Evan Christopher at the Dakota, 10/25/09: Concert review

On Sunday night, Oct. 25, Dakota Jazz Club owner Lowell Pickett gave us a gift, and New Orleans clarinetist Evan Christopher delivered: more than two hours of music that took us back and forth in time, filled us with rhythm, honored roots, insisted on relevance, and left us breathless and giddy.

Pickett flew Christopher to town for the Dakota’s annual members’ party. (If you live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and want to know more about Dakota memberships, click here.) The first part of the evening (cocktails and apps) was private, the second (music) was open to the public but not terribly well advertised. By the time the music started, the club was full.

I’ve heard Christopher play before—with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, at the Dakota (after a NOJO show at Orchestra Hall), at Chickie Wah Wah on Canal Street in New Orleans, where he has a regular gig. More than any other artist, he has opened my ears to New Orleans music: not the kitschy, touristy stuff often associated with NOLA but the living, breathing, kicking sounds of the place where jazz was born and is still evolving. When he plays, I hear the old tunes, the old sounds, but the way they sound today, this minute.

Christopher is his own cat, but I’m reminded of Marcus Roberts when he plays. Not because they’re from the same place or doing the same things (and they don’t even play the same instrument), but because each is a scholar and a historian with deep, deep roots in the past, yet their music is very modern. Listen to Roberts play “Jitterbug Waltz” on his latest CD, New Orleans Meets Harlem, Vol. 1 (J Master, 2009) and you’ll think that tune was written today, not in 1942. [While you’re at it, if you can, listen to Roberts play the same tune on As Serenity Approaches (Novus, 1991). Another just as modern, totally different approach.] Christopher performed it at the Dakota as his encore. My dream jazz club date: Christopher and Roberts together on the same stage.

Joined by area musicians Tanner Taylor on piano, Reuben Ristrom on guitar, Gary Raynor on bass, and Joe Pulice on drums, Christopher played for two hours without a break, which nearly killed a certain member of the band who smokes. The music was full of joy and emotion and virtuosity. The crowd was rapt and attentive. The only people who left before the end were a couple with small children; this was a school night, and the parents looked back in regret as they headed for the door.



Christopher is an artist who educates from the stage, telling us what he’s playing, sharing interesting stories and anecdotes without filler or shtick. Here’s what we heard.

1. Christopher solo on (I think) “Cheek to Cheek.” He talked briefly about Creole clarinet: “A vocabulary that has different layers of meaning, based on individual musicians and neighborhoods, individual countries; Creolitude.”

2. Christopher and the band on Sidney Bechet’s “Blues in the Air.” “In the words of Jelly Roll Morton,” Christopher said, “fast is not a style.”

3. Buddy Bolden’s “Funky Butt,” later known as “Buddy Bolden’s Blues.”

4. Music by Cole Porter associated with Louis Armstrong, including selections from the musical comedy Jubilee and the film High Society (“I Love You, Samantha”). Christopher sang. This, too, is a New Orleans thing. Musicians lower their horns and sing a verse or two.

5. Billy Strayhorn’s “Lotus Blossom.”

6. A song about rum punch. Christopher mentioned that he was playing with his fellow musicians tonight for the first time (except for Reuben Ristrom; they know each other and have played together before). Fine with him. “I’m not a big fan of rehearsing,” he explained. “It creates expectations.”

7. Christopher switched from clarinet to a 1926 soprano sax with a mouthpiece from Claude Luter, who played in Bechet’s band. “I honked on it last night and decided to bring it along,” he said, then played Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love?” with a Creole feel, tossing in a lengthy quote from “Caravan.” “The Creole clarinet vocabulary is a tricky thing to navigate,” he told us. “Much comes from the place and dynamics of playing in New Orleans—the heat, the economics. So much comes from individual musicians, who together as a family have created a language… There’s a fine line between performing that language and imitating that language.”

8. “Waltz for All Souls,” an original composition, which he dedicated to a friend who died recently. So tender and beautiful. It reminded me of “A Wild Irish Rose.”

9. He ended with a rousing, celebratory second-line version of Oscar Hammerstein’s “When I Grow Too Old to Dream,” playing and singing (“When I grow too old to dream/I’ll still have you to remember”).

