[Dixielandjazz] Pittsburgh Jazz - Homages from Fatha & Pop's Weatherbird to Stanley Turrentine.

[Steve barbone]

Interesting mix of jazz, at Lincoln Center, honoring Pittsburgh musicians.
Something for everybody in this program which fills the venue for 2 days.

Is this sort of broad based program in the jazz future?
 
Cheers,
Steve


Jazz Review  - 'Pittsburgh Festival' - Rambling Round Pittsburgh

NY TIMES By NATE CHINEN - February 18, 2006

The jazz legacy of Pittsburgh confounds easy generalization. There's no
shorthand summary for a city that produced the buoyant pianist Earl (Fatha)
Hines as well as the steamrolling drummer Art Blakey and the urbane composer
Billy Strayhorn. So Jazz at Lincoln Center wisely makes no claim to
comprehensiveness in its Pittsburgh Festival, which takes up two of the
three performance spaces at Frederick P. Rose Hall.

In fact, "Pittsburgh: From the Heart of Steeltown" ‹ the festival's main
event, featuring the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in the Rose Theater ‹
offers an almost breezily impressionistic homage. Thursday night's concert
included four Strayhorn compositions, along with pieces by Mary Lou
Williams, Erroll Garner and Ray Brown. But it also rambled through less
expected terrain: the opener was "Salt Peanuts," the bebop ditty made famous
by Dizzy Gillespie but partly credited to the drummer Kenny Clarke, a Steel
City native. 

O.K., that's a stretch. As explained onstage by Wynton Marsalis, though, it
made a kind of loopy sense. Mr. Marsalis, the artistic director of Jazz at
Lincoln Center, was an affable and informative M.C. He also played plenty of
trumpet, sounding limber and in command. On "Weather Bird," the immortal
duet by Louis Armstrong and Hines, he crafted a sparkling and affectionate
Armstrong ode, moving gradually away from imitation. (The pianist Dan Nimmer
filled the role of Hines, and it's no slight to say he was outmatched.)

A pair of accomplished Pittsburgh expatriates, the vibraphonist Steve Nelson
and the drummer Jeff (Tain) Watts, served as intermittent guests. Mr. Nelson
played the role of a featured soloist; Mr. Watts seemed more like a tough
assistant coach. "The Impaler," a Watts original that transports an
Afro-Cuban clave into 7/8 meter, had the band careering outside its comfort
zone; only Mr. Marsalis, soloing from within the trumpet section, seemed
fully at ease. 

The other half of the Pittsburgh Festival involves a tribute to the tenor
saxophonist Stanley Turrentine in the Allen Room, which requires a separate
ticket. The featured ensemble, a quintet anchored by the Pittsburgh-based
organist Gene Ludwig, might flourish in a casual setting; on Thursday,
impressively framed by the backdrop of Columbus Circle, it seemed a tad
underdone.

"Pittsburgh: From the Heart of Steeltown" repeats tonight at 8 at the Rose
Theater, and "Music of the Masters: Stanley Turrentine" repeats tonight at
7:30 in the Allen Room, Frederick P. Rose Hall, 60th Street and Broadway;
(212) 751-6500.