[Dixielandjazz] Concert Review - Woody Allen

[Stephen G Barbone]

Here is a review of Woody Allen at the Montreal Jazz Festival. After  
all is said and done, he communicates to, and entertains the audience  
and that's what it is all about according to Louis Armstrong.
Cheers,
Steve Barbone

www.barbonestreet.com
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

Concert Review: Woody Allen in Montreal
Posted: June 30, 2008, 2:45 PM by NP Editor
Woody Allen, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, Place des Arts

Montreal, Canada,  June 29, 2008

Early on in the film Wild Man Blues, a documentary of his 1996 concert  
tour of Europe, Woody Allen frets about his potential for boring  
audiences:  “I’m not a sufficient enough musician to hold their  
interest.”

Famously chronic worrier though he is, Allen asks a worthwhile  
question:  does anyone really go to see his New Orleans-style jazz  
band for the clarinet playing?  On Sunday night in Montreal, after two  
hours of rambunctious old-school swing, a more pertinent question came  
to mind:  did any of the nearly 3000 fans who stayed the course  
through the second encore stick around simply because Allen is a  
famous movie star?

Allen is a serious clarinetist: he fell in love with Dixieland and  
ragtime jazz as a teenager and even contemplated playing it as a  
career.  Along with banjoist and musical director Eddy Davis, he has  
been holding down a regular weekly gig in Manhattan for decades, most  
recently at the Café Carlyle.  All the same, he rarely tours; he  
hasn’t released an album since the Wild Man Bluessoundtrack, and the  
band’s material consists of chestnuts so old they’ve now sprouted and  
become trees in their own right.

So how to keep an audience riveted?  Allen’s opening gambit was  
shrewd: as pianist Conal Fowkes played a strutting introduction, he  
walked on purposefully with the rest of the band, sat down, and  
immediately began to play random-sounding squeaks and pips, eliciting  
laughter; he then played repeated staccato notes as if tittering along  
with them.

Without saying a word, Allen served notice that his self-deprecating  
humour was in effect.  And while he may not be a Sidney Bechet or a  
Benny Goodman, he has that most important of qualities for a jazz horn  
player:  his own sound.  Just as his image is instantly recognizable  
(with his black-rimmed glasses now topped by a shock of white hair),  
his playing is as distinct as the calls of a species of bird:  burbly  
in the lower register, trilling in the higher and confidently –  
sometimes honkingly – resonant.  His sound is good-natured and  
contented– qualities one wouldn’t associate with the neurotic  
schlemiel he tends to portray in his films.

“There’s nothing between you and the playing,” Allen said in Wild Man  
Blues.  “There’s no cerebral element in it at all.”  Indeed, immersing  
himself in the music, Allen seems to have set aside his cares.  He  
closes his eyes as he plays, and more often than not, his crossed legs  
are bobbing up and down – he appears to be enjoying himself whole- 
heartedly.

His companions, particularly the steadily beaming Davis, are doing the  
same.  The Dixieland jazz that they play is particularly well-suited  
to the creator of inveterately talky films:  with its contrapuntal  
improvisations, it’s probably the art form that closest resembles  
conversation without representing it directly.  When Allen, trombonist  
Jerry Zigmont and trumpeter Simon Wettenhall let loose with  
interlocking riffs, more often than not it’s the clarinetist who  
dominates the interchanges.  Even the trio’s hammier moments – unlike,  
say, the acting in Allen’s latest film, Cassandra’s Dream – are  
appropriate in context.

Alas, the concert-hall stage, with its backdrop of vaguely psychedelic  
spirally visuals, is rather far-removed from the “New Orleans jazz  
joints” that Allen evoked when introducing the music.  But the crowd’s  
enthusiasm, and Allen’s eagerness to please, is such that by the end  
of the second encore, a rip-roaring rendition of “Sweet Georgia  
Brown,” everyone arose to shimmy in the aisles, and clap along.

Allen spoke to the crowd only twice: to introduce the music and then  
the players.  His comments were earnest:  “I hope you’ll like it.   
We’ll do our best.”  Indeed, Allen delivers; if only the supposedly  
“with-it” festival crowd could get with the jazz program and learn to  
clap on the offbeats, they’d be as hip as the spry septuagenarian  
playing the hell out of his clarinet.

• Woody Allen plays a second show Monday night at the Salle Wilfrid- 
Pelletier.



Steve Barbone

www.barbonestreet.com
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband