years ago, with Moran playing piano and Monk's son T.S. on drums.

But Moran went his own way. ("Technical re-creations can be a recipe for disaster," he wrote for the Guardian [London] in May 2008. "I thought of the Gus van Sant shot-for-shot remake of Hitchcock's Psycho.") Following his curiosity, digging into history, drawing on his knowledge of conceptual art (learned in part while composer-in-resident at the Walker in 2005, where he spent his free time exploring the museum’s collection), Moran created a multimedia work that combines words and music, sounds and images, past and present, biography and autobiography, concert and theater in a personal, lavishly inventive and musically satisfying take on a historic event in jazz.

Last night at the Walker's intimate and lovely McGuire Theater, we heard Monk in conversation with his arranger, Hal Overton; we heard him tap dancing; we saw impressionistic images of the plantation in North Carolina owned by Archibald Monk, where the composer’s great-grandparents were slaves, and grainy images of Monk rehearsing in the Jazz Loft, filmed by W. Eugene Smith. Sometimes we saw double as the band we were watching was projected onto the screen; cameras were placed on either side of the stage, and to the left of the Steinway Moran was playing.

All were interwoven with live performances of Monk’s music, interpreted and explored by Moran and his eight-piece Big Bandwagon. To start, Moran came on stage alone, put on a pair of headphones, listened to Monk play “Thelonious” (we could hear it, too, barely), then improvised along with the music. The other band members entered and began playing and the music expanded to fill the room.

Throughout the evening, the octet reformed into small groups, sometimes classic trio (piano, bass, drums), sometimes all horns (trombone, tuba, alto and tenor saxes). There was much room for improvisation during solos and musical conversations, times when Monk's tunes opened up and new music, some invented on the spot, rushed in. At first I was surprised that Tarus Mateen played electric bass, not upright; it brought a more modern sound to the mix and left room for the rumbly low notes of Howard Johnson’s tuba.

They played the music Monk and his band performed during the original 1959 concert: “Thelonious,” “Friday the 13th,” “Little Rootie-Tootie,” “Monk’s Mood,” “Crepuscule with Nellie.” All were re-imaginings, not reiterations; “Crepuscule” was full of old-time gospel fervor, and parts seemed almost symphonic, lush and full. Throughout the night, Monk’s music (which Ben Ratliff has called “some of the best songs ever written in jazz”) was the core, not an enclosure. We also heard new music: to a recorded reading of a poem titled "In My Mind" (solo piano), and to the scenes of fields on Archibald Monk's plantation (tuba and cowbells).

One of the things that makes jazz so interesting (to me, at least) is its wide-openness to interpretation and reinterpretation. I’m guessing that most contemporary orchestras play Bach and Beethoven, Mozart and Shostakovich fairly straight. All the notes, nothing more and nothing less. A jazz tune, on the other hand, is a sketch, an outline, a compass pointing north. Classical musicians have scores. Jazz musicians have fake books—melodies, lyrics, basic chords. The rest is up to them.

Listening to the solos—Moran’s brilliant, unpredictable piano, Nasheet Waits’ fierce and thundering drums, Ralph Alessi’s shining trumpet, and Isaac Smith’s joyous, unfettered trombone (to me, the dreadlocked, exceedingly animated Smith was the highlight of the evening)—I wondered, if Monk were in the audience tonight, what would he think? Would he enjoy the sound of his music filtered through the intelligence and experience, imaginations and mad skills of these eight musicians? Part homage, part documentary (thanks to the newly discovered recordings and images Moran was able to use), part confessional (Moran saying “This is where I came from, this is what I care about”), In My Mind stands on its own as a new work grounded in tradition. It's Monk brought into the 21st century, tap-dancing feet and all.

Hear clips from In My Mind.
Read about the Jazz Loft and the things that were found there.
See and hear Moran in conversation with Walker Art Center Performing Arts Curator Philip Bither in February 2007.
Photos of Moran and the "In My Mind" painting from Moran's website.

