[Dixielandjazz] Jazz Review of monday night's performance at Carnegie Hall

[Steve Barbone]

Why was Dr. Michael White's Original Liberty Jazz Band at Carnegie with all
the other moderns bands for this tribute to Lorraine Gordon, owner of the
Village Vanguard?

Because they perform at the Village Vanguard every year for the New Year's
week and they pack the joint all week long.

Interesting mix of jazz genres here, from the 1920s to the 21st Century.

Note to Mad Dawg: See the "sound problem". Go East young man and straighten
those folks out.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Lorraine Gordon, Queen of the Village Vanguard, Gets Her Due

NY TIMES - By BEN RATLIFF - June 21, 2006

Contemplating the Village Vanguard at Carnegie Hall is a bit like going to
Vienna to really understand Detroit. I'm not drawing comparisons; I'm just
saying that there is a considerable disjunction of spirit between the
places. 
Still, for her accomplishments, for having run the shop with soul and
integrity since 1989 ‹ after the death of her husband, Max ‹ Lorraine Gordon
deserves a proper night out. On Monday the JVC Jazz Festival honored Ms.
Gordon, the Vanguard's 83-year-old proprietor, with a full menu of bands at
Carnegie Hall that she books regularly at her club.

Multiple bills in the JVC festival can come off a bit gingerly or as
overthought, programmed to avoid alienating the presumed micro-audience for
each band. And in truth, a mismatched double bill can feel like a non
sequitur. But a wild garden of five is much better than an awkward pairing
of two.

This one had Dr. Michael White's Original Liberty Jazz Band, from New
Orleans; Paul Motian's Trio 2000 + 1 ; Roy Hargrove's Quintet, with the
vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson as a guest sixth member; the Bad Plus; and
finally the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. Stylistically, it was all over the
place. So what; nobody minded. The idea that it was designed by the filter
of Ms. Gordon's ears ‹ she is a sharp and judicious listener ‹ helped to
make it cohere conceptually without wilting. There were very few walkouts
until nearly 11 o'clock, when the show was coming to a close.

Dr. White, the clarinetist, and his seven-piece band, who always hold down
the week around New Year's Eve at the club, played starchily elegant,
traditional 1920's-style New Orleans pieces like "Shake It Don't Break It"
and a slow "Burgundy Street Blues," as well as Dr. White's "Give It Up
(Gypsy Second Line)," which added Eastern European tonality.

Mr. Motian's trio sounded in some ways the inverse: minimal, slow, undefined
by era. The band ‹ Larry Grenadier on bass, Chris Potter on tenor saxophone
‹ played two of Mr. Motian's knotty melodies that sound as if they can be
played at any speed and in any rhythm, then was joined by the singer Rebecca
Martin for three standards.

They were "Everything Happens to Me," "The Folks Who Live on the Hill" and
"You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me." All began with the songs' often
neglected opening verses, sung against Mr. Motian's and Mr. Grenadier's airy
improvising, before the rhythm solidified and Mr. Potter came in; this band
allows everyone to solo more or less continuously, although there are proper
solo choruses as well.

But Ms. Martin's voice, easy and forthright and happily unconcerned with
evoking the phrasing and rhythmic nuances of old jazz singers everyone
knows, relaxed the pulse, and Mr. Potter's solos accelerated from logical,
melody-based structures into a controlled language of overtones and shrieks.
(An exquisite new record of this band, "Paul Motian on Broadway Vol. 4, or
the Paradox of Continuity," on Winter & Winter, is due Aug. 9. Write it
down.)

Mr. Hargrove's band, rooted in a 1960's post-bop sound, opened with a new
original song that is better than most jazz songs these days: "Trust," a
ballad with a phrase repeated through different keys to give you the feeling
of rising higher and higher. And Mr. Hargrove, who can be an exciting
trumpet player when he's on, made a strong showing. But the sound was a
nightmare, the opposite of the Village Vanguard experience: it kept stepping
over the threshold into feedback, and very little could be heard of Mr.
Hutcherson's intricate, thought-through playing.

The Bad Plus, better-sounding than any other group in a concert plagued by
erratic sound engineering, played some sharply turned-out new pieces. There
was the pianist Ethan Iverson's tempo-warped "Mint," careering and then
perorating; the drummer Dave King's "Thrift-Store Jewelry," a concise,
mixed-meter tune that, endearingly and almost nonsensically, opened up into
a short four-four walk at the very end; and Reid Anderson's "Giant," a kind
of ballad anchored by Mr. Anderson's consistent bass vamp, as piano and
drums rose and fell around it. On top of strong rhythmic foundations, it's
an original band that plays with different kinds of rhetoric. This short set
included mock-heroic, genteel and frenetic.

And the 16-piece Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, which inhabits the club every
Monday and has done so in one incarnation or another for 40 years, performed
a set of its playful, intelligent, booming music, much of which reflected
the innovative 1960's sensibilities of its composers, including Thad Jones
and Bob Brookmeyer. The saxophonist Joe Lovano soloed discursively through a
Brookmeyer piece ("Nasty Dance"); the group closed with Jones's "Little
Pixie"; and before the set ended, house lights were brusquely turned on.