<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=3>In a message dated 3/5/03 9:08:33 AM Central Standard Time, barbonestreet@earthlink.net writes:<BR>
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<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">March 5, 2003 - New York Times<BR>
<BR>
Working Together, Taking Different Roads<BR>
<BR>
By BEN RATLIFF<BR>
snipped:<BR>
<BR>
The patriarch is a quietly fearsome pianist: a generator of small<BR>
gestures, always more rhythmic than you expect. In the spaces where so<BR>
many other pianists bide their time, he played lean, gentle<BR>
provocations, playing accompaniment behind his sons' solos for example.<BR>
When it came time to shine, as in his solo during Alvin Batiste's<BR>
"Mozart-In'," he contributed a furtive, mumbling blues solo.<BR>
<BR>
That same song also gave the youngest family member onstage, Jason, a<BR>
turn to demonstrate what he has. He is one of the cleanest drummers in<BR>
jazz, and intensely conceptual. He rarely rests on patterns you've often<BR>
heard and thinks like an arranger, in discrete compartments of music.<BR>
Here he played in dragging New Orleans parade rhythm, varying his muted<BR>
drum sounds and keeping loud cymbals out of it. It was open, spacious<BR>
and tremendously funky.<BR>
<BR>
Wisely, the concert used several group permutations: a piano-trio (Ellis<BR>
Marsalis's slow ballad "After"), a quartet with Wynton and Branford<BR>
playing at full bore (on Branford's "Cain and Abel"), a trombone-piano<BR>
duet (Delfeayo's "If You Only Knew") and pieces with the full sextet. At<BR>
times the family played with an almost classical sense of restraint; as<BR>
a result the music seemed restricted by the barrier of the stage; at<BR>
other times the music gushed over the audience or incorporated<BR>
unconventional structures. ("Down Home With Homey" ended with a vigorous<BR>
bass solo.)<BR>
<BR>
At times Wynton and Branford were like a fork in jazz's road. The<BR>
trumpeter often used sleek, orderly patterns to win over the audience,<BR>
as he did at the start of "Buddy Bolden's Blues," when an unaccompanied<BR>
eighth-note solo seemed nearly Baroque in its tight, consonant<BR>
structure.<BR>
<BR>
When the saxophonist went for broke, he grew expansive, loud and nearly<BR>
messy, smashing through the walls of harmony, getting very post-Coltrane<BR>
for an audience that might not have been seeking a challenge. What a<BR>
relief that a concert like this could contain both impulses and many<BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"> With pretentious blather like this review, no wonder jazz is in trouble. <BR>
<BR>
" The music gushed over the audience"<BR>
(gag)<BR>
<BR>
Jim Beebe<BR>
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