Eric Bibb at the Dakota: Blues of hope and loving kindness

When: Wednesday, May 6, 2009 • Where: Dakota • Who: Eric Bibb

When bluesman Eric Bibb came to town last year, I went to see him because a friend wanted to go. I still think about that performance and how wonderful it was. Tonight is wonderful, too, but in different ways. Last year had the element of surprise. This year Bibb seems more at home in the room, more relaxed and easy. Happier.

Hope, loving kindness, happy—words not usually associated with the blues. Yet except for the opening song, “Stagolee,” not a shot is fired or a lover betrayed. Bibb calls his music "upside-down blues" because it's about life's joys, not life's problems. It's sincere and satisfying, not at all saccharine.

We hear many of last year’s songs again: “Stagolee,” “Shingle by Shingle,” “Still Livin’ On,” “Connected,” “River Blues,” “Kokomo,” “Diamond Days,” “The Cape,” “I Heard the Angels Singing,” “Get on Board,” “For You,” “In My Father’s House.”

We also hear many songs Bibb didn’t bring us last time around. (As before, he owns the whole night at the Dakota, two generous sets with a short break between. Tickets are for both sets and tables aren’t turned.) He precedes every song with a story, drawing us closer.

“New Home,” he tells us, is a song he performed in Seattle the night Obama was elected. The lyrics fit: “I’ll put your feet on solid ground by and by/When the river gets to rising, you’ll be high and dry.” His “Pockets” is a love song, first recorded on the Swedish audiophile label Opus 3. (Bibb lived in Stockholm for ten years; he makes his home in Finland now. He hasn’t lived in the states since 1985.) “Saucer ’n’ Cup” is also a love song (“You’re looking at a satisfied man”), and he sings it for friends in the house who are celebrating their 35th anniversary. “Marital bliss is not a big blues theme,” he says wryly by way of introduction.

He prefaces “River Blues” by saying “Here comes the other side of that coin” (everyone laughs), “a song I wrote after the umpteenth time of realizing sometimes it’s better to take a walk than try to talk.” Does the man give lessons? (That was not meant for you, HH.) “Going Down Slow” is one of the few songs we hear that isn’t a Bibb original. Written by St. Louis Jimmy, who played piano for Muddy Waters, it’s sadder, bluer. (“I don’t need no doctor/He can’t do me no good….”) Watch it here. Video quality poor but song a classic.



Bibb has an essential sweetness and optimism about him; his smile is radiant, his ways gentle. He seems open and genuine, not shiny and false. He can't possibly say something completely different every time he introduces a song, but his words never sound like the same old patter. Sometimes he ventures into blues shouts and growls and he’s convincing there as well. But he seems overall like the satisfied man of which he sings, talking affectionately about his son, Sebastian, and his own mother. “She says to never leave this song off my set list,” he says before playing and singing “Don’t Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down.”

We hear “Panama Hat,” “Right on Time” (a tune that grew out of the generosity of older musicians), “Sebastian’s Tune” (“I told my son I’d play it every time I was missing him on the road”), “The Needed Time.” Like last year, the crowd is attentive, respectful.

What must it be like to come through a curtain onto a stage, face a crowd, and put it all out there: your voice, your personality and emotions, your words and melodies and musicianship? A singer-songwriter is a courageous person, like a solo dancer must be, or any solo musician, or an actor in a one-person show, or a poet giving a reading. In the end, they're all tightrope walkers. Bibb does more than sing songs and play guitar. He lifts us up.

While he was here in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Bibb spoke with Dale Connelly and performed three of his songs in the Minnesota Public Radio studios. Listen here.
Visit his new website, learn more about him, and hear a few more songs.
Read about last year's show.
Photo by John Whiting.

