[Dixielandjazz] Tribute to Benny Carter

[Steve Barbone]

Bo b Wilber took part in this concert.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


NY TIMES - Music Review  - Benny Carter Centennial
Jazz Master¹s Signature, Written in Sax and Brass

By BEN RATLIFF Published: October 22, 2007

Benny Carter spread his aesthetic throughout jazz from the 1920s to the
1960s, and he did it in a number of ways. Jazz exists first in the public
imagination through its soloist stars, and from the mid-¹20s onward Carter
was a great improviser ‹ first on alto saxophone, then on trumpet ‹ though
he didn¹t satisfy anyone¹s picture of a jazz genius as a troubled, mercurial
man-child; he was private and professional.

But he was also an excellent composer, arranger and bandleader, able to
handle great quantities of music and musicians; he knew how to collaborate.
Those qualities eventually took him around the world and gave him longevity,
so that he made excellent music until his death in 2003 at 95.

It was fitting then that no single musician ran away with Jazz at Lincoln
Center¹s Friday night concert at Rose Theater, based around Carter¹s music,
this year¹s season-opening program. (Carter was born in 1907, and this is
his centennial year.) If there was a star, it was a whole bloc within a
band: the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra¹s saxophone section, playing the
tightly harmonized passages that were among Carter¹s signatures.

Carter¹s arrangement of ³All of Me,² from 1940, is a good example. After an
introduction, it began with the four saxophonists playing two choruses of
harmonized lockstep, running a rewritten version of the melody through the
chords, and it had everything an individual solo can have: melodic shape,
hesitation, easy swing, double-timing, open space. The same thing happened
again, at the same level of execution, in ³I Can¹t Escape From You.² It was
demanding music, beautifully coordinated.

The show¹s first half drew from 78 r.p.m. records, and the songs were over
after a few blinks. Even with the introduction of a few singers (Cynthia
Scott on ³When Lights Are Low² and the orchestra¹s trombonist, Vincent
Gardner, singing the ersatz cowboy lyrics in ³Cow Cow Boogie²), most of them
reflected the compression of the recordings. They made their point, as quiet
glides or rubbery riff tunes or saxophone-section bonanzas, then vanished.

The second section of the concert opened the music up a little more.
³Doozy,² a stylish Carter blues from his 1961 record ³Further Definitions,²
is three and a half minutes on the recording; on Friday it ran longer, and
deservedly so. They cracked it open. Bob Wilber appeared as a guest soloist
and, in the middle of the tune, traded solos on sopranino saxophone with the
baritone saxophonist Joe Temperley, little horn against big horn. Then the
focus shifted to the alto saxophonists Ted Nash and Sherman Irby, Mr. Nash
playing aggressive interval-jumps, Mr. Irby contradicting him with more
gentle and congenial phrases.

Well, maybe there was a star, and maybe it was Mr. Irby. The alto saxophone
was Carter¹s instrument, and on three memorable solos Mr. Irby used his
rich, plummy, rounded tone, one you almost never hear from younger
saxophonists anymore, with a vibrato like a throb. The music deepened
emotionally as it went along chronologically, and at the end ‹ Carter¹s
slow, lovely final composition, ³Again and Again,² from 2000 ‹ the concert
became an almost mystical kind of blue-light séance.