10. Encore: an exquisite “Jitterbug Waltz.”

By now we were all stiff from sitting. If we weren’t dopey Minnesotans, we would have gotten up and danced around the club, out the door, and down Nicollet Mall, buses and taxis be damned.

In Conversation with Tim Sparks

You can approach guitarist Tim Sparks’ music from several directions. You can enter through Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, originally arranged for orchestra, rearranged by Sparks for six strings—a feat that won him the 1993 National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship. You can look for other CDs he has made for the German label Acoustic Music. You can track down recordings by the Twin Cities jazz group Rio Nido, popular during the 1970s and 80s and still sorely missed. You can enter through the bluegrass and jazz Sparks heard as a child and finally got around to recording on his new release, Sidewalk Blues (Tonewood, 2009).

Or you can walk through the door marked “Radical Jewish Culture,” a series on John Zorn’s Tzadik label. Starting in 1999 with the solo album Neshamah, Sparks has made five recordings for Tzadik. His latest, Little Princess (2009), is a collection of tunes by Naftule Brandwein, aka “Nifty,” the King of the Klezmer Clarinet. It’s an elegant, polyglot, sophisticated recording—World Music for the 21st century.

Born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Tim Sparks “appropriated my dad’s guitar” as a child and started picking out tunes. When encephalitis kept him housebound for a year, he taught himself to play traditional country blues and gospel by listening to old LPs, the radio, and his grandmother, who played piano in a small church. Impressed by Tim's skill, an uncle nominated him for a scholarship at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where Sparks studied the classics with Segovia protégé Jesus Silva and began adapting compositions by Jelly Roll Martin and Fats Waller for solo guitar.

Rather than continue on to college, “I got my degree in the world of music, the world of nightclubs.” He went on the road with a funk and R&B band and ended up in Minnesota, where he worked as a session player and became part of the vocal jazz group Rio Nido. That kept him busy for several years, after which he worked in a variety of groups, traveled, and moved to a farm in northern Minnesota with his wife, Chyrll, who is part owner of the country music festival We Fest.

For a time, Sparks taught at the University of Minnesota-Morris, but gave that up because of the killer two-hour commute, which “during winter is really tough. We have heavy-duty weather out here on the plains.”

I’ve been an admirer since first hearing a track from his Nutcracker Suite on the radio several years ago, then ordering the CD and almost wearing it out. When I heard he was playing a late-night show for Little Princess at a local jazz club, I grabbed a table near the stage so I could see his fingers on the strings. We spoke on the phone not long after.  

***

Pamela Espeland: How did a nice Christian boy from North Carolina end up making radical Jewish music for John Zorn?

Tim Sparks: It all started with Rio Nido. That was a pretty successful Twin Cities jazz group for quite a long time. It was a period of our lives collectively when we all had families and worked constantly. We were the house band at a club; we played there two weeks a month. You can’t get those long gigs anymore.

The band folded around 1986–87. After that, I played like a lounge lizard—straight-ahead jazz, R&B—for many years. I went on a long trip to Europe with my wife. Part of it involved traveling to Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bosnia. I encountered a lot of music that was really exotic to my ears. I’d always been curious about Eastern European music. When I was a teenager, my two favorite recordings were Village Music of Bulgaria and a Charlie Parker album on Verve. In a funny sort of way, those two streams finally came together in the Tzadik recordings.

When we came back from Europe, I began digging all kinds of people. Plus I started learning a lot of things Rio Nido didn’t play—Brazilian music, world music, Edith Piaf. I took up some Middle Eastern instruments—oud, fretless lute, saz, long-string lute. I played with a belly dancer, with a group called Rubaiyat that played Persian music, with Boiled in Lead, with a Brazilian group called Mandala.

I studied Jewish music with accordionists Maury Bernstein and Mark Stillman. I played with a group called Voices of Sepharad, music of the Sephardic tradition. I had a very hands-on experience with Jewish music.

I get asked, “Why are you playing this music? You’re not Jewish.” The answer is, first of all, it’s beautiful music. Jewish music shares a quality with gypsy music of touching on a diverse array of cultural and musical boundaries, especially Middle Eastern and Eastern European, with a particular soulfulness that moves me…. There’s a mystery in it; you never get tired of it. Like the blues progression. That “Hava Nagila” scale pushes a button for me.

PLE: How did you and John Zorn first get together?

