George Cables played a concert at The Seasons performance hall the other night. It was the kind of evening his listeners have come to expect, flowing with the inventiveness, technical skill and joy that Cables has demonstrated in a four-decade career with Art Pepper, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard and Art Blakey–a few names from the long list of his colleagues. Cables, bassist Chuck Deardorf and drummer Don Kinney gave two stimulating trio sets in the acoustically blessed former sanctuary of The Seasons.
Not long after intermission, Cables glided into Thelonious Monk’s “‘Round Midnight” without accompaniment. Alternating between strict tempo and the rhythmic give-and-take of rubato, he began erecting a monument. Now bringing all of his formidable technique into play, now easing the dynamics, he never abandoned Monk’s imperishable melody altogether. He surrounded it with lightning flashes, parted the clouds to flood the themes with sunlight, swooped and soared above, below and around the tune. Symphonic, operatic and funky, he brought in Monk dissonances, roistering Fats Waller cadences, supersonic Art Tatum runs and a touch or two of Cecil Taylor delirium. He went on building, gathering intensity for five minutes, six minutes, seven. It may have been longer; the distraction of looking at a watch was out of the question. Deardorf and Kinney were mesmerized along with the audience. When Cables eased out of his rapture into the earth-bound hominess of “Blue Monk” and nodded them in, it took a momentary effort of will for the sidemen to join him aboard the blues train.
Cables has recorded a similar approach to “‘Round Midnight” in the CD called A Letter to Dexter. It is a fine version. It is not the equal of what he did last Saturday night at The Seasons, when he created that rarest of musical experiences, a concert performance that remains in the mind, whole and alive.