[Dixielandjazz] Bach and Jazz

[Stephen G Barbone]

While it may not be OKOM, one might admire how the owners of Le  
Poisson Rouge are presenting music. I remember this location when it  
was The Village Gate and played Dixieland there a few times some 50   
years ago.
Cheers,
Steve Barbone

www.barbonestreet.com
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzbandwww.barbonestreet.com

NY TIMES - June 19, 2008 - By Allan Kozinn
Bach and Jazz Variations, Slightly Abbreviated.

Le Poisson Rouge, a new club on the site of the old Village Gate on  
Bleecker Street, opened on Sunday and is devoting much of this month  
to the JVC Jazz Festival. But its owners are young classical  
musicians, and they are pointedly including classical music in the  
club’s programming. They are also intent on projecting a more casual  
image of the music and its performers, and have engaged Ronen Givony  
to assemble their classical offerings in the style of his innovative  
Wordless Music series, which presents joint bills of experimental pop  
and classical players.

The club’s first classical performance was a 50-minute recital by the  
pianist Simone Dinnerstein on Tuesday night, part of a bill that also  
included the singer-songwriter Essie Jain. As it turned out, Ms.  
Dinnerstein’s set on its own was a study in eclecticism. She began  
with her signature piece, Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, or part of it,  
before turning to “Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik” (2002), George  
Crumb’s inventively dissonant variations on the Thelonious Monk jazz  
classic “Round Midnight.” As an encore she backtracked to late  
Romanticism by way of a Brahms Intermezzo.

As an early order of business Le Poisson Rouge must decide whether  
presenting classical music in a club necessarily involves compromises,  
and how those might be made without doing violence to the music.  
Presumably, complete performances of the “Goldberg” and the Crumb were  
deemed too lengthy for the setting, so Ms. Dinnerstein played the aria  
and the first 13 variations of the Bach and a handful of the nine  
variations in the Crumb.

That was a pity, because Ms. Dinnerstein has a lot to say about both  
works. Her “Goldberg” Variations has an almost willfully Romantic  
quality that takes the form of manipulated tempos and high-contrast  
dynamic changes, and her approach is not to all tastes. But variation  
for variation, the performance seemed carefully thought through and  
deeply felt. Even in this truncated edition she took all the repeats,  
adding ornamentation, changing balances and emphases, and altering her  
coloration in each. That alone made her decision to stop at the 13th  
regrettable. You wanted to know how she would maintain this variety.

She proved a persuasive new-music performer in the Crumb, which  
requires intermittent string strumming and light percussive effects  
amid the clusters and haziness that swirl around a stylized reduction  
of the Monk melody. Ms. Dinnerstein, reading from the score, gave an  
assured performance of the first few variations before skipping to the  
last.

The club was as quiet as a formal concert hall during Ms.  
Dinnerstein’s performance, and the bright, clear acoustics suit the  
piano nicely. They also comfortably accommodated the amplified set by  
Ms. Jain, a British singer who lives in New York and writes engaging  
songs that invoke the spirit of Sandy Denny but have quirky  
originality as well.

Simone Dinnerstein next performs at Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker  
Street, West Village, on Aug. 28; (212) 796-0741, lepoissonrouge.com.