• Home
  • About
    • Doug Ramsey
    • Rifftides
    • Contact
  • Purchase Doug’s Books
    • Poodie James
    • Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond
    • Jazz Matters
    • Other Works
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal
  • rss

Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Shout

October 4, 2006 by Doug Ramsey

The Fall Festival at The Seasons ended on Saturday night with a shout. In the second of two concerts by the Bill Mays Trio, the focus was primarily on themes from classical music. The string section of the Finisterra Trio integrated with the Mays group on several pieces. Following two days of rehearsals laced with hard work and laughter, Mays Rehearsal 92906 001.jpg
violinist Kwan Bin Park and cellist Kevin Krentz put aside the typical classical player’s apprehension about whether they could swing. They could. They did–mightily–with pianist Mays, bassist Martin Wind and drummer Matt Wilson.
The program included Rachmaninov, Debussy, Mendelssohn, Ravel, Borodin, Bach and Rodrigo, with additional compositions by Mays, Wind and Wilson. The pieces by the trio alone were at the Mays Trio’s customary high level of excellence. The performances with strings were extraordinary, particularly in the breathtaking closers of each half. Mays’ arrangement of the fourth movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s “Piano Trio in C Minor” opened up for the trio’s jazz improvisation and May’s skillfully written “blowing” lines for the strings. One section employed unalloyed E-flat blues changes, the other Mendelssohn’s own harmonies. Wilson’s solo on the blues was a living definition of melodic drumming, Wind’s on the more complex Mendelssohn changes a stunning demonstration of tonal depth and harmonic resourcefulness. In the movement’s famous hymn variations, the blend of cello, violin, piano and arco bass was almost unbearably moving. Mays’ variations on the variations summoned up still more hymns, including an allusion to “Bringing In The Sheaves.” If you think the famous “We Want Cantor” 1-6-2-5 harmonic sequence began with Eddie Cantor, listen to the conclusion of the Mendelssohn C Minor. And it was old when he used it. Properly played by a classical piano trio, that finale is a powerhouse. With the addition of Wind’s bass and Wilson’s drums, it is enough to lift an audience out of its seats. It did.
Mays’ “Peace Waltz” (aka “Kaleidoscope”) and Wilson’s setting of three poems by Carl Sandburg included narration, which I was flattered to be asked to provide. The poems from Sandburg’s The People, Yes, were “As Wave Follows Wave,” “To Know Silence Perfectly” and “Choose,” with beautifully written parts for the five instruments. Wilson’s instructions included improvisation by the classical players, which Krentz and Park performed as if they had been doing it all their lives. “Choose” has the passion of a 1930s labor protest song or something by Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra.

Choose (Sandburg)
The single clenched fist lifted and ready.
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.

I was recruited to play melody on flugelhorn in “Choose” and to commit free improvisation along with the quintet. It ended up sounding like Don Cherry sitting in with your neighborhood Salvation Army band.
The final piece began with Mays playing J.S. Bach’s “Two-Part Invention No. 8 in F Major,” BWV 779,segueing into Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple From The Apple,” the cello and violin playing Parker’s “Ah-Leu-Cha” in counterpoint. Mays, Wind and Wilson each soloed at length, Mays quoting “Nola” and “Jitterbug Waltz,” among other several other unlikely things. But he wasn’t through quoting when his solo ended. The penultimate chorus that Mays wrote for the ensemble contained snatches of “Tenor Madness,” “Buzzy” and “Honeysuckle Rose.” The final shout chorus of counterpoint on the Parker themes concluded with the celebrated coda of Parker’s 1947 Dial recording of “Scrapple From The Apple,” the strings wrapping it up on a tremendous tremolo. The encore was a repeat of the shout chorus.
We have frequently discussed in Rifftides the undeservedness of ninety percent of standing ovations these days. This standing O at The Seasons was in the other ten percent.
Jim Wilke recorded the concert for his Jazz Northwest radio program. There is talk that it may also be released on compact disc. Stay tuned.

Related

Filed Under: Main

Comments

  1. fred bouchard says

    October 10, 2006 at 7:11 pm

    Hey, Doug, what a sweet concert and respectful review. wish we had more space in public places for such rare music and informed commentary. Blog on, dude.