Minor beef with the Montreal Jazz Festival

HH and I went to the Montreal Jazz Festival several years ago and loved it. We have always wanted to return--Montreal is one of our favorite cities, Europe without the jet lag--but most of the jazz we want to see is indoors and ticketed so it gets pricey. I keep up with the program each year and get that achey I-wish-I-could-go feeling.

Montreal has long been a festival that features more than jazz; when we went, we saw Prince, which was kind of crazy b/c at that time he was still living in Minneapolis and we could see him right here, but we thought it would be fun to see him outside his hometown and it was. We spent the rest of the time running from venue to venue for jazz.

The press release for this year's festival (June 30-July 12) arrived in my emailbox this week. Here are the headlines:

30TH EDITION OF THE FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DE JAZZ DE MONTRÉAL ANNOUNCES MORE THAN 150 ARTISTS FOR THE INDOOR PROGRAM
* * * * *
Wealth of Performances Including Jeff Beck, Harlem Gospel Choir, Buddy Guy, Mos Def, Pink Martini, The Dears, The Orb, Burning Spear, Toots & The Maytals and Many More
* * *
Montréal to Host 650+ Concerts Over Two Weeks

I get that it's not just a jazz festival. But couldn't they include just one jazz concert in the headline? Don't Wynton Marsalis, Dave Brubeck, Maria Schneider, Wayne Shorter, Branford Marsalis, or Ornette Coleman--all of whom are listed on the schedule--merit a mention up top?

Not that MJF isn't still a great jazz festival. It is. Also featured this year: Chucho Valdes, Dave Holland, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Chris Potter, Eric Harland, Robert Glasper, Sophie Milman, Patricia Barber, John Pizzarelli, The Bad Plus, Russell Malone, Joshua Redman, Joe Lovano, Brian Blade, Larry Grenadier, Eliane Elias, Kenny Garrett, Kenny Werner, Wallace Roney, Bill Frisell, Lew Tabackin, Lewis Nash, Baptiste Trotignon, Al Jarreau, Mark Turner, Jeremy Pelt, Greg Hutchison, Matt Penman, Esperanza Spalding, Lee Konitz, Hiromi, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Bill Charlap, Houston Person, Greg Osby, Gerald Clayton, Lionel Loueke, Anat Cohen, Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, and (gasp) more.

Wish I could go. If you go, try to make time July 4 or July 11 for the International Fireworks Competition. Very serious fireworks that make the annual Target-sponsored Aquatennial show look like sparklers in your neighbor's backyard.

The MJF website, with complete program. Starting June 3, the complete history will also be online--30 years of programs.

Brad Mehldau at the Dakota: Something Good

When: Sunday, May 3, 2009 • Where: Dakota • Who: Brad Mehldau, piano; Larry Grenadier, bass; Jeff Ballard, drums

Where has Brad Mehldau been? Not in Minneapolis/St. Paul, where we haven’t seen him since 2002. Bad Brad! Please don’t make us wait another seven years for what we heard tonight: lyrical, emotional, telepathic piano trio jazz.

Mehldau doesn’t talk much on stage, and though I have heard a lot of his recorded music—all of his albums as a leader/solo, and several as a co-leader/sideman/guest—there’s much he plays that I don’t know by name, unless it’s a standard or pop tune. Tonight he waits until just before the set’s final song to tell us what we have heard so far.

They play for 90 minutes, opening with Mehldau's original “Dream Sketch,” not yet recorded. Mehldau explains that it’s an idea he had after awaking from a dream that “kind of worked. I was glad it didn’t turn out to be a coffee commercial from the 70s.” It is dreamy, and mellow. Then “Twiggy,” also unrecorded, a lovely blues with hints of “Still Crazy After All These Years.” (They’ll play that tune later.)

“Brownie Speaks” by Clifford Brown is Mehldau’s tribute to the bop trumpeter. He’s pleased when a horn player in the audience says the name before he does. The midsection is the audio equivalent of something bursting and shards flying in all directions. The melody is moving along when suddenly Mehldau plays a complex, utterly unpredictable rhythm to which Grenadier and Ballard stick like glue. That moment—and the remaining moments of a lengthy improvisation that twists and turns, starts and stops, each new thought a feint and a ruse—is a window into where this trio lives.

