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Musik Jazz/Blues Hot house warm-up at Fasching
Musik Jazz/Blues Hot house warm-up at Fasching
| Hot house warm-up at Fasching |
| Skrivet av Rikard Rehnbergh |
| 2010-06-01 14:26 |
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As a warm-up to the upcoming yearly event at Skeppsholmen, Stockholm Jazz (10-12th of June), jazz joint Fasching in the innercity area of the capitol invites two prominent cats who go under the first name Roy, and both with surnames that begin on H. The first one of the younger, the other from the older generation of jazz stars. And they both like to entertain, joke’n’jive on stage, band-leaders as they are, and sing a few song lines when they ought not to. On Thursday the 20th of May, the 40 years old trumpeter Roy Hargrove plays with his extremely tight, and tired, jet-lagged quintet, an all black ensemble. And after the weekend, on Monday the 24th, the 85 years young drummer Roy Haynes jams with his Fountain of Youth Orchestra, a mixed quartet. Hargrove is one of those lately coming musicians, arranger and band leaders, who has tried to expand the concept of jazz, to make it even more cross over and, therefore, hip again, like a rebirth of cool. It was first and foremost the album RH Factor from 2003 that gave him a name on the jazz Parnassus. With features like Erykah Badu, Common, Roots and D’Angelo his luck was made also among the R’n’B posse. Hargrove played at Skeppsholmen the same year looking extremely cool’n’criss and youthful in his long dreads and black-green-yellow Jamaica T-shirt. he refused to get off the stageBut by 2009 he had changed his style completely, when he came to Skeppsholmen again (he sure seems to enjoy the city) for a concert with his big band (that had a woman in the horn section, a too rare sight in the jazz world). Dressed in a three-piece suit and tie, fifties style, and a clean short cut he led the big band with a firm and mature hand. And at the following traditional jam session at Fasching, he refused to get off the stage, just blew and blew his trumpet until the other musicians nearly had it. But for these reasons a lot of jazz connoisseurs dig Hargrove‘s groove and want to see him gig here on a yearly basis.So it is with at kind of mixture, an in between these two positions that Hargrove & Quartet enter the stage, on time, in a jam-packed and greenhouse hot jazz club. With the overwhelming risk of boring the reader with too much title-dropping, let us settle with: The all African-American ensemble plays some covers, arrangements on evergreens but the tune that lingers on after the concert is this one: the oldtimer, soul-dripping Strasbourg/St. Denis (composed by Hargrove in a cheap hotel in Paris), where the trumpeter manages to slip in a short quote from The Spinners-classic Could it be I’m falling in love. Haynes has played with them all: Dizzy, Davis, Vaughan, Trane, Monk, just to name a few, the list can be made much longer. And the man sure as H don’t look his 85 years nor behaves like it, a since some 20 years retired person. One could guess that the art, the music, the jazz, the battery keeps him forever young, or is it the Fountain of Youth Orchestra? Martin Bejerano, the pianist of Latin-American heritage, knows his scales and classics, Haynes gives him a lot of space and focus during the concert. And he gags’n’giggles with the base player David Wong, of Asian-American origin, who is the one most kept in the background, since it seems as if he is the one who is able to follow Haynes’s many whims the least of the three. Both these musicians have a somewhat classical approach to the music, one gets the feeling that they might as well could have been playing on stage of the classical concert hall. But the swell’n’splendid African-American saxophonistJaleel Shaw, who heretofore has played with jazz giant Charles Mingus for ten years, is all jazz. And the most interesting part of the concert is to check the interplay and understanding between him and Haynes. The jazz is kind of easy listening and swingy, yet hardbop. What remains the longest in the memory is a cool and rearranged version, an alternative take of Miles Davis first track So What from the classic Kind of Blue album from 1957, and it makes one wonder how Haynes dares picking up that piece into the repertoire since he’s lacking Miles trumpet in the quartet (this album and quintet with Miles on trumpet and John Coltrane on saxophones is one of the real corner- and milestones in the history of jazz, especially in the styles of bebop and cool jazz). Instead, Shaw plays the soprano saxophone for both parts, very meritorious, and Haynes probably finally said: So what? Rikard Rehnbergh |