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

Subscribe to RiffTides by Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

Archives

Recent Comments

  • Rob D on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • W. Royal Stokes on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Larry on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Lucille Dolab on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Donna Birchard on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside

Doug’s Picks

We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside

As Rifftides readers have undoubtedly noticed, it has been a long time since we posted. We are creating a new post in hopes  that it will open the way to resumption of frequent reports as part of the artsjournal.com mission to keep you up to date on jazz and other matters. Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s stunning new trio album […]

Recent Listening: The New David Friesen Trio CD

David Friesen Circle 3 Trio: Interaction (Origin) Among the dozens of recent releases that deserve serious attention, a few will get it. Among those those receiving it here is bassist David Friesen’s new album.  From the Portland, Oregon, sinecure in which he thrives when he’s not touring the world, bassist Friesen has been performing at […]

Monday Recommendation: Dominic Miller

Dominic Miller Absinthe (ECM) Guitarist and composer Miller delivers power and subtlety in equal measure. Abetted by producer Manfred Eicher’s canny guidance and ECM’s flawless sound and studio presence, Miller draws on inspiration from painters of France’s impressionist period. His liner essay emphasizes the importance to his musical conception of works by Cezanne, Renoir, Lautrec, […]

Recent Listening: Dave Young And Friends

Dave Young, Lotus Blossom (Modica Music) Young, the bassist praised by Oscar Peterson for his “harmonic simpatico and unerring sense of time” when he was a member of Peterson’s trio, leads seven gifted fellow Canadians. His beautifully recorded bass is the underpinning of a relaxed session in which his swing is a force even during […]

Recent Listening: Jazz Is Of The World

Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano, Jan Lundgren, Mare Nostrum III (ACT) This third outing by Mare Nostrum continues the international trio’s close collaboration in a series of albums that has enjoyed considerable success. With three exceptions, the compositions in this installment are by the members of Mare Nostrum. It opens with one the French accordionist Galliano […]

Monday Recommendation: Thelonious Monk’s Works In Full

Kimbrough, Robinson, Reid, Drummond: Monk’s Dreams(Sunnyside) The subtitle of this invaluable 6-CD set is The Complete Compositions Of Thelonious Sphere Monk. By complete, Sunnyside means that the box contains six CDs with 70 tunes that Monk wrote beginning in the early years when his music was generally assumed to be an eccentric offshoot of bebop, […]

More Doug's Picks

Blogroll

All About Jazz
JerryJazzMusician
Carol Sloane: SloaneView
Jazz Beyond Jazz: Howard Mandel
The Gig: Nate Chinen
Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong
Don Heckman: The International Review Of Music
Ted Panken: Today is The Question
George Colligan: jazztruth
Brilliant Corners
Jazz Music Blog: Tom Reney
Brubeck Institute
Darcy James Argue
Jazz Profiles: Steve Cerra
Notes On Jazz: Ralph Miriello
Bob Porter: Jazz Etc.
be.jazz
Marc Myers: Jazz Wax
Night Lights
Jason Crane:The Jazz Session
JazzCorner
I Witness
ArtistShare
Jazzportraits
John Robert Brown
Night After Night
Do The Math/The Bad Plus
Prague Jazz
Russian Jazz
Jazz Quotes
Jazz History Online
Lubricity

Personal Jazz Sites
Chris Albertson: Stomp Off
Armin Buettner: Crownpropeller’s Blog
Cyber Jazz Today, John Birchard
Dick Carr’s Big Bands, Ballads & Blues
Donald Clarke’s Music Box
Noal Cohen’s Jazz History
Bill Crow
Easy Does It: Fernando Ortiz de Urbana
Bill Evans Web Pages
Dave Frishberg
Ronan Guilfoyle: Mostly Music
Bill Kirchner
Mike Longo
Jan Lundgren (Friends of)
Willard Jenkins/The Independent Ear
Ken Joslin: Jazz Paintings
Bruno Leicht
Earl MacDonald
Books and CDs: Bill Reed
Marvin Stamm

Tarik Townsend: It’s A Raggy Waltz
Steve Wallace: Jazz, Baseball, Life and Other Ephemera
Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest
Jessica Williams

Other Culture Blogs
Terry Teachout
DevraDoWrite
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
On An Overgrown Path

Journalism
PressThink: Jay Rosen
Second Draft, Tim Porter
Poynter Online

Related

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in