Mehldau describes “Wyatt’s Eulogy for George Hanson” as a “60s psychedelic eulogy” to a character in the film Easy Rider, which he says he has watched several times on planes (on his laptop, unless Dennis Hopper has a deal with the airlines similar to his contract with Ameriprise). “Psychedelic” is a good description for what sounds like a piece where, if there is a melody, it’s soon abandoned. Grenadier coaxes sounds out of his bass I’ve never heard before, running his fingers up and down the strings until they almost speak.

Bass and drums crash through the gate together for what Mehldau later tells us is “messing around with the chord changes to Denzil Best’s ‘Move,’” a tune born on a chessboard.

Then Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Something Good,” from the movie version of Sound of Music (not, Mehldau clarifies, the Broadway musical). This is the song Maria and the Captain sing to each other when they realize they have fallen in love: “Nothing comes from nothing/Nothing ever could/So somewhere in my youth or childhood/I must have done something good.” Sweet, tender, Mehldau’s version conveys that sense of wonder and gratitude and joy.

He ends with a solo piano rumination on the melody. Times like these divide Mehldau listeners into two camps: those who consider these detours poetic, meditative, and uplifting, and those who think they’re self-indulgent, soporific, and noodley. I confess to being fascinated. You know he’s making the decisions but it seems as if the music is leading him. Or that he’s channeling some musical spirit. Maybe he’s noodling, maybe he should get back to the business of the melody, but I’m happy to follow him into the woods or down the winding path or off the cliff. This is music of deeply-felt passion and emotion.

When he does eventually find the melody again, Ballard picks up his brushes, Grenadier places his fingers on the strings, and they end together.

Encore: “Still Crazy After All These Years.” A Paul Simon song Mehldau recorded in 2002 on Anything Goes with his trio at that time: Grenadier on bass, Jorge Rossy on drums. Until now I have only heard him play live with Rossy. I’ve read reviews calling Ballard a more energetic and powerful drummer than Rossy; one writer feels that Ballard crowds Mehldau. (Nate Chinen of the New York Times thinks the results are “salutary, like drawing the curtains to let the daylight in.” He also calls Ballard a “much more loamy percussionist” than Rossy, whatever that means.) It would be interesting to know why the change was made after so many years and recordings together. My focus is mostly on Mehldau when I hear his trio play but the drums do seem bigger and denser with Ballard, less finely drawn.

The trio returns for a second encore: “Monk’s Dream.” Mehldau comps little trinkle-trinkles behind Grenadier’s bass solo while Ballard brushes his high-hat. I haven’t heard too many jazz players improvise on Monk—it seems hard enough to play him straight—but off they go into a long melodic improvisation that builds in layers and intensity and playfulness, with Ballard taking a series of small solos. It’s a terrific finish to the evening.

Both sets tonight were open curtain, the audience spilling over into the Dakota’s restaurant side. I heard the first set did and didn’t sell out. Ours didn’t though the crowd was healthy. Compare to what Will Friedwald wrote for the New York Sun on January 25, 2008: “Meanwhile, down in the Village, the line stretching down Seventh Avenue, all the way past the Psychic Reader and up to the front of Fantasy Lingerie, can only mean one thing: Brad Mehldau is at the Vanguard.” If lines formed to see jazz artists play here, we might not have to wait seven years between Mehldau sightings.

Photo from Nonesuch website. Photography wasn't permitted during the performances.

McCoy Tyner at Orchestra Hall: Volume, velocity, virtuosity

When: Thursday, April 30, 2009 • Where: Orchestra Hall • Who: McCoy Tyner, piano; Gary Bartz, saxophone; Gerald L. Cannon, bass; Eric Kamau Gravatt, drums

As McCoy Tyner’s current tour made its way to Minneapolis, I searched the Web and found reviews that let us know what we were in for.