TS: Through my friend Duck Baker. Duck was kind of a mentor to me as a teenager. He lived briefly in Winston-Salem and I used to go over to his house and he’d play Sun Ra and Frank Zappa. Perverse on his part; illuminating for me.

In the 60s, guitar music was in a bunch of separate categories and players never crossed the line. Classical guitarists completely ignored jazz and so on. Then gradually, because of people like Lenny Breau, Chet Atkins in a way, and Duck Baker, we reached the point where we’re at today, with incredibly eclectic fingerstyle guitar. It’s been quite a fluorescence in the last 20 years.

PLE: Can you explain what you mean by “fluorescence”?

TS: In a cultural fluorescence, you have a certain idea that catches on and blossoms. It’s a tipping point, when many people and ideas connect. The fluorescence in fingerstyle guitar started to happen in the late 1980s and early 90s.

I visited Duck at some point in the 90s, and he had done this great record called Spinning Song: Duck Baker Plays the Music of Herbie Nichols for Zorn. [Zorn was the executive producer.] It may be Duck’s best record. He’s known for playing Irish/Celtic music.

PLE: Which is notably absent from your repertoire.

TS: Seems to me there’s enough people covering it. There’s nothing I can add. I try to do things that add to the overall value of the body of guitar work. I’ve always been drawn more to the tri-tonal, Afro-American, Middle Eastern music sounds. Though I did go to Ireland on tour and decided that when I die, I want them to pour my ashes down the toilet of O’Flaherty’s bar in Flago.

PLE: Back to Duck Baker and John Zorn…

TS: So Duck said, “Zorn is really righteous.” I sent Zorn one of my Peter Finger [Acoustic Music] CDs, a fusion of Middle Eastern and American roots music called Guitar Bazaar. I had done an arrangement of Bartok’s “Romanian Dances” as part of that record. Zorn said he really liked it and wanted me to do a record of Jewish folk music, but done in my style. I sent him some stuff I was doing with David Harris and Mick LaBriola [of Voices of Sepharad] but he kept insisting on the solo guitar thing. That’s what he really wanted. So I worked on it. Any artist is happy to work.

Another cool thing about Zorn was he said, “Be as eclectic as you want. Pick out the songs you like.” I chose things I thought were compelling or beautiful. He also encouraged me to be eclectic in the way I play the tunes. So I freely mixed country with jazz and bebop riffs and blues runs and Middle Eastern scales. That for me made Nehama [Sparks’ first CD for Tzadik] a really fulfilling project. It was a stew of guitar music that had all these diverse elements. More like a salad than a stew, because everything still has its own unique identity.

Every time I make a record, I have a few tunes left over, seeds for another record. Zorn put me together with Greg Cohen and Cyro Baptista for Tanz, a trio record. Then the next time [for At the Rebbe’s Table] he said, “I want you to add Marc Ribot and Eric Friedlander.” Then we did Masada Guitars, where he had me and Bill Frisell and Marc Ribot each pick out tunes from his Masada songbook.

Zorn never wants to repeat himself.

PLE: What about Little Princess?

TS: I worked up a lot of tunes—more Masada tunes and a bunch of other stuff. Zorn liked the Brandwein stuff best.

I may by now have recorded almost everything there is by Brandwein. He only recorded 25–28 tunes that have been released by Rounder. When I was working on Neshama, I came across that recording and used it as a resource. I like Brandwein’s tunes a lot. A hundred years ago, he was playing with a palette and a repertoire that reflected multiple influences. His music’s got a lot of different bags in it.

PLE: You must be having déjà vu. Releasing Little Princess and Sidewalk Blues in the same year is similar to what you did ten years ago—with Neshamah and One String Leads to Another, your album of mostly original compositions for Acoustic Music.

TS: That’s kind of a coincidence. I put together Sidewalk Blues, put it out, and didn’t realize that I was going to wind up recording Little Princess so soon or that Zorn would release it so quickly. We just recorded Princess in February. That’s another nice thing about working for Tzadik. It’s a small label, always righteous…that’s what Tzadik means. A Tzadik is a righteous person. I’ve been very happy to do stuff with them. Very cool catalog, cool community.

PLE: Are you still composing?

TS: On Little Princess, the core songs are ten percent of the song, then twenty percent my arranging, then a lot of composition that developed those arrangements before improvisation. I’m not right now composing songs from scratch. I’m being a blank slate for a while. That feels kind of good.

