[Dixielandjazz] Something for everybody

[Steve barbone]

Why has this NYC Jazz series lasted, no . . . wildly succeeded for 33 years?
Perhaps because it varies the jazz styles presented, even within a night's
performance like that reviewed below. From Bop, "Godchild", to American
Songbook, Gershwin, Kern, Burton Lane, to Leonard Bernstein's West Side
Story's, "Cool", to Latin, Jobim's "Corcovado".

All of it great music by great players. Produced by a reformed lawyer.

Simple enough, eh? ;-) VBG.

Cheers,
Steve 


Jazz Review | 'Highlights in Jazz'

A Pianistic Life, With Grace and Swagger


NY TIMES By NATE CHINEN - February 11, 2006

"Thirty-three years," the producer Jack Kleinsinger marveled at the start of
his Highlights in Jazz concert on Thursday night. "Two-hundred fifty-nine
concerts. Some of you people have been to almost all of them."

His audience, which nearly filled the main theater at the TriBeCa Performing
Arts Center, chuckled appreciatively; the statement carried a kernel of
truth. It explained why Highlights in Jazz, a nonprofit venture, is the
longest-running jazz series in the city. Its survival has been a product of
steady patronage, in all senses of the word.

Mr. Kleinsinger, a former assistant attorney general of New York, is the
founder and keeper of the series. He has the expansive volubility of an
impresario, a trait that he pretends to be slightly embarrassed about. He
has no qualms whatsoever about the musicians he has presented over the
years, a roll call that has included Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton and
Eubie Blake. 

The pianist Bill Charlap is a more recent addition to those ranks, but he's
hardly a newcomer; Thursday marked his 11th Highlights in Jazz appearance.
He fits the series almost too perfectly, with a blend of precision,
erudition and selfless bonhomie ‹ qualities that have come in handy since
last summer, when he assumed artistic directorship of another longstanding
series, Jazz in July at the 92nd Street Y.

Mr. Charlap made the concert a sort of career retrospective, with his superb
working trio at its core. The opener was "Godchild," a cool-bop showpiece
that Mr. Charlap recorded more than a decade ago. It was followed by Gerry
Mulligan's "Rocker," which has a similar pedigree. The rest of the first
half was an impressionistic tour through the standard songbook, with an
emphasis on refreshing choices like Burton Lane's "Too Late Now."

The trio ‹ Mr. Charlap, Peter Washington on bass and Kenny Washington (no
relation) on drums ‹ worked in a crisp professional mode without succumbing
to rigidity or gloss. At times, their unflappable cool was unnerving. Mr.
Charlap's arrangement of "In the Still of the Night" kept a breakneck pace,
testing the musicians' graceful athleticism; the result was less like a
high-wire act than a figure-skating routine. Only with "Cool," from Leonard
Bernstein's "West Side Story," did everyone let loose; the composition's
formal twists and built-in swagger elicited a standout performance.

As is always the case in a Highlights in Jazz concert, there was a surprise
guest: the trumpeter Jeremy Pelt emerged in the first half to play a muted
horn on a lightly boppish rendition of George Gershwin's "Soon." Switching
to fluegelhorn for a duet with Mr. Charlap, he applied a warmer, more
introverted approach to Jerome Kern's "Folks Who Live on the Hill."

Three additional guests were billed and advertised, but one of them, the
84-year-old tenor saxophonist Frank Wess, had bowed out with what Mr.
Kleinsinger described as mild health concerns. So the concert's second half
featured Jimmy Heath on tenor saxophone and Slide Hampton on trombone. They
played two numbers together, including another high point, Dizzy Gillespie's
Afro-Cuban reverie "Con Alma."

Each guest also took a compelling solo turn: Mr. Hampton delivered a
beautifully straightforward reading of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Corcovado,"
and Mr. Heath followed suit with the customary tenor entreaty "Body and
Soul." On both pieces, Mr. Charlap and his trio-mates seemed quietly
confident that they were getting their point across.

The Highlights in Jazz series continues through May 11 at the TriBeCa
Performing Arts Center, Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers
Street; (212) 220-1460.