John Fidler for the Reading Eagle (Berks County): “Tyner’s playing at 70 remains as explosive, as nuanced and, at the right moments, as tender as it was when he, Coltrane, Jones and bassist Jimmy Garrison ravaged the jazz landscape in the early 1960s.”

Jim Harrington for the Contra Costa Times (Silicon Valley): “The concert was certainly a highlight of this 10th annual SFJAZZ spring season…. The evening served as a strong testimony to Tyner’s great legacy as a songwriter.”

The Twin Cities turn out for the master’s first appearance here since November 2006, when he played the Northrop Jazz Season with a fantastic brass section (Eric Alexander, Donald Harrison, Wallace Roney, Steve Turre) that was somewhat underused. Before then, in March 2004, he brought Charnett Moffett and Eric Harland to the Dakota. Pyrotechnics in a much smaller space.

Tonight we hear two shortish sets divided by an intermission. (Toward the end of the first set, Tyner tells the audience, “I always listen to Gary Bartz and do what he says, and he says it’s time for a break!”) To start, a lengthy, expansive “Fly with the Wind,” one of Tyner’s tunes from the 1970s. (During which, alas, HH waited in the lobby to get in, having let me off before he parked. Brief digression to curse and rail at every single torn-up, backed-up, pot-holed road and freeway in Minneapolis.)

“Blues on the Corner” from the 1960s. Tyner comments, “I seem to have written many of my songs long ago.” I’m listening to a version right now, probably the first one recorded, from an essential Tyner album, The Real McCoy (1967). Joe Henderson plays the sax on the recording; tonight we hear the wonderful Bartz, a fiery sax player with a flammable cumulonimbus of hair.

Tyner turned 70 in December last year but his sound is still so huge, so thunderous and layered and mighty it’s like piano four-hands. How can he do it? In December he shared his secret with National Public Radio: Drink carrot juice.

“For All We Know” travels from tsunami to whisper. Tyner is glad to be back in Minneapolis and graciously tells us so. “I really enjoy playing for you,” he says. “I get a positive vibe.”

He doesn’t announce everything from the bench but I think the final tune of this set is Coltrane’s “Aisha.” [Correction: It's Tyner's own "Ballad for Aisha." Thanks to JS, whose comment is below.] He starts the next set with Coltrane's “Moment’s Notice.” In a wry aside, he explains that it was “written by a gentleman I used to work for who inspired my younger years and made it possible for my older years to be interesting.”

His quartet—officially a trio with Cannon and Gravatt; Bartz is billed as a special guest—is perfect, and Tyner gives each man plenty of room for extended solos. Cannon slaps his bass; Bartz soars into the stratosphere (and often carries the melody over Tyner’s thick cushion of notes); Gravatt matches Tyner in volume and velocity, laying down thick chords of his own on drums and cymbals. We hear an updated, speeded-up “Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit” with Bartz’s saxophone blowing the theme high and wide.

Here’s a recent video of “Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit” with the same personnel.



One encore: “In a Mellow Tone,” which Tyner really should rename if he’s going to play it. There’s nothing mellow about his version of Duke Ellington’s famous tune. It’s a summer storm rolling in over the fields, flattening everything as it goes.

Two candid photos from backstage after the concert, one Gravatt (L) and Dean Brewington (R), one with the lovely Charmin Michelle.


Read a preview on MinnPost where Tyner talks about the future of jazz and what's next for him personally.

Tyner has a big online presence at National Public Radio. Start with the most recent feature, recorded December 11, 2009 (during his 70th birthday week at the Blue Note).

Hear a complete concert from July 2008 with Dave Holland, Joe Lovano, and Lewis Nash. Find two more under “Related NPR Stories” at the bottom of the page.

Top photo from McCoy Tyner’s website. Backstage photos by John Whiting and his iPhone.