I worked up half the tunes for the new record as part of a batch of demos I sent to Zorn last year. Then he sent me an email saying, “Let’s do a record of just the Brandwein tunes.” From October on I worked up the rest of the material, thinking as a solo guitarist. I had to comp with myself and do the bass line. When I got to New York and started to play the tunes in the studio with Greg and Cyro, suddenly half the arrangements I had made, meticulously developed and practiced, turned into soloing. I don’t know where that came from. It was something I never practiced, and I’m kind of happy about that. I played a lot of jazz for years and none of it was recorded. I think there’s some nice playing on Princess.

Greg and Cyro were creating spontaneously. They had just learned the tunes. That’s how those guys work all the time. When Zorn does a project, the musicians come to the studio, then he shows up and gives them tunes they have never heard before. John Coltrane liked to do that, too. You get a very, very fresh sound.

PLE: Has there ever been anything you wanted to play but couldn’t?

TS: Sure. All kinds of stuff. If there wasn’t, there would be no reason to live. I’ve been playing “Giant Steps” a lot lately, trying to figure out how to play that tune. For years I’ve been trying to do a follow-up to Nutcracker Suite, an arrangement of Prokofiev’s Cinderella ballet, but I can never find enough time to allocate to it. I did about five of the tunes ten years ago. Prokofiev’s music is something I’d like to figure out how to do on guitar. Maybe that will be the next thing I do.

PLE: A City Pages article from 2002 mentioned your trips to Japan and your interest in Japanese music. Tzadik has a “New Japan” series. Any chance we’ll see you there?

TS: I’ve got an idea I have pitched to Zorn and felt might be cool. In Japan, there’s a type of music called Enka music. It’s Japanese, but with a Western musical influence that goes back to the 1800s, when the Meiji dynasty decided to embrace Western culture and technology. It’s soulful, sad music about broken hearts, betrayal, the usual stuff, like Hank Williams, but the Japanese version, with cool Japanese pentatonic scales mixed with Westernized arrangements. I’ve checked into and heard stuff that definitely caught my ear. Sometimes you hear things and a light goes on and you can start hearing and sensing how that would go on guitar, how cool it would be.

PLE: So you’re still passionate about this?

TS: I’m too old to quit. That’s what [bassist] Billy Peterson once told me. “We’re too old to quit, man.”

***

Visit Tim Sparks's website for sound clips and a video.

Recommended listening:

The Nutcracker Suite (1992; Acoustic Music)

Neshama (1999; Tzadik)

At the Rebbe’s Table (2002; Tzadik)

Masada Guitars (2003; Tzadik)

Sidewalk Blues (2009; Tonewood)

Little Princess (2009; Tzadik)

Originally published on jazz.com, November 2009.

Tim Sparks interview on jazz.com

I first heard the great fingerstyle guitarist Tim Sparks on the radio--a cut from his arrangement of Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite." I tracked down the CD and almost wore it out. Lately Sparks has been recording for John Zorn's Tzadik label. When I heard he was coming to the Dakota earlier this year, I took a seat up front and asked for an interview. It was published today at jazz.com. It's on the home page now. When it's not, here's the permalink.

Free tickets for NEA Jazz Masters Awards Ceremony in January

Here's where to be at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, January 12, 2010: in the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center in NYC, where the 2010 NEA Jazz Masters will be honored.

The National Endowment for the Arts and JALC announced today that free tickets will be distributed to the general public at jalc.org/concerts or at the JALC Box Office on Broadway at 60th Street (Monday-Saturday, 10am to 6 pm; Sundays, 12 pm to 6 pm). Limit 2 tickets per person.

It's good that this is a free event. When it was part of the now-defunct IAJE, the ceremony was too pricey for most people to attend.

This year's Jazz Masters are Muhal Richard Abrams, Kenny Barron, Bill Holman, Bobby Hutcherson, Yusef Lateef, Annie Ross, and Cedar Walton. It's expected that 26 fellow Jazz Masters will also be present including Toshiko Akiyoshi, Ornette Coleman, Paquito d'Rivera, Ramsey Lewis, and Dr. Billy Taylor.

The event will be both awards ceremony and concert, with video tributes to each of the 2010 honorees. For those who can't be there (which sadly includes yours truly), it will be broadcast live on Sirius XM Satellite Radio and WGBO radio (88.3 in NYC, online for the rest of us).

