[Dixielandjazz] New Orleans meets Harlem

[Stephen G Barbone]

Here's a review of an interesting mix of music by the Marcus Roberts  
Trio. From Fats Waller to Duke Ellington to Thelonious Monk.
Note that the NY TIMES is almost imperceptibly shifting the title of  
these types of articles from Jazz Review to Music Review.
Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.net/barbonestreetjazzband


July 23, 2009 - NY TIMES - By Nate Chinen
Warmly Balancing Mind and Heart

MUSIC REVIEW
Marcus Roberts draws few distinctions between the playful and the  
professorial. As a pianist, bandleader and composer-arranger he  
balances erudition against reserves of charisma and wit. His first set  
at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola on Tuesday night was typical: generous in  
its warmth and strategic in its pacing, with a wealth of serendipitous  
detail.

Mr. Roberts filled the set largely with material from a new album,  
“New Orleans Meets Harlem Vol. 1” (J Master), his first in eight  
years. As on the album, he was leading a version of his longtime  
working trio, featuring Jason Marsalis on drums. But perhaps because  
of a substitution in the bass chair — Rodney Jordan fills in this week  
for Roland Guerin — the group’s rapport felt more reserved than usual.  
At times the schematic rigor of its arrangements exerted a faintly  
perceptible drag on the music.

That was the case, to one degree or another, on the set’s three Fats  
Waller tunes: a decorously restrained “Jitterbug Waltz”; a sluggish  
“Honeysuckle Rose,” designed as a bass feature; and a version of  
“Ain’t Misbehavin’” uneasily bracketed by a Latin vamp.

But the stronger and more relaxed portions of the set were extremely  
gratifying. Thelonious Monk’s “Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are,” set at an  
easygoing tempo, brought out Mr. Roberts’s most ingenious instincts.  
He developed a coherent solo even while shifting gears at unexpected  
moments: a splay-fingered run morphed into a graceful chord pattern,  
which in turn became a hammering trill. He got just as much out of  
Brooks Bowman’s “East of the Sun (And West of the Moon),” though in  
that case he heeded a steady buildup, opening with diffidence and  
closing with crashing force.

Mr. Marsalis has long been the perfect accompanist for Mr. Roberts:  
flexible, exacting, almost scarily responsive. He seized the solo  
spotlight onCole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love?” —  
rhythmically reconfigured with nine beats to a bar, in groupings of  
four and five — and made it into a loping funk concerto, equally  
suggestive of New Orleans parade music and the more concept-oriented  
drum solos of Max Roach. He was even more valuable for his subtler  
contributions. For a long stretch of “In Walked Bud,” another Monk  
tune, he played nothing but a skeletal cymbal pattern, and it was  
precisely what the song needed at that moment.

Near the set’s close Mr. Roberts played a solo rumination on “Mood  
Indigo,” a Duke Ellington ballad that he has often revisited. Sounding  
somber at first he briefly involved some frolicsome stride rhythm and  
then drew back again, flirting meaningfully with classical  
impressionism. He seemed loose as well as focused: while he was  
imparting a lesson of sorts, it felt like a flicker of inspiration.

The Marcus Roberts Trio plays through Sunday at Dizzy’s Club Coca- 
Cola, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th  
Street; (212) 258-9595, jalc.org.