Read the full press release here.

Happy Halloweenie

Carmen's annual Halloween photo. We're calling this "Memoirs of a Geishaweenie."

(Click on photo for actual size dog.)

Alicia Renee's "Judy Garland: Born in a Trunk" tribute

When: Friday, Oct. 23, 7:30 p.m. • Where: Cabaret Theater at Camp Bar • Who: Alicia Renee, vocals; Stephen Roemer, piano

I don't like musicals. I'm not a Judy Garland fan. But I went to Alicia Renee's tribute show, "Judy Garland: Born in a Trunk," at the Camp Bar in St. Paul anyway because I wanted to hear Renee sing again.

The last time was probably in 2002 or 2003; I have the CD, Wait for Me, she released as an 18-year-old, and it's a solid effort by a young singer with a big, beautiful voice and an ace band (Jon Weber on piano, Gordy Johnson on bass).

Renee has been away at UMD (University of Minnesota–Duluth) getting edumacated. I wondered how she sounds now.

In fact, she sounds terrific. I enjoyed the show so much I wrote a review for MinnPost.

Here's the setlist of songs and medleys Renee performed, accompanied by Stephen Roemer on piano.

"Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart"
"I Don't Care"
"Be a Clown"
"Dear Mr. Gable, You Made Me Love You"
"Johnny One Note"
("Everybody Dance"?)
"On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe"
"For Me and My Gal"
"The Boy Next Door"
"The Trolley Song"
"I've Got Rhythm"
"Born in a Trunk"
"You Took Advantage of Me"
"Black Bottom"
"Peanut Vendor Song"
"Melancholy Baby"
"Swanee"
("Overnight Sensation"?) (brief "Born in a Trunk" reprise)
"That's Entertainment"
"There's No Business Like Show Business"
"I Love a Piano"
"You Can't Get a Man With a Gun" (Lyrics: "You can't get a hug from a mug with a slug...")
"The Man That Got Away"
"San Francisco" (with Garland's "I never will forget Jeanette MacDonald" beginning)
"Get Happy"
"Look for the Silver Lining"
"Over the Rainbow"
"San Francisco" (full song)



Photos by John Whiting

Miles Davis headphones?

This just landed in my email box. Who/what is "Miles Davis Properties, LLC"? And why do I think these 'phones are...kind of cool?

WWMD?

MONSTER TO LAUNCH “MILES DAVIS TRIBUTE™” HEADPHONES –NEW LIMITED EDITION IN-EAR HEADPHONES ARE WORLD’S FIRST AUDIO HARDWARE PRODUCT TO BEAR OFFICIAL MILES DAVIS NAME

-- Created in Conjunction with the Miles Davis Family, New Headphones Feature Sleek Styling Designed to Capture the Essence of the Man and His Music; Engineered to the Most Demanding Sonic Specifications --

NEW YORK, NY, October 21, 2009 – Monster, renowned for its many advanced consumer electronics accessories and fast becoming one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high-performance headphones, is proud to announce the upcoming introduction of the world’s first audio hardware product to bear the official name and signature of legendary trumpeter Miles Davis – the new “Miles Davis Tribute” high-performance in-ear headphones. Created in conjunction with Miles Davis Properties, LLC, the new headphones are being offered in a individually numbered limited edition. Adding value to this limited edition release, purchasers of the Miles Davis Tribute headphones will also be able to enjoy free of charge the official 50^th Anniversary boxed set of the artist’s seminal album Kind of Blue, featuring two music CDs, a DVD and a 24-page booklet.

Miles Davis Tribute headphones feature a striking gold/brass finish based on the actual trumpet played by the artist, featuring a Miles Davis silhouette and gold-etched signature on the earpiece. The headphones are complemented by an attractive ”kind of blue” cord and uniquely designed “musical instrument” carry case. Designed in every way to capture the essence of the renowned musician’s style, the Miles Davis Tribute headphones are tuned to reproduce the subtle nuances of music, with advanced sonic technologies engineered to deliver reference-quality audio...

Read more here.

On the road again: Kurt Elling and Laurence Hobgood in Fargo: Concert review

Last week (Saturday, October 10): Kurt in St. Peter, MN. This week (Saturday, October 17): Kurt in Fargo, ND.

I have friends who follow U2 from city to city and believe me, jazz is cheaper.

This was a totally different concert from the one at Gustavus Adolphus College. From St. Peter to Fargo, there was not one crossover tune. Two possible reasons: This time, Kurt and Laurence performed with the Jazz Arts Big Band instead of their own quartet. And they don't repeat themselves.

How often have we all heard artists on tour for a new CD play the same sets multiple times? Dedicated to You is still new (although Elling and Hobgood are already well into planning their next recording with Concord), and while Elling mentioned DTY and the fact that it would be available for sale in the lobby after the show, they are not playing that show everywhere they go. (Though they are playing it on their European tour, which begins October 24 in Cork, Ireland.) Selected songs are being incorporated into the vast and expanding Elling-Hobgood repertoire.



Playing with a big band can’t be as spontaneous as playing with a quartet. There are charts to be learned ahead of time. When Elling told the Gustavus crowd that the quartet would be performing some tunes from DTY, some requests, and “some things I haven’t thought of yet,” I took that to mean the set list was not carved in stone and they would go at least in part where the spirit of the performance and the house moved them. But with a big band, even the encore is decided and rehearsed in advance.

I wonder if the sets they played on stage in Fargo were the same as they played earlier that day, during their one and only rehearsal with the band. We were given a printed program with titles prefaced by “Program to be selected from the following.” Over two sets, they played most but not all of the songs listed, swapping “Man in the Air” for “Say It (Over and Over Again)” and changing the order significantly. I didn’t see any of the musicians madly shuffling charts on their stands, but perhaps Elling decided the order of the program as the evening went along? That would be interesting to know.

A bit about the Jazz Arts Big Band: Founded in 1991, the 17-member band is made up of professional musicians/jazz educators from the Fargo-Moorhead area. A nonprofit organization, it has a board and depends on grants, sponsors, and individual supporters—just like Minnesota's JazzMN Big Band which, I learned later from Jazz Arts Group executive director Rochelle Roesler, was modeled on the Jazz Arts band. (JAG is the umbrella group that brought Elling to town. This is its 19th season. Trombonist Wycliffe Gordon will perform in February. Past guest artists have included Conrad Herwig and Freddy Cole. JAG also has an educational mission; Elling gave a class on Friday for students that was also open to the public. Twin Cities-based vocalist Nancy Harms went to Fargo a day early so she could attend the class.)



I’ve seen Elling with a big band only once before, at an International Association for Jazz Educators conference in NYC. (RIP, IAJE: Roesler saw Elling at the final conference in Toronto, and that’s when she decided she had to bring him to Fargo.) I saw him with the Bob Mintzer Big Band, a Grammy-winning organization led by jazz great (and Yellowjacket) Mintzer. The Jazz Arts band is not the Mintzer band, but it’s a good band and it was up for what Elling wanted it to do. Elling made his wants very clear, turning often to conduct the band and push it harder. I’m not sure how musical director Dr. Kyle Mack felt about that and I didn’t get a chance to ask him, but he was certainly gracious about it. (Writing for Fargo-Moorhead’s INFORUM website, John Lamb noted that Elling’s “takeover wasn’t hostile, but it was forceful.”)

The band opened the program with two upbeat tunes: “I Be Serious ’Bout Dem Blues,” a chart by bassist John Clayton, and “Another One of Those Things” a take-off on “Just One of Those Things” by composer John Mahoney. Mack introduced Elling by telling a story about an Arts Midwest master class he had attended several years ago, during which Elling had made a nervous young student feel at ease by asking him to stay after class for a private lesson. Then Elling and Hobgood came out, and those in the audience who were studying their programs and thinking they were about to hear the relatively mellow “Close Your Eyes” were in for a surprise.

Elling was in full bring-down-the-house Sinatra mode for “Luck Be a Lady,” turning to the band and punching the air whenever he wanted a blare from the horns. He got it. He wanted the band to swing hard right now, and he got that, too. The band might have started the evening a bit tentatively (okay, not might have, did), but by the end of the night they were breathing fire.

Everything seemed a bit overamped all evening long. Many of the subtleties usually present in an Elling show were lost. But this was about rousing a crowd that seemed even more reserved than Minnesotans, and more hesitant to show their enthusiasm. Solos (by the band and the guests) weren’t rewarded as often as they should have been.

Next: Mintzer’s arrangement of “My One and Only Love.” (Hear it on Mintzer’s Old School: New Lessons. It's also on DTY in a new arrangement by Hobgood.) Elling stepped aside to let the spotlight fall on the band's guitarist, Tom Carvell. Then, prefaced by Elling as “a little Basie action where the band gets all greasy”: “Goin’ to Chicago Blues,” with lyrics by Jon Hendricks. On this tune, Elling growled and roared. Jaws dropped. He could take this show to Vegas.



The first set ended big with Coltrane’s “Resolution,” featuring Elling’s lyrics and Mintzer’s chart. Elling and the band took it over the top. But first Elling told the story behind his version, which I had not heard before. “Mrs. Coltrane [Alice] did not cotton to people writing lyrics to her husband’s music,” he explained. He sent her a tape and heard back: “The first word is ‘God’ and I like that and that’s right, so he can record this—but no more from anybody.”

After the break, the second set began with two more tunes by the band: Lee Konitz’s “Subconscious-Lee,” arranged by David Springfield, and Horace Silver’s delightful “Filthy McNasty,” arranged by John La Barbera. This time, when Elling and Hobgood stepped on stage, they started with “Close Your Eyes” in a big band arrangement by Shelly Berg which Elling recorded earlier with the USC Thornton Jazz Orchestra. (You can find on iTunes if you’re so inclined. Search for USC Thornton Jazz Orchestra).

The band sat out for the next tune, the tender and beautiful “Say It (Over and Over Again)” from DTY (and also on Hobgood’s “Left to My Own Devices,” in a version for solo piano). Elling began by telling the crowd that Hobgood’s arrangement on DTY was for jazz quartet, saxophonist Ernie Watts, and string quartet (ETHEL), but “any night I have Laurence Hobgood with me, I have an instant ten-fingered orchestra.” This was the evening’s most romantic moment, a wonderful performance by a master of the love song and his elegant, intuitive, expressive collaborator. The crowd—about 400 people, not a full house but a good house, split among chairs on the main level and sofas/cocktail-style tables on the mezzanine—was rapt.



Before the closer, Elling took time to praise the band and introduce each member by name, “these handsome men, because everybody has a mother and they all want to hear their little boys’ names.” He reminded us that CDs were available in the lobby, each “a fitting coaster for anyone who likes a drink,” pointed us toward his website with the words “it’s costing me a fortune; it costs you nothing,” and said that his next CD—with John Patitucci on bass and Peter Erskine on drums (!!!)—will probably be out in the spring of 2010. Then the great, colorful story-song “Nature Boy.” If you want to see Kurt sing it with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, here’s a video.

The encore, during which Elling conducted the band: “My Foolish Heart.” Two full, varied, enjoyable sets had come to an end.

But the night wasn’t over. Roesler kindly invited us to a reception at The Wine Bar, a small café in a strip mall where we had some lovely Penfold shiraz and I had the chance to talk with Dr. Matthew Patnode, a saxophonist with the big band (who told me how it works—thanks for that, Dr. P.), and with Hobgood, who was seated across the table from me.

Having read Hobgood’s postings on Elling’s website (the Forum section), I always thought he would be interesting to talk with, and he was. Topics ranged from the upcoming Jazz at Lincoln Center concert with Richard Galliano (Friday–Saturday, May 14–15, 2010), a meeting with Galliano in Paris (where the accordionist is a superstar), Turkish music, world music, the Dakota jazz club in Minneapolis, life in Chicago, life in New York, the Green Mill in Chicago, Hobgood's friend Patricia Barber (he calls her Patty), the piano he recently played at a concert in Des Moines, shopping for silk shirts in Los Angeles, the prospect of composing for string quartet, listening to Shostakovich’s string quartets (numbers 4 and 6, if I remember correctly), the next Elling CD and how amazing it will be with Patitucci and Erskine, Hobgood’s recent one-night engagement at Small’s (you can listen to both sets online), and more.



Meanwhile HH, seated at my right, was talking with Elling, who was seated at his right, about photography and music and Monterey and the Iron Chef television program (this being a bar, the TVs were on). I asked Elling if he cooked. He doesn't.

The wine was passed, glasses were filled, glasses were emptied, and we ordered more.

Photos